How to create a survey using Google Forms [video]

When collecting feedback from customers, have you tried using Google Forms?

As a business owner, it is important to collect feedback from customers and fans when you can. This way you can learn what you’re doing right with your business and which areas your customers are interested in seeing you improve upon.

For most business owners, determining which tools to use to create a survey can be frustrating. There are a lot of choices for surveys – and most of them cost money.

As someone who has spent a number of years conducting market research, I wanted to share how you can create a survey using Google Forms – for free.

Google Forms

What can you use a Google Forms survey for?

Google Forms isn’t just a tool for creating just one survey. You can use Google Forms for multiple aspects of your business.

Here are a few types of surveys business owners should consider creating in Google Forms so that you can collect feedback from customers about their purchases, buying habits, or general feedback about the products that they offer.

Examples of surveys to create using Google Forms

  • Customer feedback survey
  • Testimonials for your Facebook Page, blog, or website
  • Customer returns information
  • Demographic information about your customers

Google Forms + Analytics

Unlike most survey tools, which charge you to use their product and then ask for more money to analyze the results, surveys created using Google Forms will do the analysis for you on multiple choice and radio-button questions (and for free).

Here’s an example of the analytics you get with Google Forms. It’s pretty good.

If you want to view the individual results, you can look at each response as well.

Google Forms - Analytics

Where are the results stored when using Google forms?

The great thing about Google Forms is that when users take your survey, the information is stored within your Google account. If you have a Gmail account, you can easily access this information from anywhere with just an Internet connection.

Also, if you ever want to save your survey data, you can use Google Takeout to create a backup copy to keep on your hard drive.

Creating a survey using Google Forms Continue reading How to create a survey using Google Forms

How to Set a Board Cover on Pinterest [video]

How to set a board cover on Pinterest

How to set a board cover on Pinterest

For those of you who are unfamiliar with Pinterest, it is a site that uses boards to let you share and organize your favorite quotes, images and videos from around the web.  What’s great is that in addition to being able to organize photos and videos onto boards, you can set a board cover photo.  We’re going to show you how to set a board cover on Pinterest to make your boards more appealing to users.

How do I make my board stand out on Pinterest?

Besides pinning quality images to your boards on Pinterest, a great way to get more people to follow you and to repin (share) your content is to set a board cover.  Setting a board cover is similar to deciding on which photo to use for your DVD packaging.  The more enticing an image, the more chances you have that someone would want to look further into what you have pinned on that particular board.

To help you learn how to set a board cover on Pinterest, I’ve put together a set of brief instructions along with a video on how to set a board cover photo on Pinterest.

Continue reading How to Set a Board Cover on Pinterest

How to embed tweetchat in WordPress

For those of you looking to leverage the social networ Twitter, to engage with your followers, one of my favorite tools to use for this is Tweetchat.

If you’re unfamiliar with Tweetchat, what this tool does is it allows you to hold a chat on a specific Twitter hashtag. There’s no need to refresh your screen or sift through multiple hashtags. You simply enter a hashtag and it Tweetchat creates a room where you can tweet and chat with your followers.

Tweetchat features

Here are a few features of Tweetchat

  • Put blinders on to everything else going on on Twitter and focus on one hashtag
  • Feature certain accounts so that they stand out
  • Converse in real-time
  • Have fun!

How I use Tweetchat

Personally, I’m a big fan of Tweetchat. I use it during conferences by broadcasting it to LCD and plasma screens that I have setup. This way, attendees can follow what is being talked about on Twitter while they’re walking around. If they want to participate, all they simply need to do is visit Tweetchat and sign-in to their Twitter account and they can easily add to the conversation from their mobile devices such as their smartphone or tablet and it will show up on Tweetchat.

Another way that I like to use Tweetchat is to embed it into my website. This way someone can easily join the conversation from my website. The great thing about Tweetchat is that if you want to, you can embed tweetchat into your WordPress blog,

Embedding tweetchat into your WordPress blog takes just a few minutes. Here’s how to do it.

Continue reading How to embed tweetchat in WordPress

Sync contact photos and usernames from Twitter on your iOS device

How to sync contact photos and usernames from Twitter to your iOS device


While I love using Twitter, it can often be difficult to keep your Twitter photos and usernames in sync with your iOS contacts. For most people, they never update their iOS contacts and end up keeping two separate lists of contacts.

By keeping two separate lists of contacts, this means lost time and lost productivity.  Fortunately, if you have just a few minutes, you can learn how to sync contact photos and usernames from Twitter on your iOS devices.

Before you can sync contact photos and usernames from Twitter on your iOS device, you need to first download the Twitter app.

Download Twitter app

How to sync contact photos and usernames from Twitter on your iOS device

Continue reading Sync contact photos and usernames from Twitter on your iOS device

Change your Facebook Group photo cover (video)

For those of you using Facebook Groups, one thing you’ll notice that as you add new members, your Facebook Groups cover photo will begin to show photos of your members – it is essentially creating a collage of your group members.

While this looks great when you have just a few members, as your Facebook Group grows, it becomes increasingly difficult to see the photos. Additionally, a Facebook Group cover photo of your group members might not be very representative of what your group is actually about.

Here’s a quick tutorial on how to change your Facebook Group photo cover along with a video.

Continue reading Change your Facebook Group photo cover (video)

How to promote Facebook posts (video tutorial)

BIG news this week from Facebook. They launched the ability to promote Facebook posts to a much broader audience. What this means is that Facebook Page owners who have more than 400 fan, will see an option at the bottom of their post that says “promote.”

Promote a post on Facebook Pages

So what are promoted posts on Facebook?  Once you post a status update, a link, or photo to your Facebook Timeline and you are not happy with the results you’re getting – such as only reaching just 5% of your Facebook fans, you can pay Facebook a little extra to have your content shown to more fans!

How to use the promote post feature on your Facebook Page (video):

Continue reading How to promote Facebook posts (video tutorial)