20 LinkedIn Polls That Aren't Engagement Bait (Claude)

I have run about 80 LinkedIn polls for clients over the last three years. The first 30 were engagement bait — "Which is better, X or Y?" — votes were real, followers were real, and the authority was zero. The 20 in this post are the ones I actually use, sorted into four categories by what they reveal. Every one passes one test: you know exactly what you'll do with the results within two weeks.

1. Pricing-anchor polls (5)

What your audience actually pays for adjacent tools — and whether your own price is plausible.

• "How much do you pay per month for your email platform? <$50 / $50–200 / $200–500 / $500+"
• "What's your annual budget for AI writing tools? $0 / <$300 / $300–1,200 / $1,200+"
• "What do you pay your freelance content writer per 1,000 words? <$100 / $100–300 / $300+ / I don't"
• "How much does your team spend on LinkedIn ads monthly? <$1K / $1K–10K / $10K–50K / $50K+"
• "What's the going rate for a part-time growth marketer in your market? <$3K/mo / $3K–8K / $8K+"

2. Stack-discovery polls (5)

Which competitors live in your readers' stacks. Feeds ad-targeting exclusions, content SEO gaps, partnership hunting.

• "What's your primary CRM? HubSpot / Salesforce / Pipedrive / Other"
• "Which scheduling tool does your team use? Calendly / Cal.com / SavvyCal / Other"
• "Where do you run your webinars? Zoom / Demio / Crowdcast / StreamYard / Other"
• "Primary analytics platform: GA4 / Mixpanel / Amplitude / PostHog / Other"
• "Which payment processor for your course / membership? Stripe / Lemon Squeezy / ThriveCart / Other"

3. Painpoint-priority polls (5)

Rank pains in your niche so next month's content writes itself. Run Monday, ship a post on the winner Friday.

• "What's slowing your team down most right now? Lead volume / Lead quality / Attribution / Conversion rate / Reporting"
• "Biggest bottleneck in your content workflow? Ideation / Drafting / Editing / Distribution / Measurement"
• "Which marketing task do you procrastinate on most? Newsletters / Case studies / Sales enablement / Cold outreach"
• "What kills your paid ads most often? Creative fatigue / CPM inflation / Audience saturation / Weak landing pages / Tracking"
• "What is the #1 reason your agency loses a pitch? Price / Case studies / Speed / Chemistry / We don't know"

4. Belief-test polls (5)

Gut-check a contrarian take before writing 2,000 words. If the poll goes 70/30 against you, write it anyway.

• "Do you think AI-generated content hurts SEO long-term? Yes / No / Depends"
• "Are marketing certifications worth the cost? Yes / No / Only specific ones"
• "Should CMOs code? Yes / No / Some, not all"
• "Is the 4-day workweek realistic for marketing teams? Yes / No / Already doing it"
• "Will AI replace junior marketers? Yes, in 3 years / Yes, in 10 years / No / It already has"

The Claude prompt

Given any niche, drop the four categories into this prompt and Claude returns 20 polls in your tone, each with an "act on this by ___" line attached.

I'm a [role] in [niche]. Generate 5 LinkedIn polls in each of these 4 categories: (1) pricing anchors, (2) stack discovery, (3) painpoint priority, (4) belief tests. Each poll must be 4 options or fewer, ≤20 words for the question, and produce data I can act on within 2 weeks. After each poll, add one sentence: "Act on this by ___" so the data does not die in the dashboard.

The "act on this by ___" line is the part most prompts skip. Without it, you end up with 20 polls and a Notion page of vote counts you will never look at again.

The rule I do not break

Never run a poll you cannot act on within 14 days. If a poll closes and you have not pre-committed to the post, the partnership, the price test, or the message that follows, it was a vanity metric. Anything beyond two weeks, and the votes are decoration.