I want to conduct surveys with teenagers (13-19). I am in the process
of building a website for this purpose, but I need ideas on getting
the word out and getting teens interested in filling out these
surveys. I though of giving the participants a chance to win an I-Pod,
X-Box 360 or other items by conpleting the survey. But like I said, I
need more ideas and a way to get the word around. I also thought of
going through My-Space, but I don't know exactly how that works.

I need ideas fast.

Hi there,

Since your question indicates an urgent need, I will post tw0
effective ways to reach the largest audience possible first and keep
adding suggestions continuously over time.

First: 
Depending on your scale and budget, you can use an internet survey
solution provider, such as Greenfield.

Greenfield has extensive experience in both designing and supplying
respondents for clients, including teenagers.  The following paper may
be helpful to you in designing your own survey (near the end, there
are a few short case studies summarizing their previous successes)
http://www.greenfield.com/assets/pdfs/teen.pdf


Second:
You can offer a prize and reach the teenagers through Facebook. 
Facebook is a hugely popular social networking site and they offer a
service called "Facebook flyer" which can be quite effective and the
cost is $5 for $10,000 highly targeted views.
For more information, visit:
http://www.facebook.com/flyers.php



With Myspace, you have to fill out the following form and a
representative will contact you to make further arrangements:
http://collect.myspace.com/misc/advertise.cfm
However, I believe their solution is more tailored towards large
corporations and larger advertising projects.


I hope this has helped and please feel free to ask for any clarification.

Cheers,
Tox-ga

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Request for Answer Clarification by mi2mia-ga on 22 Jun 2006 06:57 PDT

Someone suggested a hotmail "forward"
Ho would I go about that?

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Clarification of Answer by tox-ga on 22 Jun 2006 16:45 PDT

Hi there,

The typical hotmail forward would consist of sending an e-mail out to
an initial list of of people and having them send forward the e-mail
to their contacts, who in turn forward it to their contacts, and so
on.  Of course, this requires that the e-mail contains some sort of
incentive for them to forward it (ie, usually a funny joke/story) and
you have to be careful that your initial e-mails aren't considered
spam (ie, send them through a subscribed mailing list).

I hope this helps,

Tox-ga

Send Emails to High Schools etc detailing your survey and see if the
high schools will pass the information on to students. You could
possibly send them flyers to distribute.

myspace would be a good idea if you did it well. you could take out an
web ad myspace, I'm not sure how much that would cost, but it would be
a great way to generate traffic. make your ad real and to the point.
don't just have some huge "WIN A FREE IPOD" banner, cause there's a
million of em. you might want to just have something like:

interested in a free ipod? [next frame]
we need participants for a survey [next frame]
teenagers ages 13-19 [next frame]
click here for details. [next frame]

That's what I think would be most effective. the ad would have to be
well done though, so many people offer free ipods these days and it's
usually a scam.

I think that the last thing the web needs is another "win a
free______" ad.  I think your best bet is to figure out what kind of
teens you are looking for.  Then find sites that cover their intrests.
 You may be looking at music download sites, in which case you might
be able to work out a promo with the site, a free down load for
answering... you would be able to pay for several of these for the
cost of an x box and an i pod.  You may be looking at teens that are
more intrested in something else, look at special intrest topics; acne
control, chat rooms, educational sites, you might even hit on some of
the younger teens (13-14) on the ytv sites.  I would also look at some
of the sites that involve free games.  Try to work with the sites for
some kind of promotional offer.

Other things that you could raffle off are:
pay as you go phone cards 
gift cards, eg. ebay
movie and song downloads
Downloads of games (pogo, msn games) you will have to work witht he
site for this too.
Remember... it is easier to give away something small than it is to
give away something big... people with beleive that they are going to
get a 5$ phone card or a 1$ song... no one is going to beleive they
are going to win an x box...
You could also fall back on starting a few hotmail "forwards", if you
are doing research for a good reason, state it... you will probably
get some answers.