How to find users to interview?

How do you find users to respond to a survey or interview? I initially thought that Reddit would be great, as you could find a sub relevant to your niche and maybe release a poll, survey, or ask if anyone would be willing to participate in an interview. However, I think a lot of subs have pretty strict rules and am not sure if something like that would break any of them.

Otherwise, I’m thinking friends and family. How do you guys go about actually finding folks to gather user research/feedback?

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The right search keyword is “user research recruiting”. There are a lot of resources on this topic. The real challenge is to define the right recruiting screener/criteria that makes sense for your product. Start with this:

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Thanks for providing the right term for me to do more research with. The article helps and is a great start.

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@ChristieDook, ask the users of your competitors product for starters, maybe that can give you a kickstart and you can take it further from there.

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But I’m wondering, how do you get a hold of them?

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Most B2B apps will have case studies, or a logo board as a source, then, if specific people aren’t listed, search for your buyer persona at those companies on LinkedIn

For B2C, you can use something like usertesting.com and make one of your qualifying questions be what apps they use, and include a list with completely unrelated apps, and the one(s) which are your competition, and bob’s your uncle.

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@Mario, I’m not familiar with that site, but it looks like a great resource! Thank you. Another tool to add to the tool belt.

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Do you have a user report?

We have an event log, tells us by user who has completed an action in the system. This means we have lots of data on who our most active users are. We use this to determine likely targets for user interviews. Also because we are B2B we also ensure that user interviews with top clients are well represented.

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I do not unfortunately. This is at the discovery phase and I don’t have any active users to reach out to. So any and all advice is welcome. I got a lot to learn.

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I have used Respondent.io extensively and find it a great resource.

Also do a one page description and run some ads and direct people to the page and see if you get any adoption.

You can buy some from survey monkey but your gonna need a budget. I went through 30,000 grand in a month but we ran multiple surveys each week and had 11 people working the problem.

Facebook ads, Google ads…

If you have an existing customer base start reaching out to everyone one of them….

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I’ve seen this mentioned a couple of times. It looks like a great resource! Thanks!

That does sound like it would be very effective. I don’t have a budget, though. This project is just to get some experience and I don’t plan to monetize it in any way.

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@Christie, Even if money isn’t involved you want to do something that people “adopt” like the ice bucket challenge.

What you might do is a poll with friends on a social media platform you use and find out a common charity or thing to volunteer for.

Do a poll to find common ground and make it a group effort. Like toys for kids for Christmas or gathering coats for people for the winter.

Do something where people have to take an action and count it up.

The number of people you talk to. The number of people who engage. The number of people who convert.

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You can sign up for services like Respondent.io and recruit users to interview in exchange for some monetary reward. (I am not affiliated with that website, other than participating in an occasional interviews).

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@AhmadBashir, This looks great! Thanks for the suggestion.

Thank you all for your insights and suggestions. Appreciated.

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