If you’re looking for feedback and information, a poll is a great way to find out what your web conference participants are thinking.
A quick poll lets your web conference chairperson easily turn presentations into engaging, informative sessions.
By answering a simple question or two, you make your web conference participants feel like they’re an active part of the discussion.
And just imagine the information you could learn: your participants’ demographics, knowledge level of the topic and opinions.
Learning more about your participants can help your further develop your presentation, as you figure out what they know, what they want to learn and whether some topics need more discussion.
The OnConference Presents! poll function lets you choose a poll type:
✓ Yes or no response
✓ Multiple choice
✓ Ranking
✓ Opinion
You can gather general comments in a simple text box and the feature will capture the results for real-time reporting and individual followup.
Running a poll
Here are some tips for successful web conference polling:
Prepare your question in advance
You should know at what point in your discussion you want feedback from your audience. Have your poll ready to go at the right time to stimulate participation and interaction.
Keep it simple
Ensure your question is straightforward and doesn’t confuse your audience. Don’t ask more than one question at a time and keep the available responses equally as simple and applicable.
Be inclusive
You run the risk of alienating members of the audience if they don’t have a response. Always make sure a multiple choice question has an ‘other’ or ‘not applicable’ option. You could even generate further discussion by asking the ‘other’ respondents to expand on their thoughts.
Use it sparingly
You don’t want to hammer your web conference participants with questions. They came to you looking to learn something. While you can learn something about them, you want to ensure you provide them with the value they came for. Keep the number of polls per web conference to a minimum, making sure they broaden the topic for you and your audience while staying on point.
Discuss the results
A poll shouldn’t be used as a random moment to make sure your web conference audience is awake and paying attention. It should be relevant to the presentation and enrich the discussion. Use your real-time results to further the discussion and develop talking points on the fly.
Your turn
Have you used polls in your web conference or webinar? Did you gain useful information from them and do you plan on using more polls in future presentations?
