Need to see if your followers are dog or cat people, if your users prefer Android to iOS, or if your event should serve coffee or tea? You need a poll.
Most often referenced in the news for public opinion about major events—or the actual results of an election—polls on the internet typically are simple, one-question surveys with a few answer options. Your poll might say What's your favorite pet and offer dog or cat as the options. A day later, you'll know that 53% of your fans are dog people.
But how will you poll your audience—and make sure the people you want to respond see your poll? Here are the best ways to make a poll today, on social networks or with dedicated poll apps.
How to Make a Social Media Poll
Perhaps the most difficult part of surveying your audience is making sure people see your poll. That's what makes social media perfect for polls. And today, Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook all include offer built-in poll tools that can be the quickest way to discover what your audience is thinking. They're the best way to build a poll for most people—for free.
Twitter lets you add a poll to any Tweet as you're writing it. Start writing the core poll question as a Tweet as normal, then tap the small graph icon underneath. You can then add answers, set the poll's duration (from 1 minute to a week) and Tweet it out to your audience. Check the Tweet later to see the final breakdown of your responses.
Instagram limits its polling feature to Instagram Stories. To make a poll, snap a new Instagram Story photo or video and tap the sticker icon at the top of the Story editor. Select the Poll sticker, then type in a question. Instagram Story polls default to yes/no answers, but you can tap the buttons and customize the two response options if you'd like. The poll will be active for 24 hours (or until you delete your Instagram Story), and you can see the results by re-opening the story.
Facebook polls are the most in-depth social media polling option. To make a new Facebook poll, start writing a normal status then click the Poll button below the textbox. Or, on a Facebook Page, click the Create a Poll button. Now, add the poll question and answer choices, and set the duration of your poll (or let it last forever). Want a more creative poll? Each answer option could be a photo or GIF along with your text, perhaps to let the crowd help you pick your next logo.
Even though they’re limited, social media polls can be a great way to get quick opinions from your social audience. They're not as powerful as dedicated poll apps, though. You can’t easily export data from social media polls or embed them on your company blog or website—though you can embed individual Tweets and Facebook posts if you want. On top of that, social media polls can only be viewed on the social network they’re posted to, so your Twitter audience can’t vote on a Facebook poll unless they follow both accounts.
The Best Poll Apps
Ready to take your polls to the next level? Social media polls are the best option today for quick surveys, but if you need a more robust polling tool to collect additional data about your audience, ask multiple questions, or conduct in-person polls, you need an app built for polls. There are quite a few of these on the market—so we tested fifteen of the most popular and looked for poll apps that:
- Are easy to use and well designed
- Offer more robust features than social media polls
- Help you do more with poll results
The Five Best Standalone Poll Apps
| Icon: | App | Best to: | Free for: | Plans from: |
|---|---|---|---|---|
 |
PollDaddy | Get poll responses from anywhere | Unlimited polls and responses | $29/mo. |
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SurveyMonkey | Make quick polls that work with other apps | 100 responses | $35/mo. |
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Poll Everywhere | Add polls to your presentations | 25 responses | $19/mo. |
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Poll Junkie | Create quick just-for-fun polls | Unlimited polls and responses | |
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CheckMarket | Conduct market research | $49/poll |
PollDaddy (Web, iOS)
To get poll responses from anywhere
One of the first apps that comes to mind for polls is PollDaddy, part of the Automattic family of apps along with popular blog platform WordPress. As such, it's an easy way to poll your blog readers. You can make a poll from right inside your WordPress blog, or build your poll in PollDaddy's online app and embed it in any other blog or website.
Want to poll a live audience? You can use PollDaddy iOS app to collect survey responses in-person—have the participant select his their response on your iPad. Or send the poll in an email and readers can select their answer right from their email app. It even works on social media, with a dedicated Facebook app for more detailed polls that are still easy for your followers to fill out. And when you're done, PollDaddy combines the responses from all of these sources is combined into a single dataset.
PollDaddy polls are customizable, too. It includes 14 themes and lets you edit the layout and branding of your online polls, restrict your poll to a certain location or IP address, create polls in multiple languages, and more. Respondents can even add comments for more feedback on why they chose the response they did.
PollDaddy Price: Free for unlimited polls; from $29/month Pro plan for custom styles along with Excel, PDF, Google Docs, CSV, and XML exports
SurveyMonkey (Web, Android, iOS)
To make quick polls that work with other apps
SurveyMonkey is great for making polls that work wherever you want. It's quick to get started with its wide selection of poll templates, with free templates for market research, website feedback, employee benefit questions, and much more. Add the question you want to ask—or choose from free example questions to spark your imagination. Enter your possible poll answers, and you’re ready to share.
It's designed around surveys with multiple questions, but you can just as easily use it to ask only one question for a quick poll. Or you can use those features to build a more powerful poll that also asks for contact info, say. And with features like SurveyMonkey's self-grading quiz tool, you could make more interactive polls that tell respondents the correct answer.
Once you're ready to get feedback, SurveyMonkey gives you a unique link to share your poll in email or social media by default, or you can use its built-in HTML widgets to add polls to your website. Then, integrate your poll with Zapier to work with other apps in your workflow. For example, you can use Zapier to connect your Twitter and SurveyMonkey accounts and automatically Tweet new polls to your audience—or connect it to a spreadsheet to save your poll results in real-time.
SurveyMonkey Price: Free for 100 responses and ten questions per poll; from $35/month Standard plan for 1000 responses and unlimited questions
See SurveyMonkey integrations on Zapier:
Poll Everywhere (Web, Android, iOS, PowerPoint, Keynote, Google Slides)
To add polls to your presentations
Polling a live audience? Poll Everywhere makes presentations interactive by replacing the classic “hand raise.” Create a poll on its website and add the Poll Everywhere widget to your PowerPoint, Keynote, or Google Slides presentation. Ask the audience your question during your presentation and they can answer by loading the poll on their phone’s browser, texting in a response, or by Tweeting their response to your Twitter account.
Poll responses are shown to the audience in real time inside your presentation to keep your audience engaged. If you choose to make an open-ended poll (or, one with an other field), you can select which responses show on your presentation, filtering out inappropriate or off-topic responses.
It's great in conferences and workshops—and especially handy in the classroom. Poll Everywhere has a built-in grading system and you can require people enter their name before responding, so grading and assigning points is easy. Poll Everywhere can be used to replace traditional classroom clickers—a win-win for students and professors alike.
Poll Everywhere Price: Free for 25 responses per poll; from $19/month Basic plan for 50 responses and poll grading
Poll Junkie (Web)
To create quick just-for-fun polls
Poll Junkie is perfect for making quick polls with more features than social media polls offer. Open its site, click Get Started and you can make multiple choice, 1-10 rating, and open response polls with a click. After creating a poll, Poll Junkie gives you a sharable link and HTML embed code so you can share your polls with the world through social media and your website.
Best of all, you don’t have to sign up for an account to use Poll Junkie—just make sure to bookmark the link to your poll so you can see its responses. Poll Junkie also has an Open Polls page that showcases its newest and trending polls, so you may end up receiving responses from the website’s users. If you don't want that, just select I'll share it under the poll privacy settings, though do note that the poll responses are still visible to anyone who fills out your form. It's a quick and easy way to make polls for feedback from a wide range of respondents as long as you don't need private feedback.
Poll Junkie Price: Free
CheckMarket (Web)
To conduct market research
CheckMarket makes it easy to conduct market research with its professional poll tools. It's another survey tool that's also great for polls. Use its online poll builder to make a poll with rich text formatting on your questions. Then distribute it online, via email, on social media, with a QR code, in Slack, from a kiosk device, inside your mobile app, or even with a paper handout. Don't have an audience for your polls? You can use CheckMarket's response panels to get poll responses from specific audiences, giving you access to a world of new opinions and voices on your products.
Then the real magic happens on CheckMarket’s dashboard. You can use its in-depth analytical features to filter responses by device (web, mobile, etc), date, demographic data, and even the overall sentiment of responses if you let people type in their own answer. It integrates with IBM’s SPSS software, so your statistics team can use the collected data to find trends and make predictions. Connect your poll to Zapier to tie it into the rest of your workflow—perhaps to add responses to the Salesforce contact of the person who answered your poll. Or turn its charts into a PowerPoint presentation with its built-in reports tool.
Only need occasional polls? You can buy individual CheckMarket polls whenever you need them for a flat fee without having to worry about an ongoing subscription.
CheckMarket Price: $49 one-time payment per survey with 250 responses; from $995/year Pro plan for 5,000 responses and unlimited surveys
See CheckMarket integrations on Zapier:
Thanks to social media, it's easier than ever to get quick answers to your questions and poll your audience—and with dedicated poll apps, you can get more detailed responses and learn more from your poll. Next time you need to find out what the world thinks, these tools will help you find out quickly.
What's your favorite poll app? We'd love to hear in the comments below.
Image Credits: Header photo by Lukas via Pexels.
source https://zapier.com/blog/best-poll-apps/
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