How Polls Work: A Step-by-Step Tutorial

Polls are a great way to ask about how your participants are enjoying the event, their comments about the topic, what they want to improve about a product, and more.

You can ask your participants for a portion of their time to vote on your poll. Since the poll already has pre-made answers, they can choose from those four and submit their answer. It will just take a minute, even seconds.

If they want to elaborate their answer, then they can message you privately. Or, if it’s not too sensitive, they can just send it in the chat room.

So, let’s start this tutorial on how polls work.

First, decide what the poll would be about

Since the chat room can be used for about anything, you have to think about what you will put in the poll. Will it be about the product, a general concern, what ideas or topics would be next? Those kinds of questions are what you should decide.

Since participants can only choose from four answers, it’s better to be direct. Therefore, they will not take a long time to answer the poll.

Second, create a poll

To create a poll, you can do it in two ways as follows: in the admin panel or the chat room.

If you’re going to create one in the admin panel, follow these steps.

1. In your admin panel, go to Settings > Polls.
2. Click Create new poll.
3. Type in the question and four answers that the participants can choose from.
4. If you want to save it as a draft, then click Save. If you want to send it in the chat room and start the poll, then click Send.

To create one in the chat room, follow these steps.

1. As an admin, click the chat room settings button.
2. Select Polls from the list.
3. For steps 3–5, follow the same instructions as with the admin panel.

It’s that easy to create a poll. Keep in mind that only admins can create one. Therefore, non-admin users will only be able to answer polls, whereas other admins can also answer polls.

Use the available poll features

After creating and sending your poll to the participants, there are several features that you can do.

• Delete — This will delete the current poll.
• Reset — This will reset the current poll. Participants can send their votes again.
• Resend — This will resend the current poll. For instance, if users accidentally closed the poll or clicked a wrong answer, they can vote again.
• Publish — This will publish the poll, meaning that the poll will be closed and no one can vote anymore.

Gathering the collected data after the polls

When you’ve published the poll, the answers will be seen by everyone in the chat room. For your reference, you can see all of your participants’ answers in the chat room or admin panel.

To see the data, follow these steps.

1. Go to your admin panel.
2. Click Settings > Polls.
3. Select View Answers.

You’ll now see the answers of the participants. This will be anonymous. Therefore, this is kept anonymous and only the answers will be available.

Using polls to your advantage

Polls can be advantageous for a variety of uses. For instance, they can be used in surveys, post-event feedback, gathering data for future topics and discussions, etc.

Chat polls are also a great way to engage your audience. Since they might have something to add about their vote, then they can take this opportunity to speak up. This is done either through private messages or the group chat, whichever makes them comfortable.

Create your own chat poll today with RumbleTalk.