5 Tips for Creating Effective Live Polls During Webinars

Introduction

Webinars can be challenging to facilitate because attendees come from all over the place and the dynamic shifts drastically when compared to in-person seminars. However, one thing that both have in common is the need to understand how the audience is feeling, what they’ve learned, and if they have any feedback. A great way to source this information is by running polls, but knowing what to ask can be challenging. Throughout this article, we’ll help you decide on the correct questions to start asking your audience.

Making Questions Beneficial

Live audience polling is designed to promote participation from the audience, so you must make sure each question is beneficial to your audience. Even though you’ll be using live polling in real-time and get a deeper understanding of your audience, it’s important not to appear self-serving. For example, if you focus too much on demographic questions, your participants will likely feel as though they’re part of an experiment.

Keep it Simple

When writing questions for live polls, you need to consider the role of audience interpretation. Therefore, to avoid wires being crossed, keep your questions single-minded and simple, which means leaving complex language at the door.

Speaker and Audience View is Different

There are two different interfaces during a webinar - the speaker and the audience - and they both look different. If you’ve written a long question, the interface may trim some of your words, meaning you may forget what you’ve asked. Therefore, you should write down all questions on a separate screen or in a notepad. Even if your question is cut short, the audience will see the entire question on their end - so don’t panic.

Keeping Audience Size Hidden

When you plan your webinar and poll, you will have a desired audience size in mind, which may not be fulfilled. If you show the results with small audience numbers displayed, it may make the rest of your webinar less impactful. Therefore, you can set your poll to display answers in percentages, meaning you can keep on going as if you had a larger audience.

Don’t Overdo It

When planning your webinar, you’ll need to decide how many polls to use. If you overdo it, they’ll start leaving your audience feeling fatigued. However, if you don’t put enough in, you won’t get to know your audience. Typically, it’s suggested that around three polls should be executed if a webinar lasts one hour.

Conclusion

While participants are answering your poll, it’s important to keep up the momentum by continuing with the webinar. If you waste time waiting for responses, you’ll leave yourself open to ‘dead air’, which will end up feeling awkward for everyone involved.

Audience interaction is the key to a successful webinar, and live web polls can help facilitate this. However, it’s important to strike a balance to avoid causing confusion and boring your audience. To master the art of creating polls, ensure that every single question adds benefit to your audience and keep it short/simple.