The utilization of polls and/or votes in your webinar provides an easy—but extremely effective—way to engage and interact with your live audience during the session.
For example, BrightTALK polls allow you to directly survey your audience in real-time, providing pre-defined actionable insights that you can use for research, marketing, or sales follow-up. Doing so is anonymous for audience members, allowing them to comfortably give their opinion, whilst also learning more about their peers.
Confirm the poll and/or voting options with which you prompt viewers are concise, easy to comprehend, and relate to the topic at hand. Paying attention to each of these elements will ensure you keep the conversation flowing between panelists or moderators and audience members, as well as facilitate a smooth transition to the next topic or discussion section.
From a tactical standpoint, below we’ve included the details regarding who can add polls and votes to a webinar, as well as who sees the votes tab.
Who sees the ‘Votes Tab’
- The tab will only appear to the audience if you have added votes to your presentation. If you do not add any votes, then the tab will not appear on the viewing screen
Who adds polls/votes
- You (the presenter or channel manager) need to ensure that you add your poll/votes to your webinar
- Votes must be added no later than 5 minutes before the webinar goes live.
How to add a poll
1. Up to 10 polling questions can be added by presenters and observers any time up until 5 minutes before scheduled start time. To get started, navigate to the Polls menu item on the right hand side of the presenter screen:
2. Click Add poll question to add your polling question and answers (up to 5). Ensure there are no duplicate answers listed to proceed. Once a poll question has been saved, you may edit or delete it, as needed, before or during the live event.
3. When your talk is live, you will be able to launch any of the added polls to your live audience. We advise allowing at least one minute (more is recommended) for your live attendees to submit their vote. When you are ready to close the poll, click End poll.
Presenters are able to see poll results for the duration of the live event with vote data also available in channel reports. Live attendees are able to see results update in real-time after submitting their vote, shown in percentages. On-demand attendees will not able to participate in polls but will be able to see the results.