Polls are great to quickly gather people’s stances on a specific topic. Getting people to actually take the poll though, now that’s the real challenge.
Fortunately, there’s a little trick to help you out: nudge people to take your poll by sending it via WhatsApp, Instagram, and Twitter.
Let’s be honest, you can send people an invitation to your poll via email, but most likely that will remain unopened. Your sure bet is to promote your poll where people are really active: messaging apps and social media.
So if you’re experiencing a low response rate with your polls, you came to the right place. It is time to be a little more proactive, bold, and innovative.
Surprise your audience by sending polls on WhatsApp, Instagram, and Twitter. It’s convenient for them and it encourages engagement with its interactive single question.
I’ll show you how to quickly create and share your polls with MightyForms ahead.
What are polls used for?
Taking the public opinion on a particular subject is just as old as time. The ultimate goal for conducting a poll is to gather the opinion of the majority of a group.
Whether it’s a household, a classroom, a community, the total staff of a company, a city, or even the entire country, polls are designed to settle an issue with the majority of votes.
Polls may seem just a trivial “A or B”, “nay or yea” type of question, but don’t underestimate them. Depending on the case, a single poll can change the course of history.
I mean, if you think about it, when Pontius Pilate asked the assembled crowd which one should he release, Barabbas or Jesus (according to the gospel of Matthew), that poll right there and then established Christianity forever.
Too far off? Ok, then. The Social Security Act, for instance, was sanctioned in 1935 by Franklin D. Roosevelt pressured by the majority of Americans who favored “old-age pensions” in a poll.
Even the infamous statement “The people have spoken!” derived from a poll (it was said by the California State Senate candidate Dick Tuck in 1966 when he lost the election).
My point is polls matter.
Conducting polls either for anticipating a presidential election or to select the name of the new Zoo’s mascot, the goal is the same: to have people’s opinions tallied and represented.
The difference now, compared to biblical times, is that you can take a poll from the comfort of your own home, on your phone. You can make your voice be heard by clicking on a poll link you got on Whatsapp, Instagram, or Twitter.
When to Conduct a Poll
Ok, perhaps you’re not looking to change the course of humanity with your poll, I know. But what I wanted to highlight is that a poll does have the power to change the course of your business or project.
Asking people a straightforward question can guide your future decisions. It can alert you of a crisis to be diverted or of an opportunity to be seized.
That’s why you need the response rate to be as high as possible. The broader the sample of people giving their opinion, the more representative and accurate the results get.
And right now, messaging apps and social media like WhatsApp, Instagram, and Twitter will yield the greatest turnaround.
We went over before the difference between polls, questionnaires, and surveys, and when it is best advised to conduct each one.
For businesses, polls can be conducted in every stage of the Customer Journey as a checkpoint in order to validate strategies or improve processes.
In sum, you should conduct a poll when you just need quick and immediate feedback, no need for details or further analysis. The idea is to collect a snapshot of the moment, since opinions may change.
Types of Polls
We usually associate polls with elections, when they are heavily used, of course. But businesses and society, in general, can benefit from polls whenever there’s a need to feel the pulse of an audience.
No matter the purpose, polls are easy to conduct; cost-effective, compared to full-blown surveys and questionnaires; and results can be examined immediately.
When promoted on WhatsApp, Instagram, and Twitter, where polls can be quickly forwarded to other people, if engaging enough, they may even go viral.
So, what are the main types of polls that can be conducted? Here you go:
- Benchmark Poll: in politics, it is usually done to compare the intention of votes on a candidate when compared to another. However, this comparative poll can be used for competing brands, products, slogans, etc., when you need to quickly analyze how your option stands against others.
- Brushfire Poll: political campaigns often conduct this poll to test an attack message used on an opponent or a response to an attack. But industry niches with fierce competition, like the streaming services war right now, can run a brushfire poll to test a new marketing strategy.
- Tracking Poll: as the name suggests, this type of poll is taken on set intervals to track progress. This is great for the event industry, for example, to track feedback from registrants leading up to the event date.
- Straw Poll: an impromptu or an ad-hoc poll is conducted in order to settle a decision. Think of HR conducting a poll to decide if remote work or a hybrid model is preferred among the employees.
Types of Poll Formats
Polls, by definition, are made up of a single, closed-ended, stand-alone question. If you need to ask for more detailed information or collect individual descriptive feedback, then you should go with the survey route.
However, there are different ways you can present that single question:
- Multiple-choice Polls: a question with multiple options as answers. It can be set so only one option is accepted or more than one can be selected if applicable.
- Rating Polls: a question with ranging values so respondents can select their rate. It can be done using the Likert scale or the NPS Score.
- Icon or Image Polls: a question with visual answers as options. Great for brand engagement polls on platforms such as WhatsApp, Instagram, and Twitter.
How to create a poll
Ok, now that we’ve gone over some background on polls, it’s time to create one. Then, once your poll is created, we’ll show ahead how to share it on WhatsApp, Instagram, and Twitter.
When you create your poll with a form builder like MightyForms, you can easily experiment with the best format for your type of question and purpose.
The drag and drop editor lets you choose the type of poll format, edit the options, and set the parameters for answers like a professional pollster. You can even mark something as required or add a short description to explain the question. Here’s how it’s done:
Step 1. Create a Poll
First, you need to log in to MightyForms either by creating an account (if you haven’t got one already) or use your Facebook or Google account. Then choose to create your custom poll from scratch or customize one of the survey templates.
Step 2. Edit your Poll
From the builder’s toolbox on your left, you can select the format for your poll: Dropdown, Multiple Choice, Icons Choice, Single Choice, or Images Choice. Simply drag and drop it to the center of the dashboard or click on the ‘Add’ sign next to each available option.
Every element of the chosen format field can be customized on the Advanced Settings menu to your right. You can define choice weights for each option; add an “Other” option and have a blank field prompted for respondents to specify their answer; align text; add values, or even add a tooltip text to appear whenever the cursor hovers over each option in order to clarify it.
PRO TIP 1: You can set up a custom Success Message to automatically pop up to confirm respondents that their vote/opinion/feedback was well-received. Simply click on the ‘Settings’ icon on the far-left side menu (sixth option from the top) to enable this feature.
PRO TIP 2: If your poll is part of a marketing campaign, easily track its performance by adding your Google Analytics or Google Tag Manager ID to your poll’s settings:
Step 3. Style your Poll
Once the structure of the poll is set, click on the ‘Design’ button on the far-left side menu (the second option from the top). Here you can style your poll with one of the pre-set themes or add your own branding.
Also, name this project if you haven’t done it already by simply typing it in at the top left corner. You can preview it and test it from different devices (very important to ensure its mobile-friendliness for WhatsApp, Instagram, Twitter) by clicking on the ‘Preview’ tab at the top right-hand corner.
Lastly, click on the ‘Publish’ tab to make your poll official and go live. You can also have it embedded into your own website. Polls created with MightyForms can be seamlessly embedded into any CMS platform, like WordPress, Wix, Webflow, Shopify, Squarespace, and more.
How to send polls via Whatsapp, Instagram, and Twitter
As I’ve mentioned in the introduction, getting people to cast their vote on your poll is the hardest part.
Any effort is valid when it comes to driving people to your poll. If you have a mailing list of your audience, you can embed your poll question field in an email or integrate your poll to Mailchimp, the email marketing platform, as part of MightyForms features.
But nothing gets people’s attention better than messaging apps and social media these days. And MightyForms makes it easy to share your poll on WhatsApp, Instagram, and Twitter.
Once your poll is live and published, click on the ‘Share’ tab at the top right-hand corner of the builder’s dashboard:
Here you go, all the sharing options MightyForms provides in order to increase the response rate of your poll:
To send your poll instantly on Twitter, simply click on the appropriate bird icon. Note that instant sharing on Facebook and LinkedIn are also available.
As for WhatsApp and Instagram (or any other messaging app or social media platform), all you got to do is to click on the ‘Copy’ button to have the poll link copied and then pasted to the platform of your choice.
PRO TIP 1: Whenever a poll – or any form - is created with MightyForms, an URL is automatically generated containing random letters and numbers. You can easily customize the URL (as shown on this screenshot) by clicking on the URL ‘Edit’ button and typing in a custom URL name of your choosing.
A custom URL path can be the name of your brand, your product, or even what’s the poll about. Since you’ll be sending a poll on WhatsApp, Instagram, and Twitter, a catchy URL will surely lure respondents in more than a generic URL. A custom URL hinting at the context encourages more click-throughs.
PRO TIP 2: in case you want to keep your poll exclusive to a private group, like an internal poll among employees, you can limit its access behind a password.
Polls are such an effective tool to quickly find out a group decision on a pressing matter. The instant insight provided by a poll can guide your business decision-making. Sending polls on WhatsApp, Instagram, and Twitter ensures a higher response rate and increases engagement with your brand or project.
MightyForms simplifies the poll process by helping you to quickly create and share one. But that’s not all. Polls by MightyForms can be fully tracked and results are automatically tallied into visual analytical reports. Moreover, poll results can be integrated into other platforms for further data management, sharing, and storing.
Do you already have a burning question for your audience? Then frame it as a poll and send it on WhatsApp, Instagram, and Twitter right now to find out the answer!
