Don’t you hate finding out you stink at something?
I discovered that I stink at creating polls.
I don’t mean the mechanics.
- There are endless online forms and web poll generators
- Tons of instructions exist for creating Facebook, Twitter, and blog polls
But, how do you create effective poll questions?
Simply Stated
I find it embarrassing that the ones I create are unanswered or confusing.
More than once, I received a comment that none of the choices fit the responder’s opinion. Me – the Queen of –
Keep it simple, clear & uniquely yours
Sometimes simple is not enough.
Looking for Mr. Good Poll
Effective polls get people thinking.
- They pose interesting questions
- They draw readers in
- They encourage sharing
The ideal generate discussion. That’s why every blog topic ideas post includes creating polls for your readers.
Sounds simple, right? Apparently, it’s not – at least not for me.
Fighting Back
I am on a mission. I will not let this be my waterloo.
The plan of attack is –
- Finding examples of great ones
- Researching the art of creating polls
- Working on the craft
One of my favorite things about what I do is learning new things. I love hearing the opinions and the ideas of readers and colleagues.
What are the characteristics of a good poll for you?
What about it makes you want to participate?
Do you have examples of great ones? If so, what do you like about them?
Please share your comments and examples. Then stay tuned for the results of my hunting.
I’d create a poll on the above questions, but I don’t think I’m ready yet.
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Helping you Keep it simple, clear & uniquely yours – contact me for help with your business writing needs.
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I don’t have any answers for you, Cathy, but I’ll be watching the responses with interest. My polls don’t generate much response, either. I must not be asking the right questions.
Let’s hope I get some responses, Sharon. 🙂 In any event, I will do some digging into this. I used to do surveys in my Corporate days and got good responses, but the topic was usually employee benefits, and people had plenty to say about that. 🙂
We’ll see how this goes…stay tuned…
Come on, Cathy! You don’t stick at this. You have just been working for a political party for too long- they ask the questions that afford them the answers they want regardless of your reply!
Seriously, though, this is not just a poll problem. It’s a problem for the authors of multiple guess tests, too! They provide choices that could potentially be the answer, dependent upon the reader. It is a trick to develop unambiguous questions that can provide us with the direction we seek.
Do you ask questions?
See- there’s a prime example 🙂
I’m just responding to this as someone who sometimes but rarely replies to polls as to what would motivate me to participate.
How useful would the information be for me at a later time point? For example, I’ve seen an occasional writer website ask the question “How much do you earn hourly or annually for doing X” and I participate and hope that other colleagues will do the same so that I can get some sort of assessment as to whether I am charging too much or too little, for example (and I want the final information, so I participate, in the hopes that everyone will). Another example that I recently saw posed the question, “What do you want to learn next about blogging?” followed by a list of several categories. In that case, I want to cast a vote in the hopes that there will be a subsequent post about X.
Another category that makes me want to respond to a poll is: If I am voting on what I would like to learn, then is the person that put the post up truly an expert or has an access to an expert? So for example, if the person works all week long for $5/hour, then I’m not going to respond to a “what should I teach you about earning money for writing?” because the information will really not apply to me.
If I am responding to a poll that the final information is relevant and interesting to me (such as the salary or fee question above), then I also want to know that the respond ants are likely to be peers and that a large number of people are likely to respond … because if not, the results will mean nothing.
One last tiny comment: Is this because of your last poll? I looked at the previous post to get a reference, and I think that the question would have worked well as a simple sentence with no need for a poll.
This was just a 2 cent opinion. I don’t even know how to put up a poll, so you are light years ahead of some of us.
Hi Susan-thanks for the wonderful feedback. It is really helpful and I appreciate the specific feedback on the last poll, Although that somewhat motivated this post, I found any poll I have tried has failed miserably.
You’re right, a simple question would have worked. My effort to mix it up, just didn’t work, but it got me thinking about polls in general. I’m kind of geeky in that I like seeing survey results as a point of interest.
And I’m right with you on the value of good polls on our business, I’ll participate, too, in hopes we receive credible information.
Thanks for taking the time to share your point of view, Sharon.