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Slido is gradually rolling out a new user interface. If the below steps and visuals match what you are seeing within your account, then you are using the new interface and this article is for you. If not, please see this version.

 

A word cloud creates a "cloud" of the most popular words or short phrases that are sent by your audience.

 

Word clouds are a fun way to get a sense of how your participants are feeling, or where they’re logging in from. It lets you identify silent heroes, find out what your participants value most or just warm up the event.

 

In this article:

 

 

How the word cloud works

 

Here are four simple principles of the word cloud:

  • Short answers work best
    For maximum impact, one word is best. If your participants need more words to express themselves, a maximum of three words work too. This is to enhance the dynamic display. For longer answers, an open text poll is recommended.
     
  • No swearing
    Swear words won't go through at all, unless you’ve disabled the Profanity filter in Poll settings 
     
  • Watch the words grow
    The word size changes dynamically depending on how many times your attendees enter it.
     
  • You will not see certain words that are considered 'connectors'
    We should keep in mind that words we use to connect words conversationally are filtered out when submitted to the Word Cloud. These words include 'However,' 'Ok,' and 'This,' to name a few.

 

 

Create a word cloud

 

  1. Open your slido and click the + Add new button on the left, next to My interactions
  2. Select Word cloud and type in your question
  3. Hit Start interaction or the green Play button to activate your poll

Word cloud options

 

You can customize your word cloud in a few different ways. Select the Poll options in the upper right corner to see the below settings.

  • Multiple answers: Allow your participants to submit more than one response 
     
  • Profanity filter: Enable or disable the filter for profanity (this always defaults to being on)
     
  • Character limit: Set a character limit for your responses
     
  • Poll description: Add a description for added context
     
  • Poll results: Choose whether your live poll results will be visible or hidden for participants
     
  • Add image: Add an image to be displayed alongside your poll question

 

 

Test your word cloud and see how it works for participants

 

To see how the word cloud works for your participants:

  1. Activate it by clicking the green Start interaction or Play button 
  2. Select the View as participant option near the bottom right corner
  3. Submit an answer as a participant and click Exit participant mode when finished

Each line is considered a single entry, no matter the number of words included. Make sure your instructions in the poll description are clear or explain verbally what you're after.

 

Pro tip: You can share a link to your slido and test it on different devices. Get some colleagues to submit answers too, so you can see how your word cloud changes.

You can delete your testing response by clicking the three-dot menu next to your poll and selecting Reset results.

 

 

Run your word cloud

 

When you’re ready to run your word cloud for your participants, simply activate the poll and open Present mode. You can share your screen while using Present mode and display your poll results live for all to see.

 

See below what a word cloud looks like in Present mode.

 

The number of words displayed depends on the size of the screen it’s presented on. This means that the Present mode view may differ a little from what participants see on their devices.

 

Pro tip: Start the word cloud with hidden results

You can hide the results of your word cloud from participants by selecting Hidden under Poll results in the poll settings. This way, you can choose when to display the results by switching it back to Visible.

 

 

Moderate your word cloud

 

Once you click Start interaction, your word cloud is active and the audience can submit their words. Underneath your question is a Review answers box . If you click this, it will expand, giving you the option to delete entries.

 

Note that special characters (æ, ø, å, š, č) will be replaced by simple letters.

 

 

 

Learn more:

 

 

 

Thanks Cori!  The only thing is, I want to be able to show simultaneously pre-defined answers that have been repeated / voted on, and free field “Other” type suggestions, on one screen, moving dynamically, to a live audience.  This is why I was thinking Word Cloud could work well - as the words chosen would presumably get “bigger” and smaller depending on how many repeat them.

 

What do you think?

Hi @j789s, 

You could absolutely use a Word Cloud, and I can see how this will look great visually, but it doesn’t support pre-defined answers. Just to note, Word Cloud also breaks up longer sentences into individual words, so this could mean any longer responses would be compromised. You can however, use moderation to screen the replies from your participants. 

Hope this helps! 

 

Hi @Meggie from Slido ,
We used the word cloud last week and some of the sentences got through and others got cut up into individual words, no rhyme or reason which showed up properly and which didn’t - can you explain what the rules of usage are for word clouds please?

Thanks!

Hey @YaelS ,

With the Word Cloud Poll advise your participants to use one to three words when using the word cloud to get the best results. Longer phrases or sentences will be displayed, but they might cause a mixup. 

When submitting (or advising on submitting to participants) to the Word Cloud, it’s worth keeping in mind that words we use to typically connect to other words conversationally are filtered out. Examples of such words are ‘However,’ ‘Ok,’ and ‘This.’ Our reason for the words being filtered this way is due to the Word Cloud being designed to create maximum impact visually for your participants. 

If you are wanting your participants to submit sentences or longer replies I would suggest using the Open Text Poll for this, as it will not cut up the responses.

Let us know if you have any other questions!

Best,

Thanks @Carly from Slido !

I have a word cloud poll that is showing one word having a ‘words moderation’ count of 20, but in the poll results downloaded to excel, the same word only has a count of 3????

Hey @gbeumee ,

Could you share what the word that was submitted is? As well as a screenshot showing the message please? Alternatively please share this information with support@slido.com so we can help resolve this issue for you.

Best,

I do not see the option "Multiple answers” when using Word Clouds as part of a survey.

The option that someone suggested to use comma's to separarte words also does not work: it just displays as "One, Two, Three”.

The messages above are more than one year old: has there been any progress to enable multiple answers in word clouds that are part of a survey? If not, why not, it is really wanted!

 

My survey includes a few multiple-choice questions and two word cloud:

How can I let my participants enter 3 words in the first Word Cloud and another 3 words in the other Word Cloud?

 

Thanks,

Roel

 

A less than ideal workaround is to get the participant to enter multiple words as a single enter delimited by “commas and spaces”. E.g. “happy, satisfied, excited”. These appears as multiple individual words in the word cloud display. Take note of the spaces. “very happy” ends up as “veryhappy”; hypens and underscores do not help.

 

Unfortunately, that does not work. :(

Hey @Roel Tutor ,

Thanks for your questions.

I will submit this as a feature request as we do not have the option to add multiple responses for a Word Cloud that is in a Survey and it is not on our current roadmap as we have other projects that have taken precedence.

The suggestion of adding commas after each word is not a workaround either.

You could share the link to a standalone Word Cloud to allow your participants to respond with multiple submissions outside of the Survey, but I understand this is not a fix for what you are wanting.

Let us know if you have any other questions.

Best, 

Hello,

 

I am allowing the participants to propose Multiple Answers.

Is it possible to fix a limit for the number of answers ?

Thank you in advance !

Gilles

Hey @Gilles ,

Its not possible to set the number of responses to a Poll, you can allow them as many multiple responses or only limit to 1 response.

We can submit this as a feature request to the team for future consideration.

Let us know if you have any other questions!

Best,

HOW to make Word Clouds anonymous so that others are NOT seeing names of those who participate.  This is a CRUCIAL option.  Please answer.  Thanks.

Hi - just reading through this thread. Wordcloud settings “and it also filters out words that are seen as not meaningful, such as ‘this’ or ‘also’. “ and “connector words”. Do you have a full list of this?

I’ve run a Wordcloud recently, and the word “Seen” was submitted several times but filtered by Wordcloud, not appearing in the cloud.


I can’t see that this falls into these categories? Any idea why it has been filtered?

Thanks
Rob

Hey @poppermann,

Those are some lovely responses in the screenshot 💚

We recently adjusted the algorithm of the word cloud so that it doesn’t let through whole sentences and it also filters out words that are seen as not meaningful, such as ‘this’ or ‘also’. This means that when a participant types a full sentence, it is broken up into words and phrases. This was done to optimize the performance of the word cloud.

If you’d like participants to submit full sentences as responses, I’d suggest using an open text poll instead.

Hope this helps and sorry for the late response. 

 

Hey @raal ,

The Word Cloud submissions do not show a name or show participants who has submitted each response.

The Open Text Poll is the only Poll which allows the responses to show the persons name attached to it.

Could you please share with us more details about what you’re looking at and sharing screenshots of what you mean?

Best,

Hey @robgordonuk ,

Thanks for your question, thats correct in that it filters our filler words, as “seen” is under that category.

We cannot provide the list of words that are blocked as it is hundreds of thousands of words long.

Let us know if you have any other questions.

Best.

Hey @robgordonuk ,

Thanks for your question, thats correct in that it filters our filler words, as “seen” is under that category.

We cannot provide the list of words that are blocked as it is hundreds of thousands of words long.

Let us know if you have any other questions.

Best.

Ok thanks. Is there a setting to turn this off? We run a coaching business - after a session we ask participants to provide words on how they feel. The word “seen” is an important one, and used regularly by people - but doesn't show in the cloud results!

Hey @robgordonuk ,

The filter is an automatic feature that cannot be disabled.

I would suggest using the Open Text Poll as a workaround since it wont filter out your responses.

Let us know if you have any other questions!

Best,

I want to set up my word cloud so that I can run through three slides of images while my participants enter words to describe the images, and then the word cloud is on the fourth slide. In other words:

  1. Title slide
  2. Joining slide
  3. Image slide 1
  4. Image slide 2
  5. Image slide 3
  6. Word cloud already populated with responses from three image slides.

Is that possible? We had done it with PollAnywhere but have since cancelled that subscription. 

Hello @Jeb Hoge 

I have just tested this with Powerpoint integration but it is needed to activate the word-cloud from the host mode in Slido either via some secondary screen/device or a smartphone in which you would be logged in as a host. 

That means you would start your presentation with Slido integrated but before going to the first image slide you would have to manually launch the poll. That way your participants could vote and you would come to the slide with the results. 

The integration does not allow you to activate the poll in advance that is why you would have to manually enable it via host mode. 

Please let us know in case you would have any additional questions.
Kindly

Hello @Jeb Hoge 

I have just tested this with Powerpoint integration but it is needed to activate the word-cloud from the host mode in Slido either via some secondary screen/device or a smartphone in which you would be logged in as a host. 

 

That worked! Thanks for the advice. 

Using Slido to run a word cloud is a great idea! It's an engaging way to visualize feedback or gather input from a large group in real-time. Just set up a Slido event and use the word cloud option for participants to submit their responses. As more people contribute, you'll see the most popular words grow larger, making it easy to spot trends and common themes. It's perfect for meetings, workshops, or interactive presentations. Has anyone else tried this? Any tips for getting the best results? https://community.slido.com/old-slido-interface-help-articles-123/run-a-word-cloud-via-slido-3737?tid=3737&fid=123

Hi @wordleunlimited 

Glad to hear you’re looking to take advantage of Slido word clouds. Check out our blog post specifically about word clouds for more inspiration!

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