All about live polls

Polls are an easy way to learn about your audience, gather insights from them, and allow them to express their opinions. Once you start a poll question, participants can send in votes via their own devices. And the best part is, results are updated in real time.

Check out the below how-to video for setting up and testing your polls.

In this article:

Poll types

Slido offers five different poll types to choose from, plus quizzes and surveys. 

• Multiple choice poll: Ask a question to your audience and provide them with different options to select from
   
• Rating poll: Ask participants to rate something on a 1-10 scale
   
• Word cloud: This poll type creates a "cloud" of the most popular words or short phrases that are sent by your audience
   
• Open text poll: Ask a question and allow your participants to respond in their own words (max. 10,000 characters)
   
• Ranking poll: Give your audience a list of options and ask them to rank them according to their preference
   
• Quiz: Ask a series of multiple choice questions with correct answers – complete with a leaderboard at the end
   
• Survey: Present your audience with a series of poll questions all at the same time (available with any paid plan)

Create and run your polls

To create a poll, select the + Add button and choose your poll type. Then add your poll question and notice that your poll saves automatically.

Create another poll by clicking the + Add button again, or start your poll by clicking the green Start poll button near the bottom of the page.

See the process of creating a poll and starting it below:

You can also start a poll directly from the My interactions list on the left. Simply hover over any poll there and click the green play button.
 

Manage your polls

See below for some options to help organize and manage your polls:

• Lock voting - Prevent participants from submitting any new votes
• Hide results - Hide the poll results so that participants aren’t influenced when voting
• Reset results - Reset your results after doing a test or when re-using a poll
• Merge polls into a survey - Combine multiple polls so they’re presented all at once

Test your polls

To test your polls from the participant’s perspective, select the View as participant option in the bottom right corner. Submit a test vote and then reset the results once you’re done.

Follow the below steps to test out your polls:

• Start a poll 
• Select the View as participant option near the bottom right corner
• Submit an test answer
• When finished, click the Exit participant mode option near the top left
  
   

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After testing, use the three-dot menu to reset the results and start fresh with your participants.