Live Audience Polling Software: Bring Your Audience in on the Action

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One of the main complaints people have about presentations is the fact that it is more or less one-sided.  Here you have someone on stage shooting off information left and right and a room full of people just taking it in.  Yes, there may be some Q&A and interaction going on towards the end but what about during?

During you say?…that may be distracting

Not necessarily, while having audience members jump in on your presentation is not ideal there still is a way to keep them engaged and include them into your presentation.  I’m talking about polling software of course, but not just any polling software.  I’m talking about Poll Everywhere, a polling software that allows for live interactive audience participation.

Unlike other polling software’s Poll Everywhere is geared towards Public Speakers. Whether you’re running an event, using it for work or using it in a classroom setting Poll Everywhere allows your audience members to interact on the spot.

How does it work?

It’s simple!  Prepare, Present and Interpret! 

1. Before your big presentation go into the platform and develop the questions you would like to share with your audience. Poll Everywhere also allows you to customize the way your questions will appear, the types of visuals you can use (bar graphs, pie charts, etc.) and how your audience can respond.

2. During your presentation ask your questions and invite your audience to visit a specific web page, respond in a tweet or by texting. This should not be a problem considering that people love any excuse to pull out their smartphones.  The best part, you can see the results immediately.  You’ll be able to see the chart change live.

3. After you’re done with your presentation you have the option to download your reports. This allows for deeper analyzation and also offers you an opportunity to share the results with your team as well as your social media network.

So what’s the damage?

While they do have a free version I don’t think it would be of much help to any professional public speaker.  The free version may be a good option for a teacher seeing that you can only get 25 responses per poll with the free version.

You really start to get more at the $79 per month range.  Of course, if you are a Public Speaker who brings in 500 audience members at a time you may want to consider one of their more professional packages.  Check out the full range of pricing here.

All in all…

If you’re looking for a way to get your audience members more involved I think this is the way to go.  Not only do they become part of the presentation but you get to walk away with valuable data.  And in this day and age data is everything!