Over the past few weeks I’ve run a poll here at The Edublogger asking readers what they most want to learn more about. I’ve run this to help plan future posts while demonstrating how to use polls on blogs.
Two poll tools were used; so readers could compare the look of a PollDaddy poll with a Vizu poll. Both polls contained the same answers, except the PollDaddy poll had the extra answer — Process of Setting Up Blogs Within Your School.
The Results
A total of 663 people participated in the poll compared to 144 comments during this period (NB. Not excluding my comments). More readers (422) voted using the Vizu poll. Not surprising as it was embedded in both a blog post and the sidebar. Whereas 241 readers voted using the PollDaddy poll (only in a post).
Using blogs with students’ was the #1 response for both (41% votes – Vizu, 20 % – PollDaddy). While Blog design was second/third choice (Vizu/Polldady) ranking of the other answers varied considerably between the two polls.
The Graphs
Here’s how the Vizu graph looked:
NOTE : Vizu doesn’t display ranked order of responses or vote number. Reorganized graph using SnagIT to show these.
Compared to the Polldaddy:
Tips to Remember When Using Polls
- Write a post to let readers know you are running a poll. Embed poll in both a post and in your sidebar.
- Make it very obvious that you have embedded a poll in a post because polls are removed when read using RSS – check how I did it!
- At the conclusion of your poll write a summary post telling your readers the results!
Final Thoughts
Plenty of ‘food for thought’ for the statisticians in our community especially when we take into account the extra answer and Vizu set to randomize the answers while PollDaddy wasn’t.
How did your polls go? Which poll tools did you use? What was the pros/cons of each poll tools you’ve tried?
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9 Comments So Far»
An excellent post. I believe that to get proper response on research or other matters, polls are required for bloggers.
I had recently put a poll using polldaddy on ‘Can Younger People Teach The Old?’ at http://meghnaspages.blogspot.com/2008/08/can-younger-people-teach-old.html
It was a great success and I got many feedback on the subject from my readers.
Another poll I did earlier was ‘Does I.M. Language affect the Grammar of Students?’
http://meghnaspages.blogspot.com/2007/11/does-im-language-affect-grammar-of.html
I thoroughly enjoyed doing both the polls.
Thank you for sharing this useful post for all students to improve upon their blogging experience.
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Thanks for your feedback Meghna. Interesting results from your IM language poll. To be honest I wish I was better at using it — would certainly make me more efficient using twitter.
When I get a chance I hope to follow up with a poll on readership of this blog to get a better feel of my readers.
[Reply]
Sue,
Just found this blog…how helpful! I was getting frustrated with Edublogger because I couldn’t seem to create blogs like I was reading by other people.
My question is this…I have changed my theme to a 3 column one, but I can’t seem to get the widgets to show up in sidebar 2. They were there when I started, but now they are gone. Also, it is not letting me complete the ClustrMap. I can add it, edit, but when I save, it goes to a blank screen.
Can you help? I really want to give my blog that “professional” look because I am targeting other Kidlit bloggers, teachers, authors, and publishers.
Thanks!
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Hi I’m Hailey and I go to Hawkesdale college. Your blog has so much information on it.
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Hi i’m Belinda from Australia and i am in the blogging compation.
Great blog.
Belinda.
[Reply]
@Shelburns When you are in Design > widgets under the available widget area you need to change the drop down menu to change between the different sidebars.
The problem adding the ClustrMaps probably relates to our server problems this week. Try adding it again. If still a problem let me know and I will check what is happening.
@Hailey and Belinda Thanks for telling me you are part of the student blogging competition. I’ve dropped past both your blogs and said hello.
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I would like to see more information on ebooks. I am a big ebook fan and wish more sites would have a link on the left or right of their website. Kind of like a sitemap, to tell about the website. I shop a lot for ebooks and go to http://www.showmemyebooks.com for a large supply. Any way to submit one to them with info that is collected here? Cheap to get there for $1 each, totally worth not wading thru ads like other ebooks and recommend you mirror them when creating any ebooks. A lot of useful things there.
-Verle
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Sue,
I’d really like to know what I am doing wrong when I go to your blog and try and find a post I know I have read but can never find it when I need it! For example, I know you have written a post on adding feedburner but when I do a search for feed, feedburner, rss, it just doesn’t come up! I’m starting to think I need to bookmark posts as I read them so I can find them again when needed …
This sounds like a complaint, it isn’t – your posts are always so clearly explained which is why I like to refer back to them.
[Reply]
Sue Waters Reply:
December 15th, 2008 at 12:02 am
Definitely not a complaint Marie and something I’ve been thinking a lot about myself as well. Probably the best way at the moment is to use the tags below the categories. If you click on Feedburner it should bring up all the post.
I’ve been thinking I need to have a page of post names so people can find them easily – but that isn’t an approach you should normally take on a blog.
[Reply]
Thanks Sue, what a speedy response! I don’t know why I hadn’t thought of searching via tags – it was very efficient – I found the post I was looking for and have delicious-ed it this time! I don’t know why the search doesn’t bring it up?
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