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

1. Write a post to let readers know you are running a poll.  Embed poll in both a post and in your sidebar.
2. 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!
3. 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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Don’t you love RSS? I do except when an item I’ve embedded into a post is removed so people who read them in feed readers like Google Reader or Bloglines don’t realise it’s there! Definitely a problem if you are embedding an online poll in a post and you need readers to see it so they vote.

So let’s test out this solution while at the same time getting you to help me prioritize your needs. I’ve chosen 8 9 topics and I’d love to hear what you would like to learn more about so I can plan future posts on The Edublogger. Feel free to expand on your choice or add your own topic in comments.

This time I’ve created the poll using PollDaddy — so you can compare the look of a PollDaddy poll with the poll I created using Vizu. Downside with PollDaddy is a free account only allows 100 survey results per month (anyone know the restrictions on free Vizu accounts?).

What Do you Most Want To Learn More About?
( polls)

Here are the choices that you can vote for:

• How To Start A Blog
• Blog Design
• Finding Ideas For Blog Posts
• Using Blogs with Students
• Increasing Blog Readership
• Creating Podcasts
• Building your blog community
• Developing Personal Learning Networks
• Process of Setting Up Blogs Within Your School

Add your vote here! Free to expand on your choice or add your own topic in comments.

FINAL THOUGHTS

If you’re having trouble embedding the polls into Edublogs the trick is:

1. Write your entire post adding all text, images, categories, tags etc
2. Preview your post to do any last minute edits
3. Click on HTML tab and paste the embed code where you want it to be displayed then immediately click Publish (don’t click back to the Visual Tab)

Yes I know when you read the post directly on the blog it is a bit more messy doing it this way but at least it should grab the attention of people who are reading in their feed readers. Every poll I’ve tried so far is being removed from posts in RSS — if you know of any that don’t please let me know!

Remember always a good idea to subscribe to your own blog to pick up issues like these!

If you are enjoying reading this blog, please consider Subscribing For Free!