People love polls. Not long-winded customer service surveys, but those quickie little multiple choice or yes/no polls that ask a single provocative or fun question like "Do you think the Democrats will regain control of Congress?" You'll find them all over the web. They are a fixture on social networking sites such as MySpace and on many blogs.
I've recently begun using one free, easy to use tool available from Vizu. (See the poll in the upper right corner of our site--it was created with Vizu).
After signing up for my account (which took about 3 minutes), I was able to move immediately into creating my first poll. Vizu walks you through the process, letting you type in your question and potential answers in any form you want. You select one or more categories for your poll, which you can make available to all Vizu users or only to people you designate through a password protected option. (I haven't used that version so I'm not totally sure how it works).
You can also select the start and end times for your poll and how you want results to show (bar graph anyone?). Once the poll is completed, you can preview it and then post your poll to the Vizu site. They then offer you the option of exporting the poll to your own blog or site, providing multiple choices for HTML code.
TypePad users (I'm one) will find Vizu particularly easy to install. You just click on a button that says "Install TypePad Widget" and then you can select the blog where you want to install the poll. Other users will find it only slightly more complicated--basically a copy/paste to your blog template, although you do have to have some idea of how your template works.The whole thing is incredibly simple and, frankly, a little addictive as I find myself thinking in terms of poll questions now.
Keep in mind that if you make the poll public, it's possible that people who participate in your poll are doing so through Vizu rather than through your site, so it wouldn't be a good way to do a customer survey (SurveyMonkey is a good, cost-effective option for that type of poll). But Vizu offers the opportunity to inform and to have fun, as well as to supplement material on your blog by calling attention to it through your poll.
Good "blog bling" for my money.
Michele
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