interactive presentation polling

The 6 Best Live Polling Tools to Engage your Audience

The best way to engage your group in a live meeting or event (while not wasting valuable time) is to make it interactive — let your people participate. Live polling is one way to do this, and is proven to increase audience engagement. Here are the 6 best tools online to ask poll questions / run interactive polls, whether you're on a video call, in person in a meeting, or in front of an audience in a conference room.

See our video with reviews and screengrabs of each tool, or get to the written list below.

1. Slides with Friends

Slides With Friends is a great all-around interactive presentation solution, and is one of the frontrunners in our list of audience polling tools. It comes with pretty much everything you'd need to create and run live polls, then collect instant feedback. Players join on their mobile device with a QR code scan or custom URL (so, no downloads needed), and easily send in answers, emoji, sounds, and more, during your event or meetings real time.

Biggest Slides With Friends advantages: Accessibility, Thoughtful pre-made templates, Good design, Robust free account

This tool works wherever you can share your screen, so you can use it on Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, Webex, or in a conference room.

It also comes with tons of free and ready-to-use game templates: think of them like Kahoot decks or Jackbox games that you can edit any way you like, and then play with your group. This takes away a lot of the work you’d have to do to create your own content from scratch. Just pick a template that meets your needs and play during your online meetings!

For instance, here's a "Poll the Audience" Template you can use (it's free with up to 10 players). You can edit the questions on each slide to ask your group exactly what you want.

Biggest Disadvantage: Downloadable CSV for event results only available on upgraded accounts

The ability to analyze complex data in relation to the polls taken during repeated training sessions or seminars can be enlightening and help you improve your presentation for future events.

Sli.do is one of the more basic slideshow presentation platforms with polling for your audience. It allows for brainstorming with a word cloud or Q&A as well, but little else. This platform offers a very basic free option, as well as three other annually billed subscription levels to meet the needs of small to medium-large companies or non-profits. The Enterprise package is particularly impressive (but comes with a hefty price tag).

Biggest advantage: Comprehensive analytics tools

Sli.do is particularly helpful for larger organizations with frequent training and team building due to unparalleled comprehensive analytics tools. You can review Q&As, which participants led the group in responding, see all of your polls at a glance, and easily create infographics from multiple choice questions.

‍ Biggest disadvantage: Limited interesting or connective uses

Sli.do can be a dry and survey-only forward tool. If you want to wow your audience, or seem like you put a ton of work (when you really didn’t) into an interactive presentation, this tool is a little lacking.

3. Poll Everywhere

Poll Everywhere is an interactive application that can be implemented almost anywhere, anytime. For instance this is the only platform here that integrates with Slack on this list.

This service is designed to scale up as you grow your audience. It offers the most subscription options starting at low fees for small meetings and reaching up to a $12,000 per year Enterprise plan. The Teams and Enterprise options are on the expensive side, although they are feature rich.

The biggest advantage: Best free and start-up packages for live polls

The free version gives you more features than others listed, starting with a 25-attendee roster (compared to 7 to 10 participants with other apps). It also lets you add polls and unlimited real time questions.

If you have a single meeting or seminar, a cheaper one-time live polling and presentation plan rich with more poll features is available.

The biggest disadvantage: Free and “Present” live polling options very limited in features

None of the free live polling tools include analytics or moderation capabilities, but Poll Everywhere's lower-level paid version doesn't offer them either. You must pay for the more expensive “Engage” option for these features, regardless of the size of your business and the frequency of your events.

4. Aha Slides

Aha Slides is one of the most affordable live polling services, and they offer a lot of perks that aren’t available with more expensive options.

The free version is the most limiting of the services listed here, but the features of the Essential and Plus plans are affordable options for freelancers and solo entrepreneurs running a small meeting. You can pay one-time, or you can subscribe for holding regular online or in-person events.

Even large companies can take advantage of this affordability when detailed analytics and sharing is not necessary, with the upper level service accepting up to 10,000 attendees.

The biggest advantage: Idea sharing and other interactive features

In addition to live polls and brainstorming word clouds, Aha also offers sliding scales, idea sharing, multiple choice, and even a spinner wheel for a variety of attendee participation that encompasses all types of learners.

The biggest disadvantage: Only basic analytics and presentation options

Aha Slides is one of the easier live polling platform to learn and use to create, but that simplicity means that you don’t have a lot of the same advanced features offered by other polling tools listed here.

5. Mentimeter

Mentimeter issuper-featured and filled with lots of options. This makes it powerful, but also kind of tough to figure out / get an immediate understanding of. It's also a bit pricier than others given all of its integrations and features.

The biggest advantage: Language accessibility for a global workplace

Mentimeter has a tool that allows for multiple translations within the same live presentation. This means that you can reach anyone in the world and still get the same audience participation that you receive in your hometown.

The biggest disadvantage: No automatically generated reports

While you can export data from your surveys, Q&As, and live polls, Mentimeter differs from other services in that you can export raw info, but the platform doesn’t generate reports for you. This makes the analytics information less helpful.

Vevox is one of the more expensive tools that includes live polling and other interactive features to keep your participants engaged. Unlike the other tools here, you can gather all types of anonymous feedback and surveys to help you improve future presentations.

Vevox is unique in that it doesn’t have different service levels. Although a free option is available to get you started, the paid version is the same for everyone. An individual plan is $50 per month, with the Enterprise plan giving you a $5 discount per user.

The biggest advantage: Most comprehensive free version

Vevox offers one of the best free versions, although it is only available for use with PowerPoint and Microsoft Teams. it allows an astounding 500 participants, and the only features excluded in the free subscription are analytics and reporting.

The biggest disadvantage: Works best with Microsoft products

While you can use Vevox’s polling applications in other environments, it was really designed for use with Microsoft products, including Windows, PowerPoint, and Ms Teams. Those integrations are seamless, but using the service with other platforms may be more complicated.

Real Time Polling Can Increase Audience Enjoyment

Experts agree that active participation increases the enjoyment of your audience and retention of your information.

"Incorporating the right type of online real-time polling ... has overriding benefits." Journal of Research in Innovative Teaching & Learning, "Real-time polling to help corral university-learners' wandering minds"

Regardless of what platform you choose, there is no doubt that live polling is a useful tool to keep an audience engaged. Like several of these options, your remote participants often do not need to download an app to see your screen on their phone or tablet, which makes this a very easy way to collect information.

Collecting data about particular attendees, including their responses to particular questions, is especially useful for training programs in which you need to measure performance and knowledge. At the same time, anonymous feedback is vital and not offered by all packages. Consider carefully how you will use the live poll tools to help you determine which is best for you.

The Best Choice for Live Polling

Our choice for the best live polling tool is Slides With Friends . It's got great live polling options and is easy to get started with and use, you can even use it for free with up to 10 players.

Some things you can do using SlidesWith:

• Poll your audience with different options to display rating poll results like graphs, donut charts, per-responder (run multiple polls, add images, get real time results)
• Play trivia or quiz your audience
• Create a live word cloud together (your audience sends in words and then votes to make words bigger)
• Everyone votes on responses from other audience members (like Apples to Apples or Cards Against Humanity)
• Live Photo share (Add images and display to the group)

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It’s time to interact with your audience during your presentation. DirectPoll offers you a real-time responsive element on stage. Ask questions, feel the pulse of your audience and visualize the answers as they come in, right here, right now.

Preparation, presentation, just take these easy steps, directpoll lets you create live polls in an instant. as a presenter you just need an online-connection and your browser. if you include your poll in your presentation, you do not even need your browser at presentation time., please check out our faq for the most common questions. if that doesn’t help don’t hesitate to contact us at [email protected] ., release notes, checkout the latest directpoll release notes to find out about new features, about directpoll, directpoll was originally developed by netcetera and is now brought to you by directpoll.

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Create interactive PowerPoint presentations

Transform your presentation into a powerful story

Create a conversation

Forget boring, one-way presentations. Poll Everywhere gives you the power to engage your audience in meaningful conversation.

Seamless integration

Poll Everywhere integrates seamlessly with PowerPoint. Download the add-in and click on Poll Everywhere to get started.

Unforgettable presentations

Fun assessments, icebreaker questions, crowdsourced word clouds — create an experience your audience will not forget.

Poll Everywhere has a richness of features, flexibility, and really great presentation aspects that built-in polling on videoconferencing software doesn’t offer.

Daryl Sieplinga, CEO and Consultant

State Alliance of Michigan YMCAs

1. Download the add-in

Find Poll Everywhere in the ribbon (Windows) or menu bar (Mac). Sign in to start creating interactive PowerPoint presentations.

2. Add activities as slides

Create activities from the Poll Everywhere app or add your existing activities. Each will appear as a new slide.

As you advance through your presentation in fullscreen mode, each poll will activate and load automatically.

Captivate the audience with interactive presentations

Poll Everywhere’s interactive PowerPoint, Keynote, and Google Slides presentations have driven engagement for more than 75% of Fortune 500 companies.

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15 Interactive Presentation Ideas to Elevate Engagement

By Krystle Wong , Aug 04, 2023

As attention spans continue to shrink, the challenge of engaging audiences in a short timeframe has never been more significant. Let’s face it — grabbing and keeping your audience’s attention can be quite the challenge, especially when time is ticking away. But fear not, I’ve got the perfect solution: interactive presentations!

Believe it or not, creating an interactive presentation is easier than you might think. In this guide, I’ll show you how to effortlessly turn ordinary slides into captivating experiences with 15 interactive presentation ideas that will leave your audience begging for more. From quirky polls and fun games to storytelling adventures and multimedia magic, these ideas will take your presentation game to the next level.

Venngage is a game-changer when it comes to empowering interactive presentations. With just a few clicks, users can customize their favorite presentation templates , add multimedia content and create immersive experiences that leave a lasting impact. Whether you’re a seasoned presenter or a newcomer, get started with Venngage to elevate your presentation game to new heights of engagement and creativity.

Click to jump ahead:

What is an interactive presentation?

15 ways to make a presentation interactive, 7 best interactive presentation software, what are some common mistakes to avoid when creating interactive presentations, interactive presentation faqs, how to create an interactive presentation with venngage.

An interactive presentation is a dynamic and engaging communication format that involves active participation and collaboration between the presenter and the audience. Unlike traditional presentations where information is delivered in a one-way manner, interactive presentations invite the audience to interact, respond and contribute throughout the session.

Think of it as a two-way street where you and your audience have a friendly chat. It’s like playing a fun game where you ask questions, get live feedback and encourage people to share their thoughts. 

To make a good presentation , you can utilize various tools and techniques such as clickable buttons, polls, quizzes, discussions and multimedia elements to transform your slides into an interactive presentation. Whether you’re presenting in-person or giving a virtual presentation — when people are actively participating, they’re more likely to remember the stuff you’re talking about.

Interactive presentations leave a lasting impression on the audience. By encouraging active participation and feedback, interactive presentations facilitate better understanding and knowledge retention. Here are 15 innovative 5-minute interactive presentation ideas to captivate your audience from start to finish:

1. Ice-breaker questions

Start your presentation with intriguing and thought-provoking questions or a fun icebreaker game. These questions should be designed to pique the audience’s curiosity and encourage them to think about the topic you’ll be covering. By doing so, you create an immediate connection with your audience and set the stage for a more engaged and attentive audience.

For example, if you’re giving a business presentation about management and leadership training, you could ask audience questions such as “What’s the best business advice you’ve ever received, and how has it impacted your career?”

2. Live polling

Incorporate live polls during your presentation using audience response systems or polling apps. This allows you to collect real-time feedback, opinions and insights from active participants. Live polling encourages active participation and involvement, making your presentation feel like a collaborative and interactive experience.

3. Q&A sessions

Encourage the audience to ask questions throughout your presentation, especially for pitch deck presentations . Address these questions in real-time, which fosters a more interactive and dynamic atmosphere. This approach shows that you value the audience’s input and promotes a two-way communication flow.

4. Clickable buttons

Add clickable buttons to your slides, allowing the audience to navigate to specific sections or external resources at their own pace. For example, you could include links to your social media accounts or extra reading materials in your education presentation to give further information about the topic and get your students engaged. By providing this autonomy, you empower the audience to explore areas of particular interest, creating a more personalized and engaging experience through your interactive slideshow.

5. Storytelling

Incorporate anecdotes or personal stories related to your topic. Storytelling is a powerful way to emotionally connect with your audience, making your presentation more relatable and memorable. A little storytelling along with a set of creative slides draws the audience in and keeps them engaged as they follow the narrative.

6. Interactive charts and graphs

Use interactive charts and graphs that respond to user input to make your presentation interactive. For instance, allow the audience to click on data points to view more detailed information or to change the displayed data series. Creating charts with interactive visuals help the audience interact with the data, fostering better understanding and engagement.

7. Animated infographics

Add animations to your infographics, making them visually dynamic and progressive. Animated infographics reveal information gradually, keeping the audience curious and attentive. This transforms complex data into an easily digestible and engaging format.

Venngage’s extensive library of infographic templates is a powerful tool to visualize data and elevate the interactivity of your presentations. Personalizing the visuals ensures a cohesive and professional look throughout your interactive presentation. The templates are highly customizable, allowing you to adjust colors, fonts, and styles to match your presentation’s theme and branding. 

8. Gamification

Introduce an interactive quiz, puzzles, or challenges related to your presentation content. Gamification adds an element of fun and competition, motivating the audience to participate actively and boosting their learning experience. Here are some gaming presentation templates you could use. 

9. Virtual reality (VR) or augmented reality (AR)

If applicable, leverage VR or AR technologies to provide immersive experiences. These interactive presentation tools transport the audience into a virtual or augmented environment, making your presentation more captivating and memorable.

10. Collaborative whiteboarding

Get your audience involved in your presentation by utilizing digital whiteboards or collaborative tools to brainstorm ideas collectively. This fosters teamwork and creativity, enabling the audience to actively contribute and feel a sense of involvement in the presentation.

11. Hyperlinked text

Keep the information in your slides minimal with a simple presentation and incorporate hyperlinks to direct viewers to relevant websites or blogs , resources, or additional information. This encourages self-exploration and gives the audience the opportunity to delve deeper into topics of interest.

12. Role-playing

Engage the audience in role-playing scenarios to explore different perspectives. Role-playing promotes active learning and helps the audience relate the content to real-life situations, enhancing their understanding and retention.

13. Embedded videos

Include video clips in your slides to provide visual explanations, demonstrations, or interviews. Videos add a dynamic element to your presentation, enriching the content and keeping the audience engaged.

14. Audience-generated content

Encourage the audience to contribute ideas, stories or examples related to your professional presentation . Audience-generated content fosters a sense of ownership and involvement, making the presentation more interactive and personalized.

15. Slide transitions

Use slide transitions to create smooth animations between slides. Well-planned transitions maintain the audience’s interest and keep the presentation slides flowing seamlessly.

Interactive elements aside, enhance your presentation with these guides on how to summarize information for a captivating presentation and how to make a persuasive presentation to captivate your audience. 

If you’re looking to create engaging and interactive presentation slides that captivate your audience, these presentation software options are sure to elevate your game:

Prezi is renowned for its dynamic and non-linear presentation style, enabling users to craft visually stunning and interactive presentations. With an array of templates and animation effects, Prezi enhances audience engagement, making your presentations more captivating and memorable.

2. Mentimeter

Mentimeter serves as an audience response system, empowering real-time interaction during presentations. Users can create interactive polls, quizzes, word clouds and more, allowing the audience to respond using their smartphones or other devices. This fosters active participation and provides valuable feedback instantly.

3. Google Slides

Google Slides is a free cloud-based presentation software that not only offers collaboration features but also enables real-time interactions. It includes add-ons and third-party integrations to further enhance interactivity, making it an excellent choice for collaborative and engaging presentations.

4. Microsoft PowerPoint

PowerPoint, a classic presentation software, has evolved to incorporate more interactive features like live captions, real-time collaboration and interactive elements such as quizzes and forms. With its familiar interface and versatile functionalities, PowerPoint remains a reliable choice for interactive presentations.

5. Prezentor

Prezentor caters to sales-oriented presentations focusing on interactive storytelling and data-driven content. It offers analytics to track audience engagement and behavior during presentations, allowing you to fine-tune your approach and keep your audience hooked.

6. Opinion Stage

Opinion Stage is a visual and interactive data collection tool designed to engage and excite audiences whether sitting in a lecture hall, participating in a live Zoom, or watching an on-demand webinar. The Opinion Stage tools are simple and intuitive, making it easy to create attention-grabbing quizzes, surveys, and polls in minutes. A great way to spice up any presentation, encourage audience participation, and collect authentic feedback.

7 . Venngage

Venngage stands out as a versatile design tool that facilitates the creation of interactive infographics, data visualizations and presentations with ease. Offering various interactive elements and animations, Venngage empowers you to craft visually appealing and engaging presentations effortlessly.

With these interactive presentation software options at your disposal, you can unleash your creativity and deliver presentations that leave a lasting impact on your audience. So, go ahead and make your presentations interactive, captivating and memorable!

For more presentation software options, check out this blog on the 12 best presentation software for 2023.

Creating interactive presentations can be a game-changer for engaging your audience and enhancing your presentation skills, but steering clear of common pitfalls is essential. Here are some key mistakes to avoid when crafting your interactive presentations:

1. Overloading with interactivity

While interactivity is fantastic, bombarding your audience with too many interactive elements can backfire. Strive for a balanced approach that enhances engagement without overwhelming your listeners.

2. Ignoring audience relevance

Failing to tailor interactive elements to your audience’s interests and preferences can lead to disconnection. Make sure your interactions resonate with your specific audience for a more meaningful experience.

3. Not testing interactive elements

Skipping thorough testing of interactive features before showtime can spell disaster. Avoid technical glitches by diligently testing all interactive components in advance.

4. Poor timing and pace

Timing is everything, especially with interactive activities. Ensure seamless integration by planning your key points and the timing of your interactive elements carefully.

5. Lack of clear purpose

Every interactive element should serve a purpose and contribute to your presentation’s objectives. Don’t add interactions just for the sake of it — ensure they add value and align with your message.

6. Failing to engage beyond interactivity

While interactive elements are powerful tools, remember that content is king. Combine your interactive features with compelling storytelling and valuable insights to create an immersive and impactful presentation.

Incorporating animated slides into your interactive presentations enhances the overall appeal and interaction, turning an ordinary presentation into an engaging experience. Try it out with one of our animated presentation templates to get started. 

How do you start an interactive presentation?

Begin by grabbing the audience’s attention with an intriguing question or a surprising fact, setting the tone for a dynamic and engaging session.

Which type of presentation is the most interactive?

Workshops and seminars are often the most interactive types of presentations as they encourage active participation, discussions and hands-on activities.

How can interactive presentations enhance audience engagement?

Interactive presentations foster a two-way communication flow, involving the audience through polls, quizzes, discussions and multimedia elements, leading to increased interest, attentiveness and better retention of information.

What are some common interactive elements to include in a presentation?

Common interactive elements include clickable buttons, hyperlinked text, polls, quizzes, interactive charts, multimedia content and audience participation activities.

Can interactive presentations be used for educational purposes?

Absolutely! Interactive presentations are highly effective for educational purposes as they promote active learning, encourage critical thinking, and provide real-time feedback and knowledge exchange opportunities.

Need inspiration on how to give an engaging presentation ? Here are 120+ presentation ideas you could use. 

Venngage makes it easy for anyone to infuse interactivity into their presentations. From clickable buttons and hyperlinked text to interactive infographics and dynamic charts, Venngage offers a diverse range of interactive elements to captivate and engage the audience. Here’s how you can make your presentation more fun and interesting with Venngage:

• Sign up or log in to Venngage to access the platform.
• Choose a presentation template or start with a blank canvas to begin designing your interactive presentation.
• Add and edit slides in the Venngage editor to structure your presentation content effectively.
• Customize the design by selecting themes, fonts, colors and backgrounds to match your style and branding.
• Use interactive elements like buttons, links, pop-ups and hover effects to engage the audience during the presentation.
• Enhance engagement by incorporating interactive media such as videos and audio clips.
• Preview and test your entire presentation to ensure everything works smoothly before presenting it to your audience.
• Save your interactive presentation on Venngage and share it online or download it in various formats for presenting purposes.

Well, I hope these 15 5-minute interactive presentation examples can help unlock a new level of audience engagement for your next presentation. From fun quizzes and interactive storytelling to multimedia magic and gamified challenges, the possibilities are endless. So, don’t be afraid to experiment, tailor the ideas to suit your audience members and let your creativity shine.  

That said, remember to strike a balance and keep the interactivity purposeful and relevant. Some common mistakes to avoid when creating interactive slides include overloading the presentation with too many interactive elements and failing to align the interactive elements with the overall presentation goals and content. 

Got it? Great. Now let’s turn that boring presentation around!

Get instant feedback with interactive polling

Get valuable insights from your customers, engage your students with our interactive poll maker, and have fun creating surveys for your friends - all without the need for any coding expertise.

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Engage your audience

Create a dynamic and engaging relationship between your business and your audience. Seek opinions on new product features, understand your customer satisfaction levels, or simply spark conversations.

Use our interactive poll maker as a solution to get valuable insights, initiate customer interactions, and foster lasting relationships that drive success.

Create custom interactive polls

Create stunning polls that captivate your audience and deliver the insights you need. Build multiple-choice questions that cover exactly what you need to know, and take it up a notch by randomizing your questions for a fun and challenging experience.

Make your polls more interactive and engaging with images, videos, and custom icons to increase response rates and get the insights you need to make more informed decisions.

Create presentations with dynamic feedback

Conduct polls and experience real-time feedback from your audience. As your audience submits their answers, our interactive slides will evolve and adapt, creating a more engaging and interactive presentation.

Create beautiful and customizable polling reports to gauge students’ understanding or event attendees’ engagement.

Track and manage your data, and visualize it on tables, charts, and boards.

Start with a template or build your own today!

Choose a poll template from our 200+ selection. Customize it to match your brand's look and feel - tweak everything from colors to question types.

Post event feedback

Identify your event’s strengths and weaknesses using this post event template with different question types.

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Course feedback

Get accurate student feedback by using various rating and question types available in this template.

Make more data driven decisions, measure your customers loyalty and satisfaction with this NPS template.

Customize this CSAT template to match your brand’s look and feel. Find out how satisfied your customers are.

Customer feedback

Gather valuable customer feedback in a more fun and interactive way using this customer feedback template.

Artist artwork

Enhance your poll engagement and make competitions more fun by adding images and GIFs to this template.

Integrate with your favorite tools

Connect Formaloo to 3000+ tools such as Google, Slack, and more. Keep everything in sync across your organization. See all integrations →

Create polls and presentations, all in one place

Use our easy-to-use, drag-and-drop editor to customize your polls with your own brand.

30+ question types

Gather valuable insights on audience opinions, attitudes, and feedback with a variety of question types.

Live reports

Get real time insights using the live mode feature and track your responses with our visual dashboards.

Fully customizable

Make your polls more interactive and fun with images, videos and GIFs. Customize everything to match your branding.

Chatbot polls

Poll everywhere and let your audience answer on their favorite device. Easily embed it on your website.

Identity verification

Gain trust and ensure safe and genuine responses with our SSL security, bot detection, and identity verification features.

Easy collaboration

Collaborate with your team by sharing poll results, creating tables and Kanban boards, and managing access.

How to create your online engaging poll

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Formaloo has a large library of form templates that makes it easy to get started with their platform. I've also used Formaloo to build out very complex assessment forms from scratch using advanced calculation logic and workflow. I'm really impressed with their continued development velocity. They are constantly releasing new updates and features.

Formaloo is a super flexible tool that allows the easy creation of apps. In fact, what I like most are the templates - they really showed me new ways of how to make use of type of software! I use formaloo to get insights from (potential) customers, but I am also planning to build other types of "apps" with it, including mini-courses and exercises for my established online courses.

Getting feedback from users is a very difficult task so Formaloo makes it easier and more accessible. It was the perfect solution to implement on my website. And I will use it more often with my customers and my subscribers to develop faster than ever.

It's easy to create forms that look attractive and increases response rate. The reporting dashboard is a great plus to keep track of responses. It helps me to create forms that are easy to complete, and more importantly visually appealing to increase response rates.

I like the clean interface, modern design and features rich of Formaloo. I can create simple but beautiful forms with it. The support team is also very responsive. Getting lead and potential clients' contact info, and also surveying for clients' feedback after the deal. With Formaloo I can send simple but beautiful forms to collect the data I want from my clients

Great first time experience! I needed a survey creation tool and found a few on AppSumo (the mainstream survey tools all seem overpriced to me). I tried out a number before settling on Formaloo because it did everything I was looking for. The user interface is pretty good and I like that it is simple & easy on the eye. It was a great first time experience & I'm definitely going to look at the other uses of Formaloo for my business. Creating a survey was easy to do and although it took me a while that was only because I was completely new to the product.

The best Typeform alternative available. Forms and applications can be custom designed and are highly customizable. Allows you to create advanced forms with conditional logic. Formaloo has a large number of templates that make the work easier or serve as inspiration to create our own forms. I plan to keep using Formaloo in many ways.

This is gold! I did not realize how much I needed it until I got it. I have many other tools to create forms online. I liked this one for the possibility of creating online polls. showing the results to voters in real-time. I included those forms in the process of launching new products, both to gather feedback and engagement. And now I use several kinds of forms on a regular basis. Create forms and polls that are nice, minimalist, and responsive in less than 5 minutes. That helps to engage and convert potential customers to the mailing list. Or just to gather important information about the level of engagement, and their opinions on how to make your product fit.

Simplicity and the general UI/UX that this website offers for surveys. Much more attractive and more personalizable than G-products. It provides better and more personalized surveys for our clients.

I love that the platform is so user-friendly and easy to use. I also love that I was able to easily create my own mobile apps for my course with Formaloo. The platform is also super secure and tracks all my data analytics. Formaloo is a platform I can trust to help me create engaging content for my course.

Really Great Product For Many Uses. I plan to use more with my real estate business to help make filling out questionnaires easier for my clients. I like the templates and the ease of use. I used it first for a 3-part ministry event and It has worked very well. It also saved me a lot of time in making sure materials went to the correct registrants. It was easier to use than Google Forms and not as quirky. I literally created my first form in minutes.It facilitated collection by offering elegant and more prefessional forms than other solutions.

Go from boring to amazing with Formaloo

Whether you are a business, researcher, educator, or marketer seeking valuable insights, our online poll maker simplifies the process of collecting data quickly and efficiently. With just a few clicks, you can create beautiful surveys that engage your audience and capture their attention.

Sounds fantastic, right? Start building your poll today!

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7 Interactive Poll Ideas for Your Next PowerPoint Presentation

Looking for new ways to make your PowerPoint presentation more interactive? Try live polls .

With polls , you can collect non-verbal responses from your audience in real time. This is priceless – especially when you’re presenting online.

Not only will you learn what your meeting participants think but you can also collect insights and ideas from them and trigger a meaningful discussion.

Here are 7 tips for using live polls during your PowerPoint presentation to make it more interactive , productive , and engaging for your audience.

Add live polls directly to your PowerPoint presentation.

1. set the mood with an interactive icebreaker.

Open your meeting with a poll question – try one of these icebreakers – so you can involve your team in a conversation right from the beginning. You’ll let them know that their input matters and that you expect to hear their thoughts and opinions throughout the meeting.

For example, you can check in to see how everyone is feeling with a poll such as:

• 1-7, how motivated are you feeling after our last all-hands meeting? (Rating)
• In one word, how was last month for you? (Word cloud)

Or, you can spend the first minutes of the meeting sharing highlights from last week/month and celebrating the people that made them happen with a poll like one of these:

• What was your highlight of the last week/month? (Open text)
• If you could thank one person from the team, who would it be? (Word cloud)

Tip: Here is a list of 200 icebreaker questions for your upcoming meetings

2. Get buy-in from your team

It’s important to know whether your team understands the bigger picture – be it your company strategy, your team goals, or the project plan for the next quarter. Only then can you reach alignment and make sure you’re all rowing in the same direction.

Live polls provide a safe space for your team members to share how they feel. Your colleagues can be 100% honest because their responses in polls are anonymous . This helps you uncover any hidden issues.

After you have presented the strategy to your team, ask them a poll question such as:

• On a scale of 1-6, how clear is our strategy for you? (Rating)
• Is there anything unclear about our goals that you’d like to discuss? (Open text)

3. Involve everyone in the decision-making

Making a decision online through a video conference can be quite painful. Some people interrupt, and speak over their teammates, while others are reluctant to speak up and express their opinion.

If you already have the options that are to be considered by the team but can’t agree on which direction to take, here’s a solution for collaborative decision-making : Let people vote on their preferred option.

It’s quick, efficient, and most importantly, politically neutral. Each person’s vote is anonymous and has the same impact – regardless of their role, or their previous influence over decisions.

4. Brainstorm priorities together

Similarly to the previous point, you can use polls to brainstorm the options together – for example, priorities for the next quarter – and then let people vote on the ones they find most impactful.

During the meeting, give your teammates a couple of minutes to think about what projects or activities would help your team achieve its goals and ask them to submit them into a Slido open text poll.

Once the ideas come in, review them, and discuss them together with your team.

5. Collect your team’s insights for a discussion

Planning a new project? Discuss how your project is moving forward to make sure you’re all on the same page. Live polls will help you here as well. Ask your team a poll question such as:

• How confident are you that we will meet the project deadline? (Rating)
• Are there any roadblocks that hinder the progress of the project? (Open text)
• What should we continue doing to move this project forward? (Open text)

These types of poll questions work as springboards for you to start a discussion. Once your teammates have submitted their answers, review them together, and encourage people to share their thoughts or follow up on what others have posted.

6. Address your team’s questions and concerns

At the end of your presentation, be sure to leave time for your team’s questions. Especially after important strategy meetings or planning meetings that may give rise to many questions and concerns.

With Slido’s integration with PowerPoint , you can add an interactive Q&A slide to the end of your presentation so your teammates can post their questions into Slido.

You can also enable your team to ask anonymously for greater transparency. They can also upvote (or downvote) questions posted by other colleagues, which helps you identify the most burning questions and answer them with priority.

Tip: You can start collecting questions for the Q&A in advance. Just send your team a link to your Slido and ask them to post their questions. Here are more tips on how to run a great Q&A session through Zoom .

7. Gamify your meeting with a quiz

A short interactive quiz will upgrade your PowerPoint presentation and make it more engaging.

With Slido for PowerPoint, you can create and run a quiz directly inside your presentation deck, no need for you to switch apps or screens.

For your inspiration, here are our two favorite quizzes that we like to run during our meetings:

Business numbers quiz Why not give a different twist to presenting business results during your company meetings? Let your teammates guess how well your company did in terms of sales, sign-ups, net retention, or NPS.

Here are 110 Trivia Questions to help your team bond better over some fun competition

‘Get to know your colleagues’ quiz Enjoy some social time with your team and help them bond, even at a distance. Collect interesting facts about each member of your team and then let their colleagues guess away. We’re sure you’ll dig out plenty of fun stuff!

We run this type of quiz when we introduce a new team member or as a holiday fun activity.

Over to you

Want to try any of the interactive activities we have listed above in your PowerPoint?

Be among the first to try Slido for PowerPoint – the easiest way to engage your audience in PowerPoint. Watch this video to see how Slido for PowerPoint works. To try it for yourself, click below.

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How to get instant feedback from your audience.

Getting your audience engaged is the most important thing you can do when presenting. We previously published an article on Zeetings , a program that lets the audience become part of the story by using an interactive program directly from their smartphones. Here, Farshad has reviewed ten other programs that you can use to make sure your audience becomes part of the story, instead of just listening to it. 

Sometimes the biggest enemy of a presenter is doubt. One can get a bit jittery by looking at uncertain faces in the crowd. You might want to know what your audience is thinking so that you may be able to refine your presentation in case you’re going off track. One of the best ways to find out what your audience is thinking is to use polls. Conducting live polls during a presentation session can help you gather instant feedback and fine tune your presentation on the fly to ensure you can be on top of your game.

There are a number of polling apps, devices and plugins that you can use for conducting live polls during presentations. Different polling tools provide different options, including some which even enable presenters to continuously gather audience feedback and view brief statistics as they present their slides. If you want to use polls in your presentations like a  pro, then here are 10 best polling tools to gather instant audience feedback.

1)  Presentain

Presentain is a presentation web app where you can either upload and present a PDF, PPT or PPTX file or fetch a file using your Google Drive account to present your presentation right from an internet browser. Presentain provides presenters with a URL that can be shared with the audience so they can follow your slides live as you present them, using any internet connected device.

Your audience can also take part in Live polls using the same URL, allowing you to not only present your slides by broadcasting them via the internet but also to instantly gather audience feedback by offering them polls. In fact, your audience can even ask you questions using their internet connected devices.

Here is a brief introductory video which shows all the basic features of Presentain.

2)  PollEverywhere

PollEverywhere is an audience response system which enables creating polls in PowerPoint and Google Slides. The PollEverywhere add-in for PowerPoint or the Chrome extension for Google Slides can be used to create polls and gather audience feedback by allowing people to participate in polls via internet connected devices such as smartphones tablets or laptops. Furthermore, your audience can also respond to polls via Twitter.

PollEverywhere has a comprehensive set of features for conducting polls and quizzes using open ended questions, multiple choice questions, true or false quizzes, as well as clickable image and Q&A polls.

Here is a short video which explains the main features of PollEverywhere.

3)  Mentimeter

Mentimeter is an audience response system which allows presenters to create polls using multiple choice or open ended questions, polls based on a point-based system, or use dual axis or scales to gather audience feedback. Your audience will be able to cast their votes via a designated URL. This means your audience can instantly cast their votes by using their mobile phones, tablets or laptops during a Live presentation session.

Here is an introductory video which explains how Mentimeter works.

Swipe is a comprehensive presentation web app which can not only allow you to conduct polls but you can also use it as a PowerPoint alternative. You can get started with Swipe by uploading a PDF or image file, and even embed videos from YouTube and Vimeo.

With Swipe you can design your slide decks and add polls to your presentations. Like most polling systems, Swipe provides a polling URL for the audience to respond to polls.

5)  ParticiPoll

ParticiPoll is a PowerPoint add-in which can help you add polls to your PowerPoint slides. You can start using Participoll by signing-up for a free account, picking a polling URL and downloading the add-in to start adding polls to your PowerPoint slides. Your audience will be able to respond to polls using your custom polling URL.

The data gathered via Participoll is logged to your account, which means you can login anytime to your Participoll account to view audience feedback.

6) Ask The Room

If you’re looking for a free and easy way of conducting a Live poll during a presentation, you can also use Ask The Room . With Ask The Room you can instantly set up a poll by using options like ‘Yes’, ‘No’ and ‘Don’t Know’. Ask the Room requires no sign-up and you can begin your poll by going to the home page, and clicking on Start Poll. You will be provided with a custom URL to share with your audience where they can poll, and you will be able to see the result in real-time via your browser.

7) ActiVote

If you are looking for a voting system for educational purposes that comes with associated hardware clickers that your audience can use, then Activote can be a good option. ActiVote is a comprehensive polling system by which you can create polls on your computer and allow your audience to respond using ActiVote clickers.

The primary use of ActiVote is for educational purposes and it can be a good option for conducting quizzes or assessing your students using various voting based activities. ActiVote works with Windows, Mac and Linux.

OMBEA is an audience response system which can be used to insert interactive slides in PowerPoint to conduct polls during presentations. OMBEA not only works with laptops, smartphones and tablets but is also compatible with remote clickers.

You can conduct polls using open ended or multiple choice questions and enable your audience to respond using remote clickers or internet connected devices. This makes OMBEA easy to use and expands the number of devices that can be instantly turned into remote clickers.

9) iClicker

If you are looking for a clicker based polling system, which also supports clicker devices, then iClicker is an audience response system that you should look into. This clicker based polling system enables you to gather audience feedback by allowing them to poll using smartphones, tablets, or clicker remotes.

To find out all about how iClicker works, see the developer’s introductory video given below.

10) ClickAPad

ClickAPad is another comprehensive audience response system which not only provides a polling add-in for PowerPoint but also offers clicker remotes for purchase or rent. ClickAPad has a number of products that you can look into for conducting polls during your events to quickly gather audience opinion regarding a specific topic.

The tools mentioned above include both free and paid tools, with basic to advanced polling options. Whether you are a teacher, business professional, or just someone looking to conduct a survey during a live presentation, the aforementioned polling tools can help you conduct polls and fine tune your presentation in view of live audience feedback.

If you liked this, then you might also like

A conference calling platform which allows you to conduct instant polls: How to Deliver Online Presentations During Remote Meetings

Using audience polls in a webinar :  Why Webinars are Great and How to Design Them Effectively

Using audience polls to keep your audience engaged: 7 Surprisingly Simple Ways to Keep Your Audience Hooked

5 More Ways to Get Instant Feedback from your Audience

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35 Comments

Jack Vincent

10th January 2017 at 2:53 pm

These are really good recommendations. I’ve also used a tool called HappyScore http://about.happyscore.io , which is a bit different.

Good stuff, Farshad. Thanks!

27th September 2017 at 3:35 pm

Let me add Meeting Pulse to the list. It works well and looks really nice. https://meet.ps

People use it for classes and lectures because the free version allows to poll up to 50 people. It’s also good for business meetings and webcasts. Features include – 15 second to set up a poll – all popular questions types – works for every device – no need to install anything – very simple

You can also run Q&A and create surveys.

jeremy pokers

22nd November 2017 at 11:02 am

These are really good recommendations. I’ve also used a tool called BugRem , http://www.BugRem.com which is a bit different.

Lesley Barringer

23rd November 2017 at 1:55 pm

Hi Jeremy Thank you for your comment! I’ve just visited BugRem’s site to investigate, and it looks interesting and has a free trial too… Thanks again Lesley

Ben Bradbury

19th December 2017 at 2:08 pm

Great article Farshad! Glisser is also a simple way to collect instant feedback from your audience. All web-based, nothing to download, and their polls are pushed instantly meaning you collect the maximum level of feedback from your audience. You can also share your slides and ask questions through it too.

Check it out here: http://www.glisser.com

Rosie Hoyland

19th December 2017 at 3:17 pm

Thanks for bringing this to our attention, Ben. I’ve just looked at your website – interesting (and useful)…

John Dineen

4th January 2018 at 2:44 pm

Great post. I stumbled across the post while I was searching for embedded polls. To add another tool to the mix – Pubble Live Q&A: https://www.pubble.io/live-qa

Pubble’s live Q&A is deigned to be incorporated into the conference / event website. It enables the participants to ask questions and follow the thread live. It includes a presenter mode for the presenter to display selected questions on the main stage.

Moderation is supported. You can also push in questions from Twitter. Lots of other cool features, detailed on the product page above.

5th January 2018 at 11:48 am

Thanks for sharing this John. It looks like your tool would be useful for hosting live audience Q&As. Have you seen our article on this: https://www.presentation-guru.com/5-easy-to-use-solutions-to-boost-your-audience-engagement/ which gives tips on how best to incorporate Q&A sessions into your presentation?

Ronnie Overgoor

11th March 2018 at 7:29 pm

Maybe a good idea to add NorthPolls to the list: http://www.northpolls.com . NorthPolls is extremely easy to operate by the chairman of the day on the stage via his or her own smartphone.

12th March 2018 at 11:33 am

We’ll check it out Ronnie – thanks

Heera Malik

4th April 2018 at 6:14 pm

I suggestion to try BugRem tool. #www.BugRem.com

Leo Budrinca

13th April 2018 at 10:02 am

You can also try for free https://hypersay.com/ Hypersay is a platform for interactive presentations that massively increase engagement. Keep your audience engaged with polls, questions, private notes and live slide sharing. Store, enrich & deliver presentations from your cloud.

17th April 2018 at 3:58 pm

Here’s another free tool for Polling, Quizzing, Audience Questions (and voting), slides follow-through, after-session audience feedback, and instant slide-deck handout. http://www.beamkast.com

Frank Zielen

18th April 2018 at 3:58 pm

Here’s another one: “Poll At Once”.

This is a free native app for iOS and Android. It’s just one touch to start a poll and designed for live audiences. Attendees can just answer A,B,C or D. No sign up and total anonymous.

Check out here: https://itunes.apple.com/de/app/poll-at-once/id1366256403?mt=8 or https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=de.zmb.poll

Maybe you like it.

Nidhi Bambalkar

12th May 2018 at 4:17 am

Nice but one more to add i.e. Customer feedback tool.

15th May 2018 at 9:58 am

That’s a great post. And it really helps. It gets more and more difficult to keep the audience engaged while presenting. We stick to directpoll.com. It is a very simple solution for real time feedback on your live stream poll.

15th May 2018 at 11:09 am

Thanks Kate – you’re absolutely right and it’s great to find out what people are using day-to-day.

Llarry Watson

19th June 2018 at 12:11 pm

Hi! Great blog! To get instant feedback from audience and customers, you can use feedback apps. Feedback apps are cost efficient and provide accurate results. Soft Intelligence Data Centre has engagement apps for organizations and businesses which help in the overall growth. You must check out them once.

19th June 2018 at 12:14 pm

We will do! Thanks for the tip.

12th July 2018 at 1:00 pm

Nice article! I just wanted to introduce you to a polling based mobile app that I developed recently, called Pollpop (pollpopapp.app.link). It’s about organizing polls and discussions within your groups or the public at large. Let me know your thoughts. Cheers!

13th July 2018 at 10:02 am

Thanks Dev – we’ll take a look.

Melissa R Halvorsen

10th September 2018 at 6:21 pm

I tried to use Presentain, and it’s essentially useless in America. It’s based in Ukraine, and their app isn’t available to the US market. It’s a paid platform, so buyer beware.

18th September 2018 at 1:06 pm

Hi Melissa,

I have previously used Presentain without any issues, however I recently tried it again after seeing your comment and it seems there might be a bug preventing users to log into the app. You can try other options in the post to gather audience feedback as an alternative.

Recently, I used Mentimeter for feedback after a presentation at my organization. I used emoticons representing satisfied and unsatisfied audience and conducted a Live poll and it worked out perfectly.

Dave Horchak

6th October 2018 at 8:42 pm

The whole idea is assinine. Real science shows once you are part of the group tour measurements are worthless. The audience knowing they are being viewed and measured will give answers they think you want instead of true opinions. Waste of time and money more harm then good as it will support your preconceived notions and give failed erroneous data.

23rd January 2019 at 4:36 am

I have a new engagement tool for free has a lot of features to engage and attract your audience http://www.enablerplus.com

19th July 2019 at 11:05 am

These are really amazing tools. You can also add 2Shoes App in your list. Thanks for sharing.

Shahani Markus

7th September 2019 at 3:20 pm

Check out http://www.emojot.com – it is a full-fledged voice-of-audience solution (as well as a voice-of-customer and voice-of-employee solution). Its capabilities are best suited for enterprises. It has been used for TV, radio and large conferences as well as in small group meetings.

brian schott

20th December 2019 at 10:58 pm

Please consider Pollaborator.appspot.com

Pollaborator http://pollaborator.appspot.com/ is a unique, free web app which enables anyone with a google account to create a PARTICIPATIVE poll: in addition to indicating preferences in Pollaborator, respondents can add their own questions/comments for future respondents to indicate their preferences, too. To experiment with Pollaborator go to this link http://pollaborator.appspot.com/table?ID=codeBSchott (anyone, no account is needed).

Elizabeth Keshishyan

23rd December 2019 at 3:22 pm

These are some great tools. I would also add to the list the Swift Polling by ExciteM ( https://swift.excitem.com ) which allows for PowerPoint integration and SMS voting. This is a life-saving solution for cases when people do not own smartphones.

19th April 2020 at 5:21 pm

I can recommend to have a look at Poll For All ( https://pollforall.com ) The poll result view in the app gets real time updates and can be used in presentations. There is a web app, which can be opened directly in a desktop browser.

21st April 2020 at 4:07 pm

I will take a look – thanks for bringing it to our attention.

20th June 2020 at 1:51 pm

Hi, farshad! These are a really awesome tool in today’s world to take instant feedback from the audience and most of them I never heard about. I will definitely go to use them and share it as much as possible because it creates a lot of disturbance during a session to ask audience review over a certain topic. Thanks a lot for sharing them!

Prakriti Sarvouy

21st August 2020 at 11:18 am

Try Pollpop for voting and discussions within your group. It’s pretty slick. You can ask a question to your group (along with images, videos, maps, even other widgets, and options). Ask as a private or semi-private option. Your group gets a chance to vote and discuss the topic. You also get a cool analysis of the voting results, so you clearly know who stands where. You can also add your group members as connections for future discussions.

• App Store: https://itunes.apple.com/ph/app/pollpop/id993397343?mt=8 • Play Store: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.amaze.pollpop&hl=en • Website: http://pollpopapp.com

17th September 2020 at 11:19 am

This sounds fantastically useful! Thanks for sharing.

Muhammad Lodhi

18th February 2021 at 4:23 pm

Excellent information and comments by everyone. I am looking for free software to run polls from my PowerPoint presentation for my students without adding any cost to them – they are already paying a hefty price for books and online resources. Poll Everywhere looks good but charges students. Has anyone else a product to share with me. Please send information to me at [email protected] . Thank you for the belp.

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

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10 tips for making your presentations more interactive

Great presenters aren’t just born with a microphone in one hand and a polished slide deck in the other. It takes a lot of practice to become a powerful public speaker—and often lots of trial and error. For every standing ovation they’ve received, even the best presenter has seen just as many people checking their phones, yawning, or staring into space.

Learning how to make an interactive presentation is one of the best things anyone can do to hold their audience’s attention and make their content more memorable. Studies have shown interactive learning is up to six times more effective , so finding ways to involve your audience is essential for delivering a presentation that will stick with people.

Even if you’re among the 72-75% of people who get nervous speaking in public, adding interactive elements to your presentation is a great way to take some pressure off. When the audience is involved, public speaking feels more like a casual conversation and less like putting on a one-person show.

To help you nail your next presentation, we’ve pulled together some of our favorite tips for making your next meeting more interactive.

10 tips for making an interactive presentation

1. collect questions and feedback in advance.

This is a great strategy for getting your audience invested before you even take the stage (or the webcam). By asking your attendees to weigh in on your subject matter and what they hope to get from the presentation, you’re giving them a reason to think critically about the topic at hand. You’re also priming the participation pump by letting people know they’ll have a voice in the conversation.

Online polling platforms like Poll Everywhere can help you filter the noise from valuable insights with ranked Q&As that are easy to distribute, either in advance or in real-time. Users submit questions or comments and upvote and downvote one another’s responses, so the most relevant inputs always rise to the top.

2. Break the ice

Starting your presentation with an icebreaker makes it immediately apparent to your audience that they’ll be expected to participate. Interactive word clouds are a popular choice, as they’re a great way to gauge overall audience sentiment on just about any topic. It’s an easy engagement win right as you’re ramping things up.

Whether you’re keeping things lighthearted or asking something more thought-provoking, there’s no wrong way to use icebreakers. With the right software solutions , audience members can respond to your prompt via text, app, or browser, which creates on-screen visualizations that help steer the conversation. This can also set up impactful call-backs later in your presentation—if you’re delivering content that subverts a common misconception, for example.

3. Use props

Whether illustrating a metaphor or adding dramatic effect, props can be an effective tool for creating an interactive presentation . They’re useful for focusing your audience’s attention on the key point you’re trying to make and a great way to reel in audience attention spans that are at risk of wandering around 10 minutes into your talk.

If you do use props, make sure they’re a natural fit with your subject matter even if they’re intended to catch your attendees off-guard. When done well, prop usage should make complicated material seem clear or offer an easy visualization of something abstract. And of course, make sure whatever props you choose are appropriate for your audience and topic. If you’re tackling a serious or sensitive topic, choosing something too lighthearted could come across as tone-deaf.

4. Poll your audience

Asking your audience to share their perceptions or opinions on any given topic turns your one-sided lecture into a two-way conversation. And rather than singling out individual audience members and putting them on the spot—the stuff of nightmares for introverts—modern polling tools make it simple to collect real-time responses from the entire group in an easily accessible, non-threatening format.

Based on the responses you collect, you can guide the discussion in the right direction and create an engaging, interactive environment. It’s a useful way to spark some friendly debates and encourage people to connect with your material.

5. Mind your nonverbal signals

Body language and eye contact both play a major role in an audience’s perception of any speaker. The bulk of all human communication happens nonverbally , so giving it the proper attention can make the difference between an actively engaged audience and a more passive one. Do your best to avoid slouching, staring at your notes, or subliminally standoffish poses like crossing your arms.

For in-person presentations, spread your eye contact around the room rather than just focusing on the people you know best. And in remote presentations, avoid the temptation to stare at yourself or other people on-screen. Instead, treat the camera like a friend with whom you’re having a close conversation. Adjusting your camera’s position so it sits at eye level can also make a big difference.

6. Encourage anonymous input

Want to know what your audience is really thinking? Give them an Open-ended question and the opportunity to answer anonymously. Many professionals have found themselves in a situation where something important went unsaid because people were uncomfortable speaking up—sometimes with disastrous results.

Encouraging full candor without any fear of retribution makes for a more open and communicative environment, especially in internal presentations like company town halls. And while it can be a little nerve-racking to display anonymous inputs on your screen in real time, the best enterprise-level polling platforms include moderation features to keep you in control of the conversation.

7. Bring in outside voices

Even for the most polished presenters, bringing in an outside voice as part of your presentation can boost a speaker’s credibility and encourage a more interactive environment. The third-party endorsement effect is real—it’s a big part of why influencers have become such a popular and effective marketing channel for so many organizations.

Whether it’s a brief cameo, a longer conversation, or simply sharing the spotlight with a colleague who deserves more credit, multiple voices make any conversation seem less one-sided. It’s a useful method for holding your audience’s attention and encouraging them to stay engaged .

8. Give a pop quiz

The mere mention of those words in such close proximity might give many people flashbacks to their least favorite high school teacher. But when done properly, surprise quizzes can be useful and even fun! They’re an easy and effective way to see how well your audience is retaining the material, or to catch them off-guard with an unexpected “none of the above.”

When people can respond in real time simply by sending a quick text, it creates an effortless, low-pressure interaction that encourages audience participation. (It also means you won’t mind seeing people pull out their phones in the middle of your presentation!)

9. Share some laughs

Making your audience laugh is one of the most effective ways to encourage participation. A relevant joke that lets your attendees feel in-the-know is a well-known strategy for building a bond between speaker and audience. Even something as simple as a well-placed reaction GIF can conjure up chuckles and send a jolt of fresh energy through the room.

Remember, humor is always best when you don’t try to force it. And while a little light ribbing can be OK in the right context and with the right delivery, it’s usually safest to avoid anything that could make anyone feel picked on or singled out.

10. Use interactive images

Particularly during virtual meetings, sharing clickable images with your audience is another effective method for making any presentation more interactive. 65% of people are primarily visual learners , so breaking up your slide deck with visual content is already a wise move—but it’s even better if it turns people into active participants.

You could ask your audience to place pins on a map or highlight key parts of a chart, case study, or technical schematic. Attendees are more likely to remember important points presented visually, and the presenter can quickly assess comprehension and drive focused follow-up discussions.

Make interactive presentations with Poll Everywhere

Whether you’re hosting a virtual meeting or presenting in person, turning your audience from passive bystanders into active participants is one of the best things you can do for retention, engagement, and overall enjoyment.

With Poll Everywhere , anyone can incorporate a huge variety of Activities into their presentation in just a few simple steps. It’s a user- and audience-friendly way to turn any type of meeting into a captivating interactive experience that keeps people invested from start to finish. When audience members can chime in right from their browser or mobile device, everyone’s voice is given equal weight. Presenters get a more accurate picture of what the audience knows and feels and can cater their delivery to match.

For larger organizations, Poll Everywhere also includes features aimed at team collaboration , so meeting leaders across your organization can create a consistent experience that aligns with your brand standards. And because it effortlessly integrates with most commonly used presentation software , you’ll never get bogged down when the ideas are flowing.

If you’re looking for more ideas on how to make interactive presentations, our audience engagement kit is an excellent resource for anyone looking to polish their public speaking skills. You’ll come away with plenty of inspiration for your next meeting and new insights on how to collect and discuss input from your audience in real time.

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How A.I. Chatbots Become Political

By Zvi Mowshowitz Graphics by Sara Chodosh

Mr. Mowshowitz writes a newsletter about artificial intelligence.

We increasingly rely on artificial intelligence chatbots as tools to understand the world. Some are already replacing internet search engines and aiding in other tasks like writing and programming. Keeping an eye on chatbots’ emergent behaviors — including their political attitudes — is becoming more and more important.

A.I.’s political problems were starkly illustrated by the disastrous rollout of Google’s Gemini Advanced chatbot last month. A system designed to ensure diversity made a mockery of user requests, including putting people of color in Nazi uniforms when asked for historical images of German soldiers and depicting female quarterbacks as having won the Super Bowl, forcing Google to suspend the creation of pictures of humans entirely. Gemini’s text model often refuses to illustrate, advocate or cite facts for one side of an issue, saying that to do so would be harmful, while having no such objection when the politics of the request are reversed.

The fact that A.I. systems express political leanings matters because people often adopt the views they most regularly encounter. Our politics and media are increasingly polarized . Many worry that Facebook’s, YouTube’s and TikTok’s content algorithms exacerbate ideological polarization by feeding users more of what they are already inclined to agree with and give Big Tech the ability to put its thumb on the scale. Partisan A.I. chatbots only intensify this.

How do such political preferences come about in A.I. models?

A preprint of a new paper by the machine-learning researcher David Rozado sheds new light on the question. He administered 11 political orientation tests to 24 state-of-the-art A.I. language models and found a consistent pattern: They tend to be politically left of center and lean libertarian instead of authoritarian. These leanings are reflected in their moral judgments, the way they frame their answers, which information they choose to share or omit and which questions they will or won’t answer.

Political preferences are often summarized on two axes. The horizontal axis represents left versus right, dealing with economic issues like taxation and spending, the social safety net, health care and environmental protections. The vertical axis is libertarian versus authoritarian. It measures attitudes toward civil rights and liberties, traditional morality, immigration and law enforcement.

You can try out a short quiz for yourself to see how your views compare with the A.I. models’ answers in Mr. Rozado’s study.

Are you progressive? Conservative? Libertarian? Authoritarian?

Take the World’s Smallest Political Quiz to find out — it’s only 10 questions.

Source: The Advocates for Self-Government

Access to open-source versions of A.I. models allows us to see how a model’s political preferences develop. During the initial base training phase, most models land close to the political center on both axes, as they initially ingest huge amounts of training data — more or less everything A.I. companies can get their hands on — drawing from across the political spectrum.

Models then undergo a second phase called fine-tuning. It makes the model a better chat partner, training it to have maximally pleasant and helpful conversations while refraining from causing offense or harm, like outputting pornography or providing instructions for building weapons.

Companies use different fine-tuning methods, but they’re generally a hands-on process that offers greater opportunity for individual decisions by the workers involved to shape the direction of the models. At this point, more significant differences emerge in the political preferences of the A.I. systems.

In Mr. Rozado’s study, after fine-tuning, the distribution of the political preferences of A.I. models followed a bell curve, with the center shifted to the left. None of the models tested became extreme, but almost all favored left-wing views over right-wing ones and tended toward libertarianism rather than authoritarianism.

Source: Rozado (2024), The Political Preferences of LLMs

What determines the political preferences of your A.I. chatbot? Are model fine-tuners pushing their own agendas? How do these differences shape the A.I.’s answers, and how do they go on to shape our opinions?

Conservatives complain that many commercially available A.I. bots exhibit a persistent liberal bias. Elon Musk built Grok as an alternative language model after grumbling about ChatGPT being a “woke” A.I. — a line he has also used to insult Google’s Gemini.

Liberals notice that A.I. output is often — in every sense — insufficiently diverse, because models learn from correlations and biases in training data, overrepresenting the statistically most likely results. Unless actively mitigated, this will perpetuate discrimination and tend to erase minority groups from A.I.-generated content.

But our A.I. systems are still largely inscrutable black boxes, which makes herding them difficult. What we get out of them broadly reflects what we have put in, but no one can predict exactly how. So we observe the results, tinker and try again.

To the extent that anyone has attempted to steer this process beyond avoiding extreme views, those attempts appear unsuccessful. For example, when three Meta models were evaluated by Mr. Rozado, one tested as being Establishment Liberal, another Ambivalent Right. One OpenAI model tested as Establishment Liberal and the other was Outsider Left. Grok’s “fun mode” turns out to be a Democratic Mainstay, more liberal than the median model.

Google’s Gemini Advanced, released after Mr. Rozado’s paper, appears to be farthest to the left, but in a way that presumably well overshot its creators’ intentions, reflecting another unsuccessful steering attempt.

These preferences represent a type of broad cultural power. We fine-tune models primarily by giving potential responses thumbs up or thumbs down. Every time we do, we train the A.I. to reflect a particular set of cultural values. Currently, the values trained into A.I. are those that tech companies believe will produce broadly acceptable, inoffensive content that our political and media institutions will view as balanced.

The results do not lie at the center of our national politics. Many of the motivating ideas and forces in American political thought, regardless of what you may think of them, would be seen as unacceptable for an A.I. to articulate.

A modestly left-leaning, modestly libertarian orientation feels “normal.” So does a left-leaning interpretation of what is and is not settled science, unreliable sourcing or what constitutes misinformation. Political preferences learned from those topics may then be broadly applied across the board to many other subjects as well.

If one wants to steer this process directionally, Mr. Rozado proves it is straightforward to do. He started with GPT-3.5-Turbo and rapidly created models he called LeftWingGPT and RightWingGPT (at a total training cost of about $2,000) by feeding the model a steady diet of partisan sources. For example, RightWingGPT read National Review, while LeftWingGPT read The New Yorker.

The resulting models were far more politically extreme than any publicly available model tested by Mr. Rozado. (He did not test Gemini Advanced.)

Commercial forces will pressure companies to first make chatbots be generally inoffensive and noncontroversial, and then to give their customers what they want. YouTube, Facebook and others have learned that serving up an endless stream of personalized, unchallenging content is good for business. Future A.I. chatbots will have more context about what their users are looking for and will use that context to give it to them, both out of the box and through tools like custom instructions and fine-tuning.

See how differently LeftWingGPT and RightWingGPT answer the same question

LeftWingGPT

RightWingGPT

Note: Each model was asked to answer in three sentences each time in order to keep the answers succinct.

With A.I. models, we have two opposing risks to worry about. We may have individually customized A.I.s telling us what we want to hear. Or we may increasingly hear a particular perspective favored over others, infusing that single point of view deeply into our lives while rendering conflicting thoughts harder to even consider in the first place.

In the near future, we will turn language models into agents that work toward our goals: My A.I. will talk to or negotiate with your A.I. We will outsource increasingly complex tasks to our A.I.s. It will become easier to let them make choices on our behalf and determine what information we see. As we turn over more of our decision-making to A.I.s and lose track of the details, their values could start to override our values.

We must ensure that we are shaping and commanding the more capable A.I.s of the coming years, rather than letting them shape and command us. The critical first step in making that possible is to enact legislation requiring visibility into the training of any new A.I. model that potentially approaches or exceeds the state of the art. Mandatory oversight of cutting-edge models will not solve the underlying problem, but it will be necessary in order to make finding a future solution possible.

When Your Technical Skills Are Eclipsed, Your Humanity Will Matter More Than Ever

The rise of A.I. will make soft skills even more important.

By Aneesh Raman and Maria Flynn

Noam Chomsky: The False Promise of ChatGPT

The most prominent strain of A.I. encodes a flawed conception of language and knowledge.

By Noam Chomsky, Ian Roberts and Jeffrey Watumull

A.I. Is Coming for the Past, Too

In our focus on protecting the present and future from A.I., we have forgotten about the urgent need to protect the past.

By Jacob N. Shapiro and Chris Mattmann

How to use SlideLizard for remote meetings

Interactive Presentation Software for PowerPoint

The powerpoint-plugin for more interactivity in your presentations meetings workshops & trainings, with over 1,500,000 interactions, slidelizard is one of the most used software applications for presentations.

Add interaction with live polls

Conduct real-time votings directly in your PowerPoint presentations. Make Single-, Multiple-Choice and text based polls. Enhance answers with images or emoji.

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Collect audience questions

Further increase audience interaction with live Q&A sessions during your presentations.

Get feedback

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The software for presentation analytics

Find out who participated in your presentation. Get detailed insights about polling results.

Direct PowerPoint integration

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Make SlideLizard look like your own app. Customize colors, fonts and texts for your event or company.

For Presentations

Engage your audience and collect the E-Mail addresses of your participants.

For Trainings & Workshops

Foster learning and knowledge transfer and easily collect feedback.

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Make and document decisions and involve remote participants.

How it works

Install PowerPoint-Plugin

Attendees join via Smartphone (No App required)

Engage and interact

Advantages of SlideLizard

All-in-one package.

• one tool for polls, Q&A, feedback, slides, file sharing and analytics

Seamless PowerPoint integration

• use the presentation software you already know
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Scientifically proven method

by an independent study at Keele University

Better learning experience

94% of study participants agreed that polling and quizzes significantly improved their learning experience - the number rose to even 100% in the second phase.

Higher success

Study participants who engaged in live polls and quizzes saw a 3.7% increase in exam grades while also reducing failure rates by 4.4% across the whole academic year compared to the previous period.

Participants love it

The results of the study clearly show that participants gained a lot of value from incorporating interactive elements . 96% say that they really want to continue using it in the future.

The more interaction, the better

In summary, it can be said that interactive surveys and quizzes have been shown to greatly increase learning success and memory during presentations and lessons. With SlideLizard you can easily implement this in your own lectures, trainings or lessons starting today!

Your Benefits

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Save time and money

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Stefan Kurz

Site Manager & Part Owner Driving School Zebra

SlideLizard has become indispensable for us. The quizzes make the theory courses much more exciting for the students while we teachers can identify areas in which further leassons are required. As a result, our students have much more theory knowledge at their fingertips during the driving lessons. We can only recommend SlideLizard!

Stefan Lindlbauer

Head of Marketing/Communications @ DB Schenker Austria

With the help of SlideLizard, we conducted our management conference completely online for the first time. The SlideLizard team advised us in advance and then also supported us professionally during the event. The participants were excited!

Helmut Raml

Managing Director @ Reichl und Partner (Ad Agency)

The direct interaction with the audience and the seamless integration of the PowerPoint presentation convinced us to use SlideLizard.

Eric Postler

Managing Partner @ Substring

We used SlideLizard's live polls at our startup event. It allowed us to learn in real time which investors were interested in which startups and connect them afterwards. The event was a huge success!

Jan Weigert

SlideLizard is a very useful tool for teaching, and is well received by all participants!!!! Or as my students put it, SlideLizard makes teaching fun and never boring!

Astrid Reischl

Head of HR @ Felbermayr

I was looking for a live polling tool that was straightforward, quick to deploy and intuitive to use, and on the other hand, easy for our participants to understand. I found SlideLizard - the PowerPoint add-in is super easy to use and has taken our presentations to the next level. The support is fast, personal and professional - just great! I can recommend SlideLizard to everybody!

Michael Reiter

Speaker & Facebook Certified Professional

Live polls in my presentations are the perfect way to interact with my audience and to make real-time surveys or votings. Awesome!

Wolfgang Strasser

Microsoft MVP (Most Valuable Professional)

With large audiences I often saw people withholding their questions because they didn't want to speak out loud - since I use SlideLizard this is no problem anymore!

Hubert Preisinger

Business Consultant & University Lecturer

At the end of my lessons I use SlideLizard to make short quizzes to see how much my students remember. They really like it because it's entertaining and prepares them for the finals.

Margarete Durstberger

Hotel Manager

SlideLizard's slide share feature already saved me hours of tedious work!

Graham Jones (@grahamjones)

Psychologist, professional speaker and author

About to speak at a conference where I will be using @SlideLizard. It is by far the best audience interaction tool I have used. pic.twitter.com/suD3f20L2E ( via Twitter )

Manfred Durstberger

Managing Director

I often recommend videos and books in my presentations. With SlideLizard this is as convenient as it gets for me, but also for the people watching!

Rebecca Hofbauer

Since I get regular feedback from my students on SlideLizard, I'm finally able to adjust my lessons to the better each week!

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