Blog Dos #9: Add a poll to your blog

Adding a poll to your blog creates reader interaction and delivers valuable information about what your readers want. I just created my first poll for Pajama Market because I've been wishy-washy about what to do for a 'theme week.' You'll recall Wine Week a few months ago and I would like to do more weeks where I take one subject and write extensively on that one one subject. So please vote at the top right of this blog for what you would like to see covered next week.

Adding a blog was a pain-in-the-ass. Let me spare you this pain and make it easy for you. First, Typepad has a widget for polls through the Vizu platform. It didn't work (not connected to server error).

Second, I started with a nice list of poll tools from ProBlogger, although Darren admitted that he had not personally tried the different options. By the way, Darren uses the Democracy plugin for WordPress...not an option for my Typepad blog. I tried Darren's list and was disappointed by BlogPolls.com, Vizu (again), Free Blog Poll, and Blog Poll. None of them worked! They all had great promise and looked nice, but when it came to get the code there was an issue with the server on each one! Finally, the last Typepad-friendly tool on the list worked. Thanks Blog Flux Polls.

Even though it worked, it was still a pain. I created a new Typelist to place the poll in my sidebar, but the width was all screwed up and cut the poll off on the right side. I had to change the values of the width and height to get the poll to look ok. I still don't think it's the most attractive thing in the world, but it serves it's purpose.

Now that I've gone through the trouble...please vote!

Technorati : blog flux poll, blog poll, blogpolls.com, free blog poll, problogger, problogger.net, vizu, vizu polls

Comments

[sharla]

Have you tried www.wufoo.com for forms/polls? I used it for a poll on one of my blogs and it was pretty easy!

[Brian Brown]

Hi Sharla. I don't see a Poll option in their examples. And it looks like you can only use them 3 times before you have to pay for an account?

Still, considering how useful forms can be to get great feedback, I'll have to look into them sometime.