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SMS polling & text messaging polls

When you need to get information from a large audience, even if they don’t have internet or smartphones, text polling can be incredibly useful. Participants send a short message to a specific phone number — that’s all it takes!
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Use text messaging polls to create a real-time dialogue with your voting

Find out what your audience thinks and let them vote from their computer, smartphone, or mobile device.

With a dedicated phone number, it’s so simple.

During the registration process, you can select a dedicated phone number with a local area code (based on availability). This phone number is dedicated to your event for the duration of your plan. If we don’t support your country, please request support via hello@swiftpolling.com

Collect text votes for multiple poll types

Pick a poll type that works best for you, including multiple-choice, open-ended, or word-cloud–all of which will use the same dedicated phone number.

Make your presentation truly interactive with real-time text polling results

Share poll results with your audience in real-time directly from Swift’s dashboard or within Microsoft PowerPoint.

Interactive Voice Response (IVR) is enabled by default

Anyone who calls that phone number will also be able to vote automatically without any additional setup.

Custom SMS reply back

Send a link to a presentation, a coupon, or mention a sponsor with a custom SMS reply back.

Make any presentation better with SMS polling

Collect data and engage your audience during all kinds of presentations, from corporate meetings, TED talks, university lectures, at live events, during elections and contests, and more.
Powerful Features

Limit the number of votes per person

Swift can limit the number of votes registered to one or more live polls.

Branded look

Choose the graphics and visuals that work best with your live stream or show, presented as a lower-third or full-screen graphics.

Schedule poll launch

It’s up to you: schedule when you want your polls to go live.

Whitelisting

Limit participation based on options you choose so only certain people can participate in your polls, quizzes, or campaigns.

Download poll data

Your data can be exported to CSV or Excel documents.

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Live questions and answers

Live (Q&A) are an effective meeting format for many reasons. Listeners can ask questions or offer ideas and then vote for other submissions. The host of the presentation answers questions and manages different ideas presented throughout the session. This allows the presenter to keep the audience engaged and participating in the meeting. The live Q&A format is a well-suited option for these types of meeting:

  • Press conferences
  • Meetings with fans
  • Brainstorming
  • Lectures and seminars
The purpose of this format is to easily share opinions and information. It’s a useful tool for establishing relationships with customers, fans, employees, and the general public. However, people don’t always ask relevant questions, and even the most thoughtfully planned session can get derailed. This can happen when the audience doesn’t ask questions related to the topic at hand, or simply doesn’t relate to the speaker. That’s why it’s essential to organize the event in a way that mitigates any negativity and promotes the benefits of these presentations. And that’s where Q&A platform, like Swift Polling, comes in.

This allows the presenter to keep the audience engaged and participating in the meeting. The live Q&A format is a well-suited option for these types of meeting:
  • Press conferences
  • Meetings with fans
  • Brainstorming
  • Lectures and seminars
The purpose of this format is to easily share opinions and information. It’s a useful tool for establishing relationships with customers, fans, employees, and the general public. However, people don’t always ask relevant questions, and even the most thoughtfully planned session can get derailed. This can happen when the audience doesn’t ask questions related to the topic at hand, or simply doesn’t relate to the speaker. That’s why it’s essential to organize the event in a way that mitigates any negativity and promotes the benefits of these presentations. And that’s where Q&A platform, like Swift Polling, comes in.

How to use live questions and answers

During live Q&A sessions, you can compile:

  • Feedback
  • Listener questions
  • Suggestions
  • Ideas
All of this is part of the open-ended question term, and this means polls don’t have strictly defined options and formats. Participants address the organizers or the speaker in a freestyle manner, without any special rules or restrictions. Where live Q&A session can be used:
  • In discussions — at meetings, at public round tables, in press conferences.
  • In retrospect — review and joint analysis of the company’s past reporting period
  • In brainstorming — creating a list of ideas supported by the majority of participants
  • In interviews — with game developers, authors, creators, etc.
  • In education — workshops to increase student involvement and engagement
It’s a flexible format that is appropriate whenever you need to get feedback from your audience. The live questions format helps:
  • Analyze the audience: what do they care about the most?
  • Answer burning questions
  • Find new ideas and solutions to problems
  • Understand where to go next — in business, development, teaching, etc.

All of this is part of the open-ended question term, and this means polls don’t have strictly defined options and formats. Participants address the organizers or the speaker in a freestyle manner, without any special rules or restrictions. Where live Q&A session can be used:
  • In discussions — at meetings, at public round tables, in press conferences.
  • In retrospect — review and joint analysis of the company’s past reporting period
  • In brainstorming — creating a list of ideas supported by the majority of participants
  • In interviews — with game developers, authors, creators, etc.
  • In education — workshops to increase student involvement and engagement
It’s a flexible format that is appropriate whenever you need to get feedback from your audience. The live questions format helps:
  • Analyze the audience: what do they care about the most?
  • Answer burning questions
  • Find new ideas and solutions to problems
  • Understand where to go next — in business, development, teaching, etc.

How to create live questions and answers with Swift Polling

If you don’t have an account, the first step is to sign up with Swift Polling. When you register, you will enter your full name, email address, and password. It only takes a few steps to create an online Q&;A:

  • Enter the dashboard and click on Create New Poll.
  • Specify the question type: Open Ended
  • Assign a phone number for SMS messages or a symbol combination to enter the online survey on the website.
  • Click on “Start” at the bottom of the page
Participants will send their answers via SMS or on the website. Our Q&A platform compiles responses in the Feedback section. You can share the data you collect by embedding the poll in a PowerPoint slide or by enabling Presentation Mode. Responses can be displayed in three ways:
  • Wall display — each answer is in a box
  • Single display — messages are shown one after another
  • Word clouds — received responses are collected in a single cloud. Repeated words become larger than less popular words.
We also provide an archiving function. With this feature, questions marked with an asterisk aren’t shown on the screen. This is useful when the audience has already discussed a particular response and you no longer need to display it on the screen.

  • Enter the dashboard and click on Create New Poll.
  • Specify the question type: Open Ended
  • Assign a phone number for SMS messages or a symbol combination to enter the online survey on the website.
  • Click on “Start” at the bottom of the page
Participants will send their answers via SMS or on the website. Our Q&A platform compiles responses in the Feedback section. You can share the data you collect by embedding the poll in a PowerPoint slide or by enabling Presentation Mode. Responses can be displayed in three ways:
  • Wall display — each answer is in a box
  • Single display — messages are shown one after another
  • Word clouds — received responses are collected in a single cloud. Repeated words become larger than less popular words.
We also provide an archiving function. With this feature, questions marked with an asterisk aren’t shown on the screen. This is useful when the audience has already discussed a particular response and you no longer need to display it on the screen.

Give your audience a chance to speak out

Live questions are an effective way to help your audience speak out and be heard. With this kind of session, your listeners are able to express themselves in many ways:

  • Share their opinion
  • Brainstorm
  • Upvote the options shared by other participants
  • Downvote options that are considered inappropriate or ineffective
Participants can send responses during your event. Suggestions, questions, and ideas appear immediately on the screen in real-time. Our platform collects all answers at once and compiles them on a single dashboard. Make your event multi-channel:
  • With our live Q&A platform, you can create polls on Facebook. These responses are aggregated with the rest of your responses.
  • Create a hashtag Twitter poll
  • Facebook and Twitter data is connected directly to your account dashboard.

  • Share their opinion
  • Brainstorm
  • Upvote the options shared by other participants
  • Downvote options that are considered inappropriate or ineffective
Participants can send responses during your event. Suggestions, questions, and ideas appear immediately on the screen in real-time. Our platform collects all answers at once and compiles them on a single dashboard. Make your event multi-channel:
  • With our live Q&A platform, you can create polls on Facebook. These responses are aggregated with the rest of your responses.
  • Create a hashtag Twitter poll
  • Facebook and Twitter data is connected directly to your account dashboard.

Anonymous questions = equal opportunities

Participants can ask questions online anonymously during a web version of a Q&A session. This anonymity can be beneficial as it encourages participants to ask frank and honest questions and offer suggestions at the same time. Even those who are reluctant to share can express their opinion with the comfort of knowing their identity is protected. This also means the most vocal participants aren’t overwhelming anyone else and everyone has the same opportunity to interact in the session. Note that anonymity is not available for SMS responses in the open-ended questions format that is used for Q&As. It’s worth remembering that with the introduction of anonymity, not all participants will refrain from irrelevant, hostile, or obscene comments. To help keep these at bay, our platform offers filtering options. You can filter questions before going live in a couple of clicks:  

  • Go to the settings for the live Q & A
  • Select the ‘Which to show — Curated’ settings
  • The audience will only see the questions you have marked with a star
If you don’t want to limit session transparency, then use social downvoting. Participants can remove inappropriate or undesirable responses collectively.

Even those who are reluctant to share can express their opinion with the comfort of knowing their identity is protected. This also means the most vocal participants aren’t overwhelming anyone else and everyone has the same opportunity to interact in the session. Note that anonymity is not available for SMS responses in the open-ended questions format that is used for Q&As. It’s worth remembering that with the introduction of anonymity, not all participants will refrain from irrelevant, hostile, or obscene comments. To help keep these at bay, our platform offers filtering options. You can filter questions before going live in a couple of clicks:  
  • Go to the settings for the live Q & A
  • Select the ‘Which to show — Curated’ settings
  • The audience will only see the questions you have marked with a star
If you don’t want to limit session transparency, then use social downvoting. Participants can remove inappropriate or undesirable responses collectively.

Identify the most important questions

Our online Q&A platform allows you to identify the most critical questions in real-time. With the crowdsource upvoting function, session participants will vote for the topics they are most interested in. All attendees have equal opportunities to express themselves and vote. With upvoting, the audience collectively prioritizes talking points. This is useful when you need to:  

  • Find important areas for further business development
  • Identify “gaps” and essential points of project development
  • Answer “burning” questions from fans Identify the most critical social issues
  • Explore your audience with Q&A analytics
Our platform offers convenient visual Q&A analytics. Every single poll, including Q&A sessions, provides you with this data:
  • The breakdown of votes per option
  • The breakdown of response per channel (SMS, web)
  • The date and time of the Q&A creation
You’ll see which questions are the most popular and get the biggest response from the audience. Choose these visual graphics formats to display the results:
  • Select the pie chart to display the percentages
  • Or select the column chart to represent absolute values (in numbers)
You are also able to upload the results to a CSV file. You can choose to convert it into Excel if you prefer to use this program for analysis.

With upvoting, the audience collectively prioritizes talking points. This is useful when you need to:  
  • Find important areas for further business development
  • Identify “gaps” and essential points of project development
  • Answer “burning” questions from fans Identify the most critical social issues
  • Explore your audience with Q&A analytics
Our platform offers convenient visual Q&A analytics. Every single poll, including Q&A sessions, provides you with this data:
  • The breakdown of votes per option
  • The breakdown of response per channel (SMS, web)
  • The date and time of the Q&A creation
You’ll see which questions are the most popular and get the biggest response from the audience. Choose these visual graphics formats to display the results:
  • Select the pie chart to display the percentages
  • Or select the column chart to represent absolute values (in numbers)
You are also able to upload the results to a CSV file. You can choose to convert it into Excel if you prefer to use this program for analysis.
FAQ for SMS and Text Polling
When you first log in to your Swift Polling account, you’ll see an empty questions list. You can create a new question by clicking the “Create new poll+” button in the center. You’ll be given the option for 3 question types: multiple choice (poll), open-ended, or word cloud. For interactive presentations where your audience can ask questions, selecting the “open-ended” option is the best choice. Once you’re done, click the “Launch” button. Now your audience can start responding. You can also choose to moderate the questions as you go to remove repetitive or offensive questions before they’re displayed to the audience.
To embed an interactive Q&A into a website, you first need to access the embed code. Your embed code can be found in the active poll view and in the polls list by clicking “More options” and selecting “Embed code.” Then, your embed code pops up. To copy the embed code, click “Copy to Clipboard.” If you have a designated area on your website for your poll, you can type the desired width and height in pixels to get the best responsive view. These fields add additional parameters into the embed code to ensure the poll looks good on your website and is in line with your branding.

How to create and present text polls with Swift Polling

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Swift polling is the fastest way find out your audience is thinking. Create text polls and capture audience responses in real time. Make your events more fun and interactive.

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Create and present SMS polls

Create a text poll

1. Enable the SMS feature on the bottom of your dashboard.

2. Go to the left side and select "Create Poll"

3. Type in the questions and add the response options; add more than two options by selecting "Add Option"

4. Launch the poll by using the corresponding button on the lower-right corner.

Collect SMS votes

1. Ask your audience to text their votes to your Swift phone number.

2. Tell them to send the option number, for example, text 1 for the first option.

3. Or send the option itself, such as "Red".

SMS polling features

Create multiple polls and navigate through them using arrows. "Stop" the current poll, move to another and press "Start" right from the presentation page.
swift_polling_textpoll_features_2
With Swift you can customize how ofter people can participate for each question. You can set it up to one vote for poll, make it unlimited or customize the number of votes.
Add a custom text reply: This is a great opportunity for you to send a thank you message or highlight a sponsor. this is the message they will receive after voting.
swift_polling_textpoll_features_3
Accept questions and open -ended feedback to the same number. The responses appear in the feedback section.
Enter full-screen mode from your presentation page.
Change the color of the background on the results page to light or dark.
Choose a bar chart or pie chart to present the results.

ProTips

• Give your respondents 60 seconds to submit their text votes.

• Give your audience additional seconds to input the phone number before voting.

• Ask seven questions at most; we recommend only five.

• Simplify the response options of the poll so that your audience easily submits the votes.