Have you ever run a Zoom meeting or Zoom webinar and wanted to run a quick poll of all your attendees? Or how about something more visual like a word cloud of audience responses?
Running a poll, wordcloud, Q&A session, spinner wheel, or interactive map in Zoom is now as easy as asking your audience to put their response in the chat - no second screens or new interfaces for them to learn.
There are two ways you can do this.
- Sign up for a StreamAlive account and connect to your Zoom meetings and webinars through our dashboard
- Use the new StreamAlive app for Zoom and manage everything through your Zoom account
Here's how to run polls, wordclouds, and more directly in your Zoom session.
1. Add StreamAlive to your existing Zoom session
If you have a Zoom session running, locate the Apps icon in the menu and search for StreamAlive. You'll be invited to add the app.
Alternatively, you can add StreamAlive to your Zoom account at any time by visiting the Zoom App Marketplace and searching for StreamAlive there. Simply click the "Add" button and whenever you run a Zoom session, StreamAlive will be available as a pre-installed app.
2. Create your first audience interaction in Zoom
You don't need to have an account with StreamAlive to run an audience interaction. You can select from one of the five pre-defined interactions or opt to create your own. The pre-defined interactions are:
- Interactive map - ask your audience where they are joining from and see their responses plotted in real-time on a map
- Wordcloud - a great ice-breaker, ask your audience how they are feeling today and see their responses visualized into a wordcloud
- Poll - ask your audience to let you know their favorite type of movie - and their responses update a poll in real-time on your screen
- Audience call-outs - let your audience feel heard by asking them why they joined your session today. Their responses are highlighted in colorful thought bubbles on your screen
- Tetris-inspired call-outs - Ask your audience what they plan to do after attending your session and see their responses visualized in a cascading wall of colorful tiles
If you want to ask your own question and run it as a poll, wordcloud, or map, select the Create your own interaction and you'll see multiple interaction options.
If you're lacking inspiration for your own question to ask, use the AI powered by Chat GPT to come up with the questions for you.
You can make edits to the question and apply any settings, for example you might want to turn the profanity filter off (we're not sure why!) or you might want to limit responses to one per person, which is useful if you're running a poll! When everything looks good for your interaction, click the 'Go' button.3.
3. Run your first interaction
Your interaction is ready to run. Just make sure you're sharing your screen - the results update in real-time on your screen. When you press the spacebar on your keyboard or click the 'play' icon on the interface, the interaction starts. All you need to do is to tell your audience to type in the chat. StreamAlive automatically collects the responses and updates the interaction on your screen.
This is when the magic happens: once your audience sees that their voice is being heard by simply using the chat, more and more people start participating. In one webinar, we had over 90% of the audience engage in one or more of our interactions.
Once your audience starts to answer the poll by putting their answer (1, 2, 3, 4, etc.) in the chat, the interaction updates in real-time so everyone can see the results come in.
Usage limits: As a guest user (no StreamAlive account) and a free user (you've created a free StreamAlive account) there are usage limits. You can create an unlimited number of interactions in an unlimited number of sessions. Each interaction is limited to the first 50 participants. If your interactions are regularly getting more than 50 people participating you'll need to upgrade to one of our paid plans which start at just $19/month.
4. Run more interactions
There's no limit to the number of polls, wordclouds, and other interactions that you can run during your Zoom meeting or webinar.
There are other visual interactions that you can run such as emoji wordclouds and audience call-outs, but we'll leave you to discover those on your own!
5. Automatically create a Q&A bank during your Zoom session
From the moment StreamAlive is activated in your Zoom meeting or webinar, it automatically captures audience questions and saved them in a Q&A bank that you can access at any time or come to at the end of your session when it's time to answer audience questions.
The difference between StreamAlive and other Q&A apps is that your audience doesn't have to jump through hoops, open up new tabs or submit questions on a different form. They just type their question in the chat at any time during your session and StreamAlive picks it up and saves it for you. This is particularly useful if you're focused on your presentation and don't have a chance to scan the chat for questions, or if your chat stream is on fire and audience questions are mixed in with comments and other messages.
6. Analyze your Zoom session
For guest users that don't have a free StreamAlive account, when the Zoom session ends, any poll results, wordclouds, or questions from the chat will not be saved. By creating a free StreamAlive account you can plan your polls, wordclouds, maps and other interactions in advance, and even upload your slides so you don't have to do any tab hopping while presenting.
Additionally, all your audience interactions are saved and you can analyze how they performed. You can also see the results of your polls and other visual interactions along with all the questions that were asked and links that were shared.
It's free to use the StreamAlive app for Zoom and you can run as many interactions as you want in as many sessions as you want. The only limiting factor is the number of people that can participate in each interaction. For more information, see our pricing page on usage limits.
Create your free StreamAlive account today to ensure your visual interactions are saved after your session ends!
