SodaHead - How to easily poll your readers like ESPN and Fox News

SodaHead claims to be the ”premier opinion-based community where visitors discover, debate, and discuss today’s hottest issues.” From what I can see they may be right.

With a complement of clients that include Fox News, ESPN and ABC News, they are powering polls for some of the most high-profile websites on the internet. You can use their tools to power polls on your site as well (for free).

How I became aware of SodaHead

I became aware of SodaHead when I wrote about a glut of articles that took liberties with one of SodaHead’s polls. When I drew some incorrect conclusions about SodaHead in that post, SodaHead’s founder Jason Feffer reached out and explained to me how integrated they had become in popular websites. He explained to me the concept of social polling that was the genesis of SodaHead. Intended to be a hub for people to share their opinion in anonymity, it has quickly become one of the highest ranking sites in the world.

The main site has an overwhelming number of user-generated polls, and many of the polls on the front page are focused on popular culture. There are tabs on the top that navigate to different topics from fashion to politics, so there is something for everyone there.

How you can use SodaHead on your site

The SodaHead poll widget is pretty easy to use, you simply ask your question, input some potential answers, create the poll and embed it. I will caution that you should be logged in ahead of time, as I created the poll below twice after losing all of my data in the sign-in process.

Here’s one that I created to gauge how people enjoyed four recent contributor articles to leaderswest:

Public Opinion Poll Results

A poll like this is tremendously useful if you want to keep people interacting with your site, or if you just need another reason to advertise a particular post (“tell us what you think in our poll,”is a pretty enticing call to action). All-in-all the poll widget is a very slick and useful product that you may be able to add to your arsenal. And if your like contributing to Quora but are looking for something with a little less time commitment, you may enjoy answering polls as well.

The only bad news is that embedded polls are in Flash, meaning a certain operating system (iOS) won’t be able to see them. So when you’re embedding a poll be sure that the link to the site (the widget appears to do this automatically) so that everyone has opportunity to participate.

I’m interested to know if this is something that could be useful to your site. Leave a comment below and tell me your impressions of Sodahead.

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Jim Dougherty

Writer and chief of miscellany at leaderswest.com

I aspire to give people something to think about rather than tell them what to do. My favorite Google Alert is “social media research,” I am increasingly compelled by Gen Z, and I appreciate good writers agnostic of where they write. At one time I was Kred’s 12th most influential social media blogger and Klout’s most influential person on the topic of David Hasselhoff. Transplant from Seattle living in Cincinnati. Haven’t entirely adopted the local sports teams yet.