LinkedIn Rolls Out Polls and Virtual Events

LinkedIn Rolls Out Polls and Virtual Events

By Techtonic group

LinkedIn has started rolling out a new Polls feature that lets you gather valuable feedback from your network and 'LinkedIn Virtual Events' made possible by the combination of LinkedIn Live and LinkedIn Events.

"Asking your network for feedback—and providing it to others in return—is a great way to get relevant and informed input, while also sparking new conversations and discussions with your trusted connections.", wrote Howie Fung from LinkedIn in a blog post announcing the polls feature.

According to the company, it takes less than 30 seconds to get started with polls. If you're interested, you can start a poll by starting a new post and clicking on the "Create a Poll" option.

You can add up to four options in the poll and set the duration of the poll ranging between 24 hours and up to two weeks. The company recommends writing up a post explaining more details about the poll along with hashtags for better user engagement.

LinkedIn says just the poll creator and the person who voted will be seeing what they voted for. That is, other people engaging in the poll will not be able to identify voters from a poll. In case the poll creator is interested to gain more insights regarding a person's vote, the company says there is an option to message the voter within the poll.

If seeing polls on LinkedIn feels familiar, that's because the company had a poll feature long before. As pointed out by TechCrunch, the polls feature seems to have got removed in 2014.

Coming to LinkedIn virtual events, the merger appears to have happened in wake of lockdown restrictions in place due to the pandemic, as an effective way to engage with LinkedIn users. According to LinkedIn, its Live feature typically gets 23 times more comments and 6 times more reactions per post when compared to a normal video.