How to Create a Poll on Facebook: All You Need to Know

These days, it seems like polls are everywhere – even Twitter has polls. Whether it’s the old-fashioned opinion poll from politicians or a survey that brands deploy to see how good brand affinity is, they are popular for one important reason: people make decisions based on poll results. Politicians are influenced in terms of policy, for instance. On the other hand, brands and nonprofits can benefit from polls as well. That’s because consumer sentiment is critical for marketing efforts. Plus, polls can inform product development.

No matter why you want to know how to create a poll on Facebook, the good news is that these are invaluable as marketing tools. Plus, they’re both easy to set up and simple to interpret. With all of that said, here’s everything you need to know about this valuable tool.

Does Facebook have a poll feature?

Yes, like other social networks like Twitter and LinkedIn, Facebook has a poll feature. Since they launched it way back in 2007, it is safe to say that they are the pioneers of the social networking poll! This means that if you know how to create a poll on Facebook then you’ll be tapping into one of the older tools in the social media world generally. Plus, you’ll get a great window into consumer sentiment.

Can you still create a poll on Facebook?

While Facebook features come and go, the poll is still one that can be utilized for Facebook marketing. For instance, it’s easy to ask people to choose between several different new product ideas or highly-promoted features of a product or service.

However, Facebook has changed the poll features over the years, especially when it comes to posting polls on personal profiles. Facebook sees polls proper as a marketing tool, which means that personal profiles don’t really need them. However, Facebook had a similar polling feature for personal profiles called “Questions” which they discontinued way back in 2012. 

Later on in 2017 they allowed you the ability to ask a question with 2 answers supporting animated GIFs that they apparently discontinued in 2019. This means that there’s no formal poll-like tool for personal profiles on Facebook. With that said, there are still ways to do it informally. For instance, you can give possibilities in a regular post and encourage people to respond in the comments with A, B, C, and so on. You can also track the reactions. Of course, with these options the results aren’t scientific.

So while you might have seen the Poll option disappear from your personal profile, it is still possible to create a poll on Facebook today. Plus, there are plenty of great reasons to make them. Keep reading for your options on how to create a poll on Facebook.

What are the Benefits of Facebook Polls?

There are many reasons why you should take advantage of Facebook polls, some of the most important being:

• A poll increases engagement, which is critical to allow more of your fans to see more of your content. Remember, the Facebook algorithm favors content with high levels of engagement and relevance to a particular audience. In addition, high levels of engagement is one of the few ways to increase views for organic posts on a brand account.
• This technique humanizes your brand by encouraging a 2-way conversation with fans through the poll content. In other words, polls present the idea that you care about what people think. Too many brands just push stuff on people and hope they like it.
• It provides you another avenue to get customer feedback in an interactive and appealing way. In particular, you’ll get opinions from people who don’t feel strongly enough to write a rave review or yell at customer service.
• You can get advice from your fans by being able to get answers to questions that can help guide your marketing strategy, including your content strategy. Simply asking gets a lot of information out of people that you wouldn’t hear otherwise.
• Gain market research to better understand the needs of your fans. For instance, a restaurant or food brand might not know how important low salt or sugar recipes are to their customers without asking.
• When done right, polls improve lead generation by showcasing that your product or service has a feature/benefit that your fans are looking for and can ask in a way which exposes it and how much better it is than without it.

How do I create a poll on my personal Facebook page?

While personal profiles supported polls in the past as previously mentioned, unfortunately, at the time of the writing of this blog post, personal Facebook pages do not support Polls. For that reason, there is no option to create one there at this time besides the informal methods I mentioned. If you’re an influencer with a personal Facebook account, consider other ways to promote engagement on Facebook.

How do I create a poll on my Facebook Business Page?

Although Facebook Blueprint, Facebook’s official training for businesses and marketers, shows how to create a poll on your Facebook business page, the option to create one is unfortunately not available at the time of this writing and appears to have been discontinued or paused earlier in 2021. It’s safe to say that knowing how to create a Facebook poll is increasingly difficult these days.

With that said, you can always ask consumers questions. They have to be open-ended or multiple choice, with answers being placed in comments. This does give your post a lot of engagement, and you can learn a lot from consumer feedback. However, once again, the results are very imprecise. Go this route for what you can learn but proceed with caution on the results.

How do I create a poll in my Facebook Group?

The only place where you can create the traditional poll on Facebook desktop today is within a Facebook Group. Knowing how to create a poll on Facebook will allow you to get the kind of results that you are accustomed to seeing.

When clicking where it currently has the prompt “What’s on your mind, [first name]”, it will open a “Create Post” box. At the bottom it will say “Add to Post” and if you press the 3 dots button in the bottom righthand corner you will have the option to create a poll and it should look like what you see below:

You will then have the option to enter text for the post that introduces the poll as well as asks the questions for which you want people to respond to.

You type in the possible answer below where it says options, and by selecting “Add Option” at the bottom you can add at least 25 answers according to my testing. 

There is also a section for Poll Options. Here you can choose whether or not to allow users to choose multiple options as well as give users the ability add their own options.

There are many things that can’t be added to a poll post, such as explanatory photos or videos, but the following can be added to your poll:

• Tag People: this brings the poll to someone’s attention, and also associates them with it. So, you might consider this in conjunction with an influencer campaign or something similar.
• Feeling/Activity: I’d use this one to give context to your poll. In this way, you can reduce the chance that your poll seems random or irrelevant.
• Check In: If the question in your poll is somehow tied to a location, then this is a great way to highlight it. For instance, you might want to ask about favorite activities in Los Angeles.
• Tag Event: Golden if you want feedback from people about your latest branded event or perhaps a presentation table that you had at the event. An example for me might be the latest conference I spoke at. Here, the results will help plan for the future.

Here’s the thing: with Facebook Groups, you can ask targeted questions of people with common interests. So, for a hotel company it might be a luxury travel-related group. Or, a bunch of marketers might be polled on their favorite email marketing tool. For B2C brands, the Facebook group might be a brand community where community managers are looking for new product feedback.

How do I create a poll on my Facebook Story?

Similar to Instagram Stories, Facebook Stories also supports a similar poll feature. Knowing how to create a poll on Facebook within the Stories framework can be quite helpful to your marketing strategy. This is true whether you want to determine how popular a product, service, or concept is.

To create a Facebook Poll in a Facebook Story first click the “Add to Story” button that appears at the top of your home feed. You will then see various options such as Text, Music, Boomerang, Mood, Selfie, and the final option at the time of writing this blog post is the Poll option.

Pressing the Poll button will allow you to ask a question and then enter two potential answers, the default text being a basic yes / no answer. The background will be default colors that you can change. It should look something like this:

You can also first select a photo or video to share and then add the Poll option by selecting it from the Stickers icon. This approach is a great way to determine if a particular video is popular with fans, or if they like the concept presented in your video. If your purpose of having the poll is to refine your marketing strategy, the results can be pure gold.

The Final Word on How to Create a Poll on Facebook

If you manage a business Facebook page, and especially if you have a Group, it’s important that you know how to create a poll on Facebook. Polls are important for one big reason: they help you get information from and about your fans that you wouldn’t get otherwise. In particular, polls help with market research, product development, content strategy, and much more. Even considering the fact that Facebook has limited their use somewhat, polls aren’t something you should ignore. 

Hero photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash

How To Create A Poll On Facebook FAQs