Tutorial Three: How to Create a Poll!

Updated: Mar 21, 2023

Author

Olivia Markowski

You’ve set up your club and invited members to join — now you want to poll your members! Bookclubs' free polls make it easy to find the meeting date and time that work best for all your members and to pick your next book. Add books to your poll and the cover image will automatically be included in the poll, along with a book summary if available.

Upgrade your club to Bookclubs Pro or Premium to gain access to even more poll features and types like limiting the number of votes in book selection polls, or adding yes/no or multiple choice questions.

This step-by-step guide will walk you through all the different types of polls on Bookclubs, and how to create each one.

Related content:

Looking for tutorials on some of our other great Bookclubs features like meetings, personal and club bookshelves, and more? Click here for our full set of Bookclubs How-Tos.
If you still need to set up your club and create your free Bookclubs account to manage it, click here to create your club.
Curious how other book clubs pick their books? Learn when and how book clubs select books.
Check out our criteria for what makes a good book club book, and the top five questions you should ask.

Let's get started!

If you prefer to watch a video, click here to watch our Tutorial Three: Create a Poll video!

	Once you are logged into your Bookclubs account, navigate to “My Clubs” and select the “Polls” tab in the left navigation. This is where you will be able to facilitate all polling activities! All of your upcoming polls and past polls will be shown here. Click “Create a new poll” to start making your first poll.v First you will want to add a title to your poll, and then add any notes or instructions for your poll. Following this you will want to set a due date for your poll (once this date passes the, voting will close for the poll). If you want the votes to be anonymous, check the “Set Anonymous Voting” option.v
	Next, you will decide what kind of poll you want to create. If you are voting on what book to read, you can add books to the poll by clicking the “Add book selections to the poll,” search for the books you want to add and click on the book cover image add! If Bookclubs has a summary of the book it will automatically populate, otherwise you can add your own. You will have to add each book individually, so if you want to add more click the “add another book” option at the bottom to search and add the next book. v There is also an option to use the check box asking if you want to auto populate the book options from your “Books We Want to Read” list. This will add any books your members recommended on the "Books We Want to Read" list to your poll. v With a Bookclubs Premium or Pro subscription, you can set a limit for the number of books that a member can vote on. For example, you can limit everyone to just one vote, or allow them to pick their top three book choices. The ability to set a vote limit will pop up once you've added more than one book to your poll.v
	If you want your club members to vote on meeting times, click the “Add meeting date and time options to the poll,” and add options for meeting dates and times. Just select the date and time you want listed on your poll, and then click add! You can continue to add more dates by continuing the same process and the dates will show up as options below. v
	If your club is a Bookclubs Premium or Pro club, you can also add Yes/No questions, or open ended questions to your poll! You could use this feature to ask whether your club wants to meet in person, attend an upcoming event, or any other question you want clarity on. You can also add a potluck poll by entering the categories of food and drinks you'd like people to sign up for. v
	Once you are finished, click create poll and then you are set! Your members will automatically receive an email and app notification with the details and a link to the poll! v
	Any open polls will appear in your club’s page under “Polls,” and past polls will be displayed here as well. v Members can vote for the options they prefer by clicking “Vote” on books and date/time options, and can also respond to your poll’s Yes/No or open-ended questions! Once members have voted on book options, the number of votes will appear underneath each option. v You can use all of these features in one poll, or simply send out a poll that uses one feature.v
	If you want to change any details about your poll, click the edit button on the upper right corner of the poll to make updates. It will reopen the edit page so you can make changes. Save those change by clicking the "Edit Poll" button at the bottom of the page. You can decide if the changes are significant enough to re-notify your club's members or not - if you don't want them to get another email, uncheck the "Send a notification to my club" box.