Introducing Polco Live — Get Instant Resident Engagement

- By Jen Aceto -

Polco Live allows local governments conduct real-time engagement at remote or in-person events 

Polco’s new live polling feature lets local governments hear from residents instantly. 

Polco Live allows local leaders to poll their communities in real time, delivering insightful feedback while keeping their communities engaged. The new feature is custom-made to gather crucial information about any issue in numerous settings, whether it be a streaming event, a video call, or an in-person meeting. Polco Live integrates with live video streaming services like Facebook and YouTube Live, allowing for a completely virtual community engagement experience.

“Imagine being able to propose policy in either a virtual setting or an in-person one and in an instant receive feedback, data and comments from your audience to inform decision making,” said Polco CEO Nick Mastronardi. “We believe this not only changes the game for local governments now in the COVID-19 pandemic, but for the future of community engagement.”

An Easy Engagement Solution for a Socially-Distant World

Polco Live provides an easy way to gather important feedback at a time when community leaders are using digital platforms more than ever before.

“Leaders can use results from Polco Live to create deeper, more meaningful relationships with residents and stakeholders, especially hard-to-reach populations,” said Michelle Kobayashi, Polco’s Sr. Vice President of Innovation. Local governments can use Polco Live for budgeting, capital improvement projects, strategic planning, public relations, policy and more. 

Polco developed the feature with the experience of users in mind. “Our goal was to make a product that provides a civil, insightful and equitable experience,” Mastronardi said. “We also focused greatly on the respondent, making the experience fun and interactive.”

Our beta testers appreciated the ability to receive instant feedback within a meeting setting. “Polco Live worked great on a variety of remote meeting platforms,” one city reported. “It was easy to enter information to get questions up and running.”

Enhanced Features Allow for In-Depth Engagement

With Polco Live, community leaders can draft polls prior to the event and set them live during the event. They can create new polls while the event is happening and view results and comments as they come in. In addition to these features, you’ll have access to all of Polco’s functionality, which is tailor-made for local governments. So what sets Polco Live apart?

With Polco Live, local government leaders can: 

• See Polco Live results alongside past polls and surveys on Polco
• See any demographic breakdowns included in their Polco plans
• Foster civil conversations through Polco’s one-of-a-kind commenting experience with upvoting
• Post multiple questions at a time to let respondents move at their own pace
• Send an email invitation about the event directly from the Polco platform, or include an invitation to the live event in the Polco weekly email to your subscribers
• Compare information against public records through Polco’s voter verification feature, so that you can see verified responses and auto-captured demographics
• Choose to allow guest responses or require an account to help with verification and additional demographic information
• Choose to restrict event access to your audience — only those with the link or an email list — or open the poll to anyone on Polco

This new addition to the Polco suite of community engagement tools makes it even easier and faster to get the input you need, right when you need it. 

Local governments can use Polco Live with their own residents. Learn how here. Polco Live is available for purchase in the Polco Store. Learn more about Polco Live.

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