Run a Word cloud via Slido

  • 24 August 2020
  • 32 replies
  • 42676 views

Userlevel 3
Badge

Word cloud creates a "cloud" of the most popular words or short phrases that are sent by your audience.

 

It lets you identify silent heroes, find out which company value resonates the most with your employees, or just warm up your participants with a fun question before it comes to more serious topics.

 

In this article:

 

How the word cloud works

 

Here are four simple principles of the word cloud:

  • Short answers work best
    Advise your participants to use one to three words when using the word cloud to get the best results. Longer phrases or sentences will be displayed, but they might cause a mixup. 
     
  • No swearing
    Swear words won't go through at all.
     
  • Watch the words grow
    The size of the word changes dynamically depending on how many times your attendees submit it.
     
  • Some words that are considered ‘connector’ words, will not show
    When submitting (or advising on submitting to participants) to the Word Cloud, it’s worth keeping in mind that words we use to typically connect to other words conversationally are filtered out. Examples of such words are ‘However,’ ‘Ok,’ and ‘This.’ Our reason for the words being filtered this way is due to the Word Cloud being designed to create maximum impact visually for your participants. 
     

    If you want to display answers in complete sentences, our Open Text Poll may work better for your use case. 

 

Create a word cloud

 

Before starting with polls, make sure to create an event first. Once ready, go to Live Polls tab:

  1. Click Create poll
  2. Select Word cloud
  3. Type in your question and hit Save

Or click Browse templates and select an example word cloud to use at your next meeting or event.
 

Creating a word cloud

 

Keep in mind that multiple entries are not possible if your word cloud is part of a survey.

 

 

Moderate text entries in a word cloud

 

Once you click the Play icon, your poll is active and the audience can submit their votes. They appear on the right side of your admin as a list. 

 

If you receive poisonous or unwanted responses to your word cloud, you can delete them with a simple click.
 

Deleting responses from word cloud

 

Display your word cloud in Present mode

 

To show the real-time results of your word cloud to your audience in a nice visual way, display the Present mode for them:

  1. Make sure your poll is active
  2. Navigate to the green Present mode button in the upper right corner
  3. Select your preferred option

You can open Present mode in a separate window or copy the link and open it in a new tab of your browser.
 

Options available under present mode


This is how your participants will see it in present mode.

 

Present mode view of word cloud


Quick tip: Start the word cloud with hidden results

Hide the results at the beginning to prevent people from influencing each other with their answers or to delete irrelevant submissions before they show up live. To hide the results, click the "eye icon" next to your poll question.

 

Icon for hiding poll results

 

How word cloud works for participants

 

Once you activate your word cloud, your participants will be able to submit their answers. If multiple responses are allowed, a new line will appear as soon as the participant begins typing a word.

 

To see how the word cloud displays when the audience joins from their computers, copy the event link under the "share" button and open it in another tab of your browser.
 

file.php?view=Y&file=7b5d54n6k1rov3jmzl29gvrbtwiigerm.gif

 

 Participants can see word cloud suggestions based on the already submitted answers (even 1 is enough). As an admin, you can use this feature to pre-populate your word cloud with submissions.

 

Each line is considered as a single entry, no matter the number of words included. Make sure your instructions in the poll description are clear or explain verbally what you're after.

 

Once the participants submit their answers, they will see the word cloud on their mobile, tablet, or computer screen. The number of words shown on the device depends on the size of the screen.

 

Useful tips:

  • Tip 1: Test your word cloud
    It's always a good practice to check if everything's working before your event starts. Try to send a testing vote from Participant mode on the left-hand side to put yourself into the shoes of your participants, open Present mode in your browser to see how the answer looks on the screen, and then reset results to start from zero.
     
    Testing word cloud using participant mode

     
  • Tip 2: Advise the audience on the format of submitted words
    Word cloud works best with short answers. Agree on the unified format of the words or phrases. Even slight alteration may cause a mismatch.
     
  • Tip 3: Handling capital letters and special characters
    All letters will be turned to lower case. Special characters (æ, ø, å, š, č) will be replaced by simple letters.

 

Curious about more?

 

 


32 replies

It would appear that not all of the responses participants enter into my wordclouds are actually appearing on the screen when I am in presenting mode.  I haven’t moderated how many times people can enter their responses, so why is this.  I became aware of it after looking at my results, post training, and seeing comments there that then do not appear when you go to “present”.  Can anyone advise me what I am doing wrong or why this is? 

 

 

Userlevel 5
Badge

Hi @SharonH,

I think the reason why some words were missing is because there’s a limit of top 50 words being shown on Slido Present mode at a time. This is for accessibility reasons, to make sure that all words are readable. 

Number of words shown also automatically changes with the resolution of your screen, if the screen you use for Present Mode is smaller, it’ll show less words compared to a larger screen. Though it will still only show up to 50 top words maximum, even on a large screen.

It is also possible that some words were automatically excluded through our profanity filter. Do you know if perhaps some of the words could be considered vulgar? 

Please let me know if you have any more questions. 

All words are in the same font how do i fix?

Userlevel 5
Badge

Hi @Jacki,

If by the same font - you mean the size and colour of the words, this is because each of the words have only been mentioned once in the word cloud (or all words the same amount of times, equally). 

Please try adding one of the words in there multiple times on a different device to see if that word grows bigger and perhaps changes colour (depending on which theme you’re using).

Let me know if this helps or if you need more help!

Hi @Jacki,

If by the same font - you mean the size and colour of the words, this is because each of the words have only been mentioned once in the word cloud (or all words the same amount of times, equally). 

Please try adding one of the words in there multiple times on a different device to see if that word grows bigger and perhaps changes colour (depending on which theme you’re using).

Let me know if this helps or if you need more help!

I tried type type the same word 3 times and other 10 word just once, the font is still same for every word. Is there any threshold that to change the font (color and size)?

thank

David

Userlevel 5
Badge

Hi @David Dou,

Sorry - I realized my earlier explanation was lacking a key element!

 

You’ll need to submit the same words but as different participant to count more times. This means that if a single user submits the same word multiple times, it’ll only count as once. This is to make sure that voting in a word cloud remains fair. 

So, in order for certain words to appear bigger, multiple participants have to submit the same word. 

 

For example: Participant 1 submits the word “lion five times, it’ll appear small until Participant 2 submits “lion too.

 

Please let me know if my explanation makes things a little clearer or if there’s anything else that I can help with! 

Hi @David Dou,

Sorry - I realized my earlier explanation was lacking a key element!

 

You’ll need to submit the same words but as different participant to count more times. This means that if a single user submits the same word multiple times, it’ll only count as once. This is to make sure that voting in a word cloud remains fair. 

So, in order for certain words to appear bigger, multiple participants have to submit the same word. 

 

For example: Participant 1 submits the word “lion five times, it’ll appear small until Participant 2 submits “lion too.

 

Please let me know if my explanation makes things a little clearer or if there’s anything else that I can help with! 

thank for your information and I will try later.

-David

Is it possible to amalgamate word clouds from different meetings to create one large cloud?

Userlevel 5
Badge

Hi @Team North,

Unfortunately, this is not possible. 

You can only see the answers from a single Word cloud poll. 

Sounds like a neat feature though! I’ll make sure to share this with our Product Team. 

 

Let me know if there’s anything else that I can help you with 😊

I have set up my word cloud to build by using Slido in Webex. However, my results are not building a word cloud, but just a list of words with votes next to them. How can I display the word cloud in Webex? (The word cloud does appear on cell phones signed into Slido.)

 

Userlevel 2
Badge

Hi, @jcnorman

You’re right, at the moment the host view shows a list of word cloud with a respective number of submission for each word. On the other hand, your participants can see the word cloud in the sidebar with Slido. 


Here’s the good news: Our product team is already aware of this experience and they plan tol change it with the next release in early 2022 (January/February). 


In the meantime, I’d suggest to open Slido Present mode
1. Go to slido.com
2. Log in with your Webex credentials
3. Select your Slido
4. Click the green Present button in the top right corner.

This will open the Slido Present mode in the browser tab you could screen-share in Webex to display the poll results and Q&A in a nice visual way. 

We understand it’s not ideal with the workaround, but we hope it helps a bit. 


Please do let me know if you have any outstanding questions. Happy to address them. 

 

Best, 

 

Dáša from Slido

I have added a word cloud as one of the questions in a survey. It seems as though the setup doesn’t have the same options as a word cloud as a poll. In a survey, they can only enter one word. Is there a way to enable multiple words for a word cloud in a survey?

Userlevel 3
Badge

Hi, @johanne-g


You are right, at the moment it’s not possible to enter multiple words when the word cloud is part of a survey. I understand it’s not the best experience, sorry about that. I’ve let our product team know and they’re looking into it.

We’ll get back to you as soon as we’ve got any news. 

---
Dáša from Slido

Userlevel 3
Badge

Hi, @johanne-g,  

Just wanted to share a workaround with you that could work for submitting multiple entries for word cloud in a survey.

When you separate your submissions with a comma and space, all words will appear as standalone words. Having said that, this would only work if you: 

  1. Add a space after a comma
  2. Use only 1-one word submission - no space between words is possible


Here’s an example: 

 

Hope this helps.

Having said that, as mentioned before we understand this is not ideal and we’ll be looking into possible solutions. 

Hi,
I’ve got a quick question about wordcloud entries: If somebody enters the response “Ok”, the word doesn’t appear in the wordcloud, even though it is the most used word. “O.k.” is displayed as usual, “0k” also works just fine. Is “Ok” listed as spam / explicit word or is there another problem? 

Thanks in advance for your help.

Userlevel 5
Badge

Hey @Christina,

That’s a good catch! The word cloud filters out words categorised as not meaningful enough or unacceptable. The word ‘ok’ is categorised as not meaningful enough and so it is filtered by the algorithm and doesn’t show up for everyone, even if it is popular. The reason why you saw 0k come through is that it is not seen as the same as ‘ok’.

It’s set up this way to make sure that word clouds show the most meaningful responses.

I hope this helped :) Let me know if you have any questions.

 

EDIT: An earlier version of the comment incorrectly stated that words with fewer that 3 characters are also filtered. There is no character limit on words that show up in the word cloud. Sorry for the miscommunication on our side!

Userlevel 5
Badge

Hi @Juraj S,

That’s a good spot! Sorry, I did not notice that this option disappears as soon as you add more polls to the survey.

After checking with our product team, I found out that adding multiple answers isn’t possible in word clouds and open text polls in surveys. Instead. you could add another word cloud poll that lets participants submit another answer. You could then export the results and combine answers from both word clouds in Excel or Google sheets.

Hope this helps and sorry again for my incorrect advice above - even we discover Slido features every now and then :) 

Hello Slido community!

In the past we were able to present longer sentences vs. just 1 or 3 word entries (see attached screenshot).

For example, when I add a longer sentence now, I noticed how each sentence is ‘butchered’ into individual words. Is this a new restriction or is there a workarond as I find it quite limiting to only allow a few words vs full sentences.

Thank you!

Peter

 

Hi all! Word cloud is not working for me. I did a test with a couple of folks from my team. We all answered with the same exact answer, one word, no comma, no space but it only shows the answer once and the word itself is not bolded or larger. It’s basically not working as a word cloud and even worse it looks like only one person answered the question. Can you explain why please?

Userlevel 3
Badge

Hi @Ludo

I’m sorry to hear you’re having issues with this. 

Do you have a screenshot with what’s happening in the word cloud I can take a look at? 

Thanks! 

I set up a word cloud and began testing it.  The question asks for up to three words to explain why they are here.  The first words I tested were “had to be” and “Had to” and neither of them showed up.  Many other words showed up and when duplicated, the words grew.  

Userlevel 5
Badge

Hey @poppermann,

Those are some lovely responses in the screenshot 💚

We recently adjusted the algorithm of the word cloud so that it doesn’t let through whole sentences and it also filters out words that are seen as not meaningful, such as ‘this’ or ‘also’. This means that when a participant types a full sentence, it is broken up into words and phrases. This was done to optimize the performance of the word cloud.

If you’d like participants to submit full sentences as responses, I’d suggest using an open text poll instead.

Hope this helps and sorry for the late response. 

A less than ideal workaround is to get the participant to enter multiple words as a single enter delimited by “commas and spaces”. E.g. “happy, satisfied, excited”. These appears as multiple individual words in the word cloud display. Take note of the spaces. “very happy” ends up as “veryhappy”; hypens and underscores do not help.

Hi, I’m having trouble adding pre-populated answers as an admin.  I want to give people the ability to click on a dropdown to pre-select an answer, but also to type something new if they don’t agree with one of the answers.

The above states I should be able to do this as as an admin, but I can’t see instructions on how to do this.

If I just add one word answers to the Slido as a respondent, this doesn’t seem to resolve this, so assume it’s something I need to give as an admin.

Please can you help?

Userlevel 3
Badge

Hi @j789s

The best way to do this would be to create a multiple choice poll that has an ‘other’ option as an answer, you could then follow this up with an open text poll which calls back to the multiple choice poll. For example ‘If you answered Other in our first poll, could you elaborate here?’ - this would then give your participants space to share their alternative ideas with you. 

I would recommend then merging your polls to create a survey, which sounds best suited for your use case of collecting insights and feedback from your participants. 

Let me know if you have anymore questions! 

Best,

Reply