LinkedIn polls collect votes for a day to two weeks, show the author every vote by name, and cannot be edited once they go live.

What are LinkedIn polls?

LinkedIn polls are a post format that asks your audience one question with a short list of answers, collects votes for a fixed period, and then closes. LinkedIn describes the feature as a way to ask other members for their perspectives and understand trends and opinions.

A poll is built in the same share box as any other post. You add the question, the options and a duration, and you can write ordinary commentary above the poll in the field LinkedIn labels "What do you want to talk about?".

Every number and rule on this page was read on a LinkedIn Help page, and each source is listed at the bottom. Where LinkedIn publishes nothing, this page says so instead of repeating a figure that circulates on marketing blogs.

Every poll limit and rule LinkedIn publishes

This table holds only figures stated on a LinkedIn Help page. Nothing in it was counted by hand, inferred from the interface, or taken from a third party.

Two rows deserve a second look. The option count appears twice on LinkedIn Help with different answers, and the duration wording differs between the overview page and the create page. Both are covered in the sections below.

How to create a poll on LinkedIn

LinkedIn documents the same flow on desktop and mobile, with different labels for the buttons. Page super admins and group admins can start a poll from the Page or group homepage instead of their own feed.

1. Open the share box

   Click Start a post at the top of your LinkedIn homepage. On the mobile app, tap Post in the navigation bar.

2. Open the poll composer

   Click the More icon, then the Create a poll icon. On mobile, tap the More icon and then tap Poll.

3. Write the question

   Type your question in the question field. LinkedIn limits the poll question to a maximum of 140 characters, so write it as one plain sentence.

4. Fill in the options

   LinkedIn's create page sets a minimum of two options and a maximum of four, each capped at 30 characters. Click or tap +Add option for another one.

5. Set the duration

   Choose one day, three days, one week or two weeks from the Poll duration dropdown. LinkedIn sets the default to one week on desktop and seven days on mobile.

6. Choose who can see it

   Click the dropdown next to your name and pick Anyone, Connections only or Group. LinkedIn saves your choice as the default for next time.

7. Add the context above the poll

   Write why you are asking in the "What do you want to talk about?" field. This text is optional, and the 3,000 character post limit applies to it.

8. Read it once, then post

   Click Done, then Post. LinkedIn states that a poll cannot be edited once it is created, so a typo in an option stays there until you delete the whole poll.

The question and option limits, and the row that disagrees with itself

LinkedIn's Polls FAQ states two hard caps: the question is limited to a maximum of 140 characters, and each option is limited to a maximum of 30 characters. Those two numbers shape everything about how a poll reads.

The option count is less settled. LinkedIn's create page says a poll has a minimum of two options and a maximum of four. The Polls FAQ says the number depends on the device: up to four on desktop and the Android app, up to five on the iOS app.

Both pages are live on LinkedIn Help. The safe plan is to design for four options, because a fifth option written on an iPhone is not documented as visible everywhere. If you want a fifth answer, put it in the text above the poll and ask for it in the comments.

Thirty characters is tighter than it sounds. "We are still evaluating vendors" is 31 characters and will not fit. Our guide to the LinkedIn post character limit collects the rest of the published field limits.

How long a LinkedIn poll runs

LinkedIn publishes four duration settings and no others. Once the poll closes it cannot be reopened, which makes the duration a decision rather than a default to click past.

The default is one week on the desktop composer and seven days on the mobile composer, which is the same period described in two ways. If you plan to quote the closed result in a follow-up post, count backward from the date you want to publish that post.

Who can see your poll and who can vote

A poll inherits the visibility rules of any shared post. LinkedIn lists three options: Anyone, which is visible on and off LinkedIn including your extended network; Connections only, which is visible to your 1st-degree connections; and Group, which is visible only to members of that group.

Anyone eligible to see the post can vote, and each member can submit only one vote at a time. A LinkedIn Page super admin may also vote on behalf of the Page, and the author of a poll can vote on their own poll.

LinkedIn states that you cannot change the visibility option after you have shared a post. For a poll, that matters twice over, because you also cannot edit the poll itself.

With Anyone selected, LinkedIn says the post may appear in your connections' feeds, in your followers' feeds, in content search results, on your Activity page, on your public profile and on sites off LinkedIn. That reach is the reason polls are worth using, and the reason a careless question travels.

Are LinkedIn polls anonymous, and who sees your vote?

They are not anonymous to the author. LinkedIn states plainly that how you vote is visible to the author of the poll, and that the author can view who voted and how each person voted, name by name.

LinkedIn adds a warning that belongs in every honest guide to this feature: while LinkedIn only shares how you vote with the poll author, it cannot guarantee that a poll author will not disclose your vote to others.

One privacy detail runs the other way. LinkedIn states that voting does not show the poll on the Activity section of your profile, so your vote is not broadcast to your own network.

Changing or removing your vote

LinkedIn documents both actions. Voters can change or remove a vote up until the poll closes by clicking or tapping Undo on the poll. After the poll has closed, voters can still remove a vote by clicking or tapping Remove vote.

A member who removes a vote before the close can vote again, so the same person can move between options while the poll is open. Poll authors can also vote on their own poll and remove that vote.

To find a poll you voted on, LinkedIn says to go to the Activity section of the poll author's profile. That is worth knowing if you want to withdraw a vote from a poll you no longer want attached to your name.

Editing or deleting a poll after it goes live

LinkedIn's answer on editing is a flat no: a poll cannot be edited once it is created. That is the one rule that separates polls from ordinary posts, where LinkedIn says the text can be edited and an "Edited" label appears afterward.

Deleting works normally. LinkedIn states that a poll can be deleted after it is created, using the same route as any post: the More icon in the upper right corner of the post, then Delete post, then confirm.

• Deleting is not undoing: the poll and its votes go, and you cannot recover the responses you had collected.
• Spam-flagged content stays: LinkedIn says you cannot delete content that has been marked as spam.
• Digest emails lag: LinkedIn warns that a deleted post can still appear in a digest email sent to your connections.
• Closed is final: a poll cannot be reopened once it is closed, so a poll that ended early has to be rerun as a new poll.
• The commentary is a separate question: LinkedIn does not publish whether the text above a poll can be edited on its own, so assume it cannot.

Who gets notified about your poll

Two notifications are documented, and both matter if you are worried about bothering people. LinkedIn states that your connections will get notified that you created a poll, which is not true of every post format.

The author is also notified in the app about the first vote and about subsequent votes. LinkedIn says those vote notifications can be turned off through the "Responses to your posts, comments and polls" setting.

The first notification is the reason polls should not be a weekly habit. Your network receives a nudge every time, and a notification that keeps arriving for questions nobody needed answered is how a useful account becomes background noise.

LinkedIn poll analytics and where they stop

A poll is a post, so it appears in post analytics along with text posts, images, videos, events and articles. LinkedIn is explicit that these analytics cover the post itself and do not apply to poll results.

In other words, there are two separate sets of numbers: the vote breakdown inside the poll, and the reach and engagement numbers that any post gets. LinkedIn also notes that the figures in post analytics are estimates and may not be precise.

Three limits are published and worth planning around. Demographic data is not available for content shared only with your connections or inside LinkedIn groups, demographic breakdowns are available for 180 days, and members reached data is available for 400 days.

LinkedIn also says your own views and engagements count toward your analytics, and that your post analytics are private to you. Our guide to LinkedIn analytics covers the rest, and LinkedIn impressions explains what that top number actually measures.

Polls from LinkedIn Pages and inside groups

Super admins of a LinkedIn Page can create polls, and a Page super admin can vote on behalf of the Page. LinkedIn states that when a poll is created by a Page, all admins of that Page can see who voted and how each person voted.

That is a real difference in exposure. A vote on a personal poll is seen by one person. A vote on a Page poll is seen by everyone who holds an admin role on that Page, which in a large company is a long list.

Group polls run the other way. LinkedIn says that when a poll is created in a LinkedIn group, only the poll author can view who voted, and the ability to see voters is not available to all group admins.

Page admins get their own reporting. LinkedIn's Page content analytics cover impressions, members reached, clicks, reactions, comments, reposts and engagement rate, with a note that metrics can take 48 hours to appear, except reactions and comments, which appear in real time.

What a poll is not allowed to ask

This is the part most poll guides skip. LinkedIn names sensitive data that poll authors may not ask for, and may not ask for indirectly in order to infer.

• Political, religious and philosophical beliefs: including political opinions, named in both LinkedIn poll help pages.
• Health: physical and mental health, and health status.
• Race and ethnic origin: listed directly in the Polls FAQ.
• Sexual orientation or lifestyle: listed directly in the Polls FAQ.
• Trade union or organization membership: including membership in a religious or political organization.
• Precise geolocation: and anything else defined as sensitive by law, with LinkedIn naming the GDPR as an example.

Polls also fall under LinkedIn's Professional Community Policies, which ban false or misleading content and state that members may not use LinkedIn to hold lotteries, contests, sweepstakes or giveaways. A poll with a prize attached is covered by that line.

Inappropriate or offensive polls can be reported like any post, through the More icon on the right side of the post and Report this post. LinkedIn reviews reported items and removes them if they violate the User Agreement.

Using LinkedIn polls for research, and what a result is worth

The honest case for LinkedIn polls in B2B is research: they are the cheapest way to hear how your market words a problem. The dishonest case is treating the output as a statistic, and that line is easy to cross.

A poll result is a self-selected sample of whoever saw your post and felt like tapping. There is no sample frame, no weighting and no way to tell who did not vote. LinkedIn does not publish a margin of error because there is none to publish.

So use the result as a signal, not as evidence. It tells you which framing of a problem people recognize, which words they pick, and which option nobody chose. Those are useful inputs to a B2B buyer persona and to your messaging.

Anything you plan to publish as a number should come from a real study, not from your own feed. Behavioral signals like content consumption and search sit in B2B intent data, which is a different instrument with different limits.

LinkedIn poll ideas for a B2B audience

Good poll ideas come from a question you actually need answered this month, not from a list. These are the five kinds of question that reliably earn a relevant answer from a business audience, with the goal each one serves.

• Product feedback: ask which of four capabilities your audience would use first, then treat the answer as direction for a roadmap conversation, not as a vote that decides it.
• Customer feedback on a process: ask where a workflow breaks for their team, so the feedback points at the stage your content and your product should address.
• Industry trends: ask what their business will spend time on next quarter, which tells you what is relevant to plan content and campaigns around.
• Audience pain points: ask which symptom costs them most, and let the comments explain why. This is the most useful poll for a small audience.
• Role and ownership: ask who signs off on a purchase like yours, which sharpens targeting and tells sales who else belongs in the room.

Keep the business context in the text above the poll. People answer more carefully when they can see what the answers are for, and the comments get longer when the question sounds like real work rather than a game.

One poll per topic is enough. If you are tempted to add a second poll the same week, write the post you would have written anyway and add the question at the end.

What to do when the poll closes

Most polls end without a second act, which is why the audience learns that voting leads nowhere. The follow-through is where the research becomes useful to you and visible to everyone who took part.

1. Read the comments before the results. The written answers usually carry more than the percentages.
2. Reply to every comment in public, in the thread, with something other than thanks.
3. Note the option nobody picked. An empty column is often the clearest finding.
4. Write the result up as its own post, with the percentages and what changed your mind.
5. Message the people who commented, quoting what they wrote.
6. Keep the question. A poll you can repeat in six months gives you a second reading.

Sharing the outcome is also the only engagement tactic on this page that does not cost anything. People who voted come back to see what everyone else chose, and the result post reaches an audience that missed the poll itself.

If the poll was research for a piece of content, add the finding to the content and say where it came from. A line like "this came from a poll of my own network, which is not a representative sample" is more credible than a number with no source.

How to write a poll question that gives you a usable answer

Inside 140 characters for the question and 30 for each option, the writing is the whole job. The constraint is also a filter: a question you cannot state in one line is usually two questions.

• Ask about their situation, not your product. "Which stage stalls your deals?" returns something. "Which of our features do you like?" returns flattery.
• Make the options mutually exclusive. If a voter could honestly pick two, the result means nothing.
• Count the characters before you post. Thirty is short, and a truncated option changes what it means.
• Add an escape option. "Something else" or "None of these" keeps people who disagree with your framing from voting at random.
• Put the reason in the text above. Say what you are working on and what you will do with the answers.
• Promise the result, then deliver it. Post the closed percentages and what you learned, including the part that surprised you.

Polls fit inside a wider plan rather than replacing one. Our LinkedIn content strategy guide covers the mix, and a LinkedIn carousel is usually the better format when you have an answer rather than a question.

The poll as a conversation starter in B2B sales

The legitimate sales use of a poll is narrow and worth stating precisely. A poll gives you a public question, a list of people who engaged with it, and a reason to talk that is about their work rather than your pipeline.

The important step is the fourth one. A vote is not permission to be sold to, and LinkedIn itself warns that voters cannot control what an author does with their vote. Messaging every voter is the fastest way to earn the reputation described in our entry on being salesy.

A comment is different. Someone who typed a sentence under your poll has started a conversation in public, and replying to it in a message is a normal continuation. That is the same standard applied in LinkedIn prospecting generally.

If you do reach out, quote their comment, not their vote. And if you need to message someone outside your network later, the rules for InMail and for connection requests apply as usual.

Can LinkedIn polls generate leads?

Not directly, and the marketing content that says otherwise is usually selling a scraping tool. A poll collects one tap from each voter. It captures no email, no consent to be contacted, and no statement of interest in what you sell.

The common tactic is to export the voter list into an outreach sequence. LinkedIn says it may limit the visibility of posts when it detects the use of an automation tool, and the voters themselves were never told their answer was a lead form.

What a poll does give a lead generation program is narrower and more durable.

• A target segment that recognizes the problem: the option people picked tells you which version of the pain is live in your industry right now.
• Insights for your targeting: viewer demographics show the job titles, seniority and company sizes your question reached, which sharpens who you go after next.
• A public reason to talk: the commenters raised their hands in a way a vote does not, and a reply to a comment is welcome where a cold pitch is not.
• Material for the next asset: for example, a poll that shows nobody picked the option you expected is the outline of a post, a guide or a case for a new page.
• A reason to be visible to the same people again: leads who watched you ask and then publish an answer have seen you do useful work, not just promote.

Treat the poll as the top of a conversation, not the top of a funnel. The leads that come from it arrive through the content you write afterward, which is the slower path and the only one that survives contact with the audience.

Why engagement bait polls cost more than they return

The tactic that circulates is a poll with no research purpose, sometimes with joke options, posted because polls collect taps. It works once, and the cost arrives later.

LinkedIn states that if it detects excessive post creation indicating inauthentic activity or the use of an automation tool, it may limit the visibility of those posts. It also asks members to contribute in a constructive manner under its Professional Community Policies.

The audience cost is more immediate. Your connections get a notification every time you create a poll. Spend that notification on a question you do not know the answer to, or stop spending it.

Common LinkedIn poll mistakes

• Posting before proofreading, then discovering a poll cannot be edited.
• Writing options longer than 30 characters and letting the composer decide what to cut.
• Designing for five options on an iPhone when LinkedIn's create page documents four.
• Asking about politics, health or anything else on LinkedIn's sensitive data list.
• Treating the percentages as a statistic and quoting them as research.
• Messaging everyone who voted, when only the commenters started a conversation.
• Setting two weeks by habit, so the result lands after anyone cares.
• Forgetting the text above the poll, so nobody knows why you are asking.
• Never posting the result, which teaches your network that voting is pointless.
• Running polls weekly, so every question arrives as a notification nobody wanted.

The message to send after a poll

The template below goes to someone who commented on your poll, not to everyone who voted. It quotes what they wrote, offers the finished result, and does not attach a meeting to the offer.

Hi {{firstName}},

You picked "{{option}}" on the poll about {{topic}}, and the line in your comment about {{detail}} was the part I did not expect.

The poll closes {{closeDay}}. I am writing up what people chose and what the comments added, for {{role}} teams dealing with the same thing.

Want me to send it when it is done? No call attached, and no follow-up if it is not useful.

{{senderName}}

Frequently asked questions