Talking about the recent times, virtual or hybrid events have gained up their pace and become immensely popular. A rapid increase in hybrid and virtual events platforms has been witnessed recently. Nowadays, the internet is flooded with ample virtual event engagement platforms that offer comprehensive virtual event engagement tools.
Developing ways to engage your audience and increase audience participation can give everyone the connection that they’ve been missing. And that is just as true of virtual and hybrid events as it is for in-person events.
WHAT IS EVENT ENGAGEMENT?
Event engagement refers to an event’s ability to hold the attention of its audience as well as promote full participation from event attendees. Engaging events are captivating and compelling; they capture the attention of their audience from the start and hold on tight. It’s also known as audience engagement.
WHY DOES EVENT ENGAGEMENT MATTER?
Event engagement is an important component of every stage of the planning process. It could mean the difference between a popular sellout event or a no-show flop. Attendance, audience retention, and future event success are all influenced by levels of engagement. Essentially, the more engaging an event is, the higher the likelihood of attendee satisfaction and participation in similar events in the future.
STRATEGIES TO IMPROVE ENGAGEMENT DURING AN IN PERSON EVENT.
Kick off the event with high-energy entertainment or a group icebreaker depending on the size of your audience. Use mobile-friendly check-in software to keep track of attendees who have arrived.
Attendees are energetic to be engaged and involved in the overall event experience. They want to participate, and they are willing to try new things.
Pay attention to the energy and participation level of the audience throughout the event. Incorporate a mix of activities and strategies to help maintain strong levels of engagement, especially if your event is fairly lengthy.
- Use a mobile app to communicate with event attendees. Send session and event reminders, registration deadline alerts, and communicate changes.
- Measure engagement live in your event app or on social media. Keep track of analytics measuring activity, content updates, and other helpful real-time KPIs. Market event hashtags and promote online discussions prior to the event and keep an eye on drastic usage changes during the event. Ask attendees to participate in live polls, answer trivia questions, or vote on outcomes while you track overall attendee participation.
- Incorporate seating arrangements that promote engagement and person-to-person conversation. Making attendees sit alone can greatly influence the atmosphere of the event and the engagement levels of attendees. Encourage guests to get to know one another by choosing a seating arrangement type that promotes communication. Consider your audience before deciding if open or assigned seating is best for your event.
- Include participatory activities. Get your audience up and moving to help boost energy levels and alertness. Include challenges and encourage healthy competition with pop quizzes, team events, and games. Announce winners on social media and include event-related prizes for contest winners. Plan your setup needs in advance with free event diagram software for smooth activity transitions.
- Provide swag bags to your event attendees. Allow vendors and brand-related companies to set-up trade show-style booths where they are able to provide informational materials and give event attendees promotional items. Tech-savvy planners, or planners working with a mobile-loving audience, may opt to provide attendees with virtual event bags. Virtual swag bags allow attendees to take home digital coupons or promotional codes for free items, software trials, and other giveaways.
STRATEGIES TO BOOST ENGAGEMENT DURING A VIRTUAL EVENT.
Here are some effective and brilliant virtual event engagement tools & features that have helped virtual events achieve a milestone. It offers customisable solutions to suit business requirements. When the platform offers an end number of innovative games and engaging features for virtual event audience engagement. It helps in keeping the interest of the audience alive throughout the event.
- Live Audio & Video Chats
Face-to-face interactions and handshakes have always been an integral part of the event program. But as the scenario has changed completely so does the event format. Dreamcast virtual event platform enables one to have live audio and video chats to have the same essence of in-person events.
Attendees can interact with speakers, hosts, exhibitors as well as with other attendees in real-time remotely. It helps in replicating the same look and feel of on-ground events from face-to-face to interface-to-interface. Live audio and video chat functionality can be utilized in any type of virtual or hybrid event. Whether you are hosting a virtual conference, meetings or a trade show, live audio and video chats can be incorporated into all. The platform offers a request for a callback feature for the comfort of virtual attendees. It facilitates attendees to schedule a call as per their choice from the given time slots. However, resulting in making the event ecstatic, interactive & immersive.
- Quiz
Organizing a quiz is another feature that helps in keeping attendees involved with the event. Offering gifts to the top 5 winners makes them feel valued and excited to be part of the event. It boosts the morale of other attendees to participate in the same. You can simply design the quiz as per your event requirements. Virtual event platforms would enable you to customize your quiz as per event needs. Introducing quizzes is one of the best virtual and hybrid event ideas to keep attendees hooked and gain their insights.
- Live Polls
Live polls are among the most significant virtual event engagement tools. It helps in boosting engagement within virtual events. Live polls can be introduced amid long sessions that help in grasping attendees’ points of view and know how much they enjoyed the event. It even helps in keeping attendees engaged with the event in real-time. The attendees of the event can look at the results of the poll on their respective screens. Additionally, the live poll functionality is easily customisable depending upon the needs and requirements of the event.
- Spin the Wheel
Adding an element of fun amid long monotonous sessions helps in keeping the audience hooked throughout the event. Spin the wheel is one such virtual event engagement tool that helps in holding the audience with the event in the most creative way out. You can simply introduce spin the wheel at any point in your event. Attendees can simply spin and play to win virtual giveaways. It helps in engaging the audience with the event along with boosting their morale and making them feel valued.
- Photo Booths
The ability to organize a virtual photo booth is one of the most innovative virtual events ideas to boost engagements. It enables event attendees to get clicked virtually with branded frames which can later be shared or downloaded. The clicked pictures can later be used by the brand for branding purposes. Virtual photo booths add a little fun to the entire virtual event and keep the audience hooked.
- Q&A Sessions
Q&A sessions are one of the best virtual events engagement tools that help in driving engagements within virtual events. You can introduce Q&A sessions during your virtual events to gain audience insights. It facilitates the organizer to gain insight into attendees in real-time.
- Social Wall
Social wall is another virtual events engagement feature. It engages the audience instantly at virtual events. Social wall encapsulates the feed from all the social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc. that integrates specific event hashtags. It is one of the most brilliant and innovative virtual event engagement features that help in engaging the audience across the globe.
- Twitter Wall/ Twitter Space.
The Twitter wall is one such virtual event engaging feature that helps in boosting engagements at online events. It works on the same process as social walls. As the name suggests, Twitter Wall captures the essence of virtual event conversations on twitter feeds with the specific event hashtags. It collates all the feeds on Twitter that integrate event hashtags at one spot, thus leaving a lasting impression of the event on attendees. Moreover, it motivates the attendees to take part in the conversations happening over Twitter to be a part of the Twitter Wall.
- Emoji reactions
Know how people feel about your event by activating the Emoji Reactions on the Virtual Stage. Allow your attendees to share their excitement about the sessions they’re attending.
- Surveys
Get your attendees’ feedback regarding their event experience. Send post-event surveys to evaluate your event’s success and know what to improve next.
5 AUDIENCE ENGAGEMENT TOOLS YOU NEED TO KNOW.
These days, you don’t need to rely on cheers and claps. Instead, you can use audience participation software to enable guests to interact with your event format. What’s more, free audience participation apps don’t require any investment in expensive hardware – attendees already have the technology required in their bags and pockets in the form of their phones and tablets. Read on to discover the best audience engagement tools that can help take your event to the next level.
- GLISSER:
Glisser lets presenters share slides to the audience’s mobile devices during their presentation. In turn, audience members can like, comment on, or share those slides on their own social networks. Attendees can also download the slides for later reference or to share with colleagues back at the office. It means there’s no need for printed handouts, which in turn saves trees and is more convenient for attendees.
- CROWD MICs
Crowd Mics is an app that turns the audience’s phones into wireless microphones. This comes in particularly useful at forum-style events or those that usually need a roaming microphone. The app works in conjunction with an ATOM box that plugs into the venue’s wired network and sound system. Meanwhile, the moderator uses an iPad app interface to control who speaks. Crowd Mics also has comment and polling functionality.
- CATCHBOX :
Unlike the rest of the tools in this list, Catchbox is not an app, but a physical microphone. However, it’s no ordinary microphone – it’s the world’s first throwable wireless microphone. So, when you’re asking questions for audience participation, rather than having to pick your way through the crowd to reach them with a normal mic, you simply throw them the Catchbox. It engages participants in a fun game of catch, while also helping to create an informal, laid-back atmosphere.
- ENGAGENOW
Engagenow lets you design attractive-looking polls and quizzes that empower the audience to interact with the big screen during an event. It can also be used to crowdsource questions or open up chat around the event in order to spark debate and connect audience members. This could come in handy at events that feature a debate, such as panel discussions.
- MENTIMETER
Mentimeter is a mobile voting app that lets you show the results live with real-time graphs and charts. Perfect for live, virtual, or hybrid events, it can be used for a wide range of events – from wine tasting and learning to paint, to gym classes and comedy nights. Able to handle over 30,000 votes per minute, it can work for small events or big ones. The app provides many different question/response formats such as multiple-choice, open-ended, rating scale, and word clouds. Plus, you can easily style it with your branding.
WRAPPING UP:
Moving on, focusing on engagement will become even more of a priority, with sustained engagement being particularly important.
Remember, an engaging event is usually a successful event. Make use of the strategies above and follow for more event blogs.
