The engagement of the audience is critical to the success of any event. Event organizers want attendees to pay attention and participate, whether in person or online.
In fact, more than 80% of marketing professionals believe that audience engagement is an important predictor of event success.
Event planners and organizers who are experts understand that selecting the right audience engagement strategies can make or break an event.
In this post, we will look at various audience engagement strategies that work for event planners, organizers, and industry professionals.
This list can assist you whether you are a new planner planning your first event or a seasoned professional looking for the latest tips.
8 Audience Engagement Strategies For Your Events
Understand Your Audience In A Better Way
Getting to know event attendees is one of the most effective audience engagement strategies available to event organizers.
Knowing your audience “who they are and what they care about” can help event planners anticipate audience needs and create an event catered to their interests.
This will help ensure that attendees are enthusiastic about the event’s content, which will lead to increased engagement.
Use event planning software that tracks attendee behavior trends and visitor activity on event websites to better understand your audience.
Determine the types of content that visitors interact with and incorporate those same types of content into event presentations.
Furthermore, knowing which company attendees represent, what the company does, and the position of the attendees can help event organizers and presenters connect with members of their audience.
Be Choosy While Selecting Your Speakers
Pacing, enunciation, tone, and tempo are all as important as content, so look for experienced and confident speakers and presenters.
Find a keynote speaker who is vivacious, charismatic, and credible. They should be regarded as trustworthy experts on the subject under discussion, and they should excel when interacting with a crowd.
A Mobile Event App Is More Important Than You Think
Mobile apps can be used to streamline communication, provide valuable insights, and promote event engagement for both event planners and audience members.
Select a mobile event app that enables organizers to quickly communicate with event attendees.
Upload the event agenda, a layout map, and detailed information for each session, and encourage attendees to use the app during your event.
Encourage attendees to sign up for push notifications in order to receive agenda updates, session reminders, parking alerts, and other important information.
Make Proper Use Of The Live-Polling Technology
Event organizers can connect audience members to the material being discussed by including live opinion polls.
Request that attendees rank ideas, express their opinions, or respond to questions. Show the results of live polling to the audience to encourage discussion and help audience members discover how they connect with one another.
Polling is a useful tool for measuring real-time attendee engagement during virtual events, in addition to increasing live audience engagement.
Incorporating real-time virtual polling can help keep online retention rates high by giving attendees the impression that their participation is being tracked.
Displaying A Social Media Wall Is the Way To Go
Social media walls have taken a special place in the marketing scheme of event organizers nowadays. Social media walls are brilliant when it comes to engaging the audience.
It is a unique real-time representation of user-generated content gathered from multiple social media platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc.
They can generally be displayed across multiple locations at an event to keep the audience engaged through the whole event.
A large amount of user-generated content can be produced through Twitter walls for events by displaying user-generated content only.
This happens when people start posting content on social media after watching other people at the event getting displayed on the social media walls. A great way to boost your event in-person and on social media too.
A Social Media Contest Can Take You A Long Way
A common side effect of having a highly engaged audience is increased social media exposure. An event hashtag is required at all events.
This hashtag will be used by your audience when they post something about your event. Naturally, you can monitor this hashtag and conduct analyses and competitions with Twitter hashtag analytics tools like Taggbox.
So, during your virtual events, make sure to give your audience opportunities to post creative things to social media.
Most people enjoy a good competition, especially if the prize is something they really want. Run some social media contests for your large virtual meetings.
Design Your Event For Networking Opportunities
It is impossible to create interaction if you do not allow the audience to interact with one another.
As a result, always ensure that you provide your audience with opportunities to interact with others. Chat, one-on-one meetings, or live conversations can all be used to accomplish this.
If you’re planning a large virtual conference, this is an important factor to consider when choosing a virtual event hosting platform.
When it comes to B2B events, networking is extremely valuable to the audience. If you give them the opportunity to interact with other people, their level of engagement will skyrocket.
Select A Thoughtful Event Design
Think about how the layout of your event will affect the interaction between audience members and presenters.
Avoid isolating speakers from the audience by restricting walking paths, overbooking your space, or making it difficult for attendees to move around.
Seating audience members in crescent rounds that allow them to converse or by setting up a separate area of breakout pods for intimate discussions can encourage attendee-to-attendee interaction.
Smaller events may benefit from hollow-square or U-shaped seating arrangements, which encourage discussion and engagement.
Wrapping Up
Audience engagement tops the objectives list of all event organizers. Event organizers can achieve it effortlessly through the strategies that we just shared. Include them in your plans and reap the benefits.