Audience engagement. It’s what everybody talks about and wants to maximize at their events (whether it’s in-person, virtual, or hybrid).
But what is audience engagement really?
Generally speaking, audience engagement can be defined as the strategy of turning your event attendees into active participants in order to reach both your attendees’ and your own goals.
While this definition is rather vague, it carries a crucial notion to keep in mind:
Audience engagement can mean different things for different people. It all comes down to what you and your attendees expect to gain from the event.
So consequently, the engagement techniques that you choose for your event should always be consistent with your overall event goal and resonate with your specific target audience.
As soon as you have become clear about your event goal as well as identified and understood your target audience, define what audience engagement means to you and your business.
If you don’t, you will not be able to measure the level of engagement at your event. And you will never be able to assess whether your event was actually engaging or not.
Without this insight, how can you derive any learnings? How can you differentiate between the more immersed and less involved attendees to draw conclusions on potential sales leads?
Find your own definition of engagement
For example: You are running a virtual B2B event and your goal is to establish new relationships with prospects and to generate sales leads.
Does it really matter how many people have participated in your poll or shared something related to your event on social media? You guessed it: actually not so much.
What you really want instead is identifying those people who showed genuine interest in your business and actively participated in the conversation during your virtual event.
Because they are the most promising prospects for your business and most likely to convert after the event (in comparison to other, less involved attendees).
So in alignment with this, you want to define engagement in terms of:
1. Results of the Q&A session(s)
- What kind of questions have been asked? By whom?
- Has someone raised multiple questions?
- Was someone particularly interested in a dialogue with you?
2. Interaction with additional content
- Which on-demand content was mostly viewed? By whom?
- How many downloads have you received for additional online content? By whom?
Select the right engagement techniques for your business and audience
After figuring out your own definition of audience engagement, you can turn to selecting the right techniques and tools to facilitate the engagement that you and your audience are looking for.
Virtual is a quite different game. It is more challenging because you can’t rely anymore on reading people’s body language or feeling their concentration and energy levels like you can during an in-person event. There, it is fairly easy to assess how engaged your attendees are at a given point in time and what you should do in order to boost their engagement (if necessary).
Reading the virtual room and your remote audience’s level of engagement is much trickier.
However, there are some valuable techniques that you can apply to activate your audience and boost their engagement. We will for now focus on presenting some tools which help driving audience engagement DURING the virtual event experience.
Make room for interaction and become a proactive facilitator of audience engagement.
No matter your goal, a virtual event consisting of a one-way stream of information with a passively watching audience is painfully dull and zero engaging.
It won’t bring you any kind of human connection or meaningful conversation. And attendees will sooner or later just log off.
So, ensure from the beginning to make enough room for interaction and to give your audience a voice.
And here is how! Read on for an inspirational list of different engagement techniques and tools for you to consider and leverage in the most effective way for your event goals.
Enable your audience to get the most from their experience by explaining them upfront all the interaction and response features available to them. Make it easy for them to interact and engage when they wish to without having to figure out first how the virtual event platform works.
1. Q&A sessions
Real-time dialogue can be very difficult at virtual events. However, Q&A sessions in which attendees have the opportunity to ask questions and directly engage with the speaker can replicate this two-way conversation quite well – if executed properly.
Q&A sessions are intended to exchange ideas, share knowledge, and foster debate and open discussion. These interactions are especially valuable, if your event goal is to establish new relationships and generate sales leads.
To make this happen, you need to set aside enough time for your Q&A session (which usually takes place at the end of a session). Depending on your event goal, you may even want to consider a 50/50 split between your presentation and Q&A.
Communicate the Q&A session early on with your audience (on your event website, the agenda, email communications, social media, etc.). That way, your attendees will have enough time to come up with questions and to note them down for the Q&A session.
What if nobody asks a question? Embrace the silence at virtual events. It may feel a bit awkward in the beginning but it is perfectly normal. Give your attendees a little bit of time to reflect first.
It can also be helpful to have a few back up questions ready that you can refer to in order to get the Q&A session flowing. Plus, recognize who goes first and voluntarily participates. You can confidently refer back to them or call them up later in the conversation to keep the dialogue going.
You also want to think about how to manage the virtual Q&A session. Do you want attendees to speak up and pose their question or should they use a chat box?
This very much depends on the size of your audience, but typically it is more manageable and easier to structure if your audience uses some kind of technology to ask their questions.
It can simply be via a live chat box, but you can also use more advanced tools where people can submit their own questions and upvote other attendees’ questions throughout the session.
Then, when you start your Q&A session, you can remind your audience again to submit or upvote before starting to answer. The voting system gives you a good indication of what the burning questions are and in which order you should address the incoming questions.
Everyone should get the answers they are looking for.
So if you don’t manage to address every question, make sure to save the unanswered ones! Answer them in a follow-up email or approach the participant who asked the question. This is how you show that you care and establish relationships.
2. Polling feature
Polling is a very popular tool for in-session engagement and it is an ideal tool to interact with the audience during a presentation.
You can keep a finger on the pulse of what’s on your attendees’ minds at that very moment.
Plus, you collect valuable insight into their backgrounds, interests, opinions, current challenges, and so on. If your event goal involves getting to know your audience to the core, this engagement technique can be of great help.
To get greater return and a useful amount of data, make sure to give your attendees enough time to participate in the poll. They need to read, understand and reflect on your question before they can cast their vote.
If you plan on incorporating quite a few polls into your presentation, consider to spice it up a little (you may need an additional tool for that). For example, instead of only asking multiple choice questions over and over again – make it a bit more visually appealing by asking open ended questions that feed into live word clouds highlighting the most popular answers submitted by your attendees.
3. Virtual networking
Facilitating virtual networking opportunities is a must, if your event objective is to build and grow a community around your business.
Provide a Social Media Wall
Leverage the power of social media. Consider integrating social sharing activities and a social media wall.
It helps humanize the whole virtual event experience and brings attendees in touch with each other.
On top of that, it is super easy and convenient for your attendees: they can simply use their own social media accounts for engaging in the conversation – no need for any additional tools.
A social wall can easily be embedded in your virtual event live video stream. Attendees can then post questions, ideas, opinions, or pictures to the social wall using a branded event hashtag and it will be visible for the other attendees.
Taking it a step further, the social wall can be used to play ice breaker games, people can start conversations and network with other attendees.
The social network environment may feel a little more personal and natural to your attendees which encourages them to participate and engage.
This is how you can grow a community of like-minded people around your event and brand which will stay connected and continue the conversation long after your event has ended.
Create Space for Personal Interaction
The value and extent of networking at your event is defined by you. You as the event organizer act as the facilitator and you need to create sufficient networking opportunities for your audience if you want your attendees to connect and interact with each other.
Remember this when you build your event agenda and consider making room for virtual 1:1 meeting spaces, virtual cocktail hours, or virtual breakout sessions.
These agenda items are specifically designed to split up your audience into smaller groups making it easier for your attendees to actually engage and talk to each other.
While virtual cocktail hours may be a little more informal, offering a space where people can mingle just for the fun of it – virtual breakout sessions may be an integrated part of your event program where groups of attendees discuss a specific topic or work on a given task together.
Setting aside time for virtual 1:1 meeting spaces in your event program can be extremely valuable too and replicates the personal touch from in-person events as best as possible. In those virtual meeting spaces, like-minded people can schedule a 1:1 conversation and discuss relevant topics of shared interest.
Both for the virtual breakout sessions and the 1:1 meeting spaces to be successful, you have to do your homework BEFORE the event:
Make sure to give your registered attendees access to a platform where they can view an online guestlist and other attendees’ profiles, and where they can use a private message feature.
That way, people can check out before the event who will be tuning in as well, who could be interesting to connect with, and who they would like to “meet” 1:1 through the screen. They can message each other and set up a virtual meeting which will then take place virtually during the event.
For the virtual break out sessions, it is crucial that the specific topic or task discussed in this smaller group of attendees resonates with their personal interests and experience.
That is why you should consider co-creating the content of the breakout sessions with your registered attendees before the event. Ask them for their current challenges or topics which they wish to discuss (through surveys, email communication, registration form, etc.). Build your breakout sessions around these valuable insights.
And then, when the content of the breakout sessions is tailored to their interests, give attendees a chance to sign up for their preferred session in advance.
4. Entertainment, gaming and surprises
Add a bit of fun to the experience!
Especially if your target audience attends (virtual) events on a regular basis, incorporating a creative and unexpected component to your event can work as a powerful differentiator. You keep your attendees engaged and make a lasting impression.
By now, virtual events are common practice and attendees’ expectations are rising. So, some extra effort may be just what your event needs to provide a unique experience that stands out from the crowd.
However, remember that every engagement tool you use should be consistent with your event goals.
In other words: incorporating gaming, quizzes, and other entertainment features may not fit every industry and audience.
But if you choose to use it, you may be able to add some excitement and “more tangible” touch to your virtual event.
For example, for a B2B event you may want to consider
- sending gourmet lunch boxes to attendees’ homes for your “VIP lunch”
- sending goodie bags or information packs to your attendees just like the ones you would hand out at your in-person events
- bringing in a surprise speaker or unique type of entertainer relevant to your industry
Conclusion
Be smart about the choice of engagement techniques for your virtual event. Define clearly what audience engagement means to you, your business, and your attendees.
Make your chosen engagement tools match with your event goals and your audience.
And lastly, (virtual) audience engagement is a concept you have to integrate in every step of the event journey in order to benefit from its full, powerful potential.
While we have discussed here how you can keep your remote attendees engaged during the virtual event, your engagement efforts should begin long before the event starts and end long after your actual event does. Embrace pre-event and post-event engagement and own the entire event journey.
And ideally, all of these efforts will go hand in hand, nurture each other and jointly take you to your ultimate event goal.
Read more
Are you looking for some more examples to engage your audience?
Check out this list from Engagingleader.com
https://engagingleader.com/26-ways-to-engage-your-target-audience/
