Virtual attendee engagement is at the forefront of most eventprofs minds when designing a virtual event. How do you keep people, most of whom have been staring at screens all day, engaged? It’s a tough question, but luckily it’s one that can be answered. There are several things you can do to make your attendees journey a happy and successful one.
Firstly, when using a virtual platform you need to remember that not everyone may be as tech-savvy as you think, even the most simple and user-friendly platforms such as our platform, can be intimidating to a first time user who may have only used their laptop for email before 2020. This is where a FAQ or Helpful Hints document or video is best to be deployed. This is your first point of ensuring engagement. A frustrated attendee is an unhappy attendee if they even bother to attend once they experience difficulty. Think of the login process as the first 10 seconds in a restaurant, it sets the tone for the evening. If you are left waiting for assistance, you are going to be hard to please from that point onwards. Luckily, here at Register Event, we tackle this part for you. The helpful hints or How-To video sets the tone, if your attendees feel comfortable with the tech, they are more likely to engage with it.
A second way to encourage attendee engagement is to let the attendees share their opinions using live polls. Generally speaking, audiences love to share their opinions! Live polls during a session are a great way for speakers to engage with the audience, this can work with live or pre-recorded sessions too. Using polls during an event gives people an activity to actively participate in. The same can be said for having a live Q&A session at the end of a session, make sure to leave at least 2-5 minutes dedicated to this at the end of your sessions, and get creative with it, bring a member or two of the audience up on your virtual stage to engage face to face with the speaker/s. This is really simple to do using our Green Room and is effective in upping attendee engagement.
Still, worried that your attendees won’t engage? It’s time to turn to a virtual event buzzword – Gamification. It’s a buzzword for a good reason. Gamification is effective in enhancing attendee engagement because it uses tactics from the most engaging of screen time activities- video games. Adding gamification to your event and then gamifying polling, Q&A and networking is a tried and tested way to up attendee participation.
Creating a fun and engaging virtual environment for your attendees doesn’t have to be complicated. The above three tips are simple, and are easy enough to add to your event design, and have been proven effective.