How to engage a remote audience at your virtual event?

Ever since March 2020, our lives have never been the same. The unforeseen Covid-19 pandemic has ravaged and disrupted the whole world. Nevertheless, thanks to virtual events that salvaged and brought a new revolution in the event industry. Even though at first people perceived online events as a ‘ forced evolution’ due to the pandemic, however, over time, after experiencing remarkable benefits of online events, people’s perception has changed.
 
However, even after the new advancements of technology in the event industry, due to the lack of skill sets, most of the organizers are unable to utilize the benefits of virtual events and gather like-minded audiences.  
 
So here are a few tips for becoming a pro at hosting events and achieving maximum engagement of your audiences.

1.  Understanding of Your Audience: To host an effective virtual or hybrid event that engages your entire audience, you must first have a thorough understanding of your audience. Understanding your audiences’ wishes and expectations from the event is the foundation of any effective event. It not only improves the audience interaction but also helps to reach your goals and objectives. An in-depth understanding of the audience can also assist you in deriving better-targeted attendees ahead of time through various social media platforms.

2. Start on time:  Nobody likes waiting, so do not test your audiences’ patience and start on time. Your attendees might be sincerely waiting for your event for days, so to make them feel valued and encourage engagement, it is important to start your event at the right time.

 

3.   Short attention span: Also, there are a lot of distractions at home, so to attain the undivided attention of your audience throughout the event it is important to keep the content of your event relevant and interesting.  Do not try to overload your content with too much information. An ideal presentation should not exceed more than 40 minutes. Try incorporating fun yet informative images and videos along with texts in your PowerPoint presentations. Allow your audience to comprehend, question and discuss the provided information.

4.   Interactive breaks: Nobody wants to sit in the chair for hours and hours, make sure to plan lunch breaks, coffee breaks in between the meetings to avoid dullness and fatigue amongst attendees.

5.   Networking lounge: Finally, one of the main reasons to attend an in-person event or conference is for the networking opportunities, which can be replicated in a digital setting. Before, during, or after the event, you can create a space in your platform where your participants can communicate, build professional relationships or share their digital business cards with one another.

 

6.   LIVE Q&As: Q&A and AMA ( ask me anything) sessions are the best way to keep your audience engaged and interested in your event. These sessions not only help attendees to receive expert advice from speakers but enables attendees to form connections with the speakers.

7.   Polls: Adding polls makes your event more engaging and interactive for your audiences. To encourage contact with your attendees, create at least one poll per session. LIVE polls on social media can also enhance and attract more audience engagement.

 

8.   Feedback and Survey: Post-event feedback is not only important for attendees but for the organizers as well. This feature offers you as an organizer an opportunity to figure out how successful your event was and what improvements can be made for the next round. This allows the attendees to express their opinions which makes them well valued and appreciated. ibentos provides an instant feedback feature that facilitates the organizer to create a personalized questionnaire and send them out to the attendees.

9.   Breakout Sessions:  Breakout sessions offer attendees the opportunity to discuss, reflect, question, and focus on specific agendas in a more intimate (5-6people) group. You can create multiple breakout sessions along with the main conference. These sessions help attendees to engage or find clarity in specific topics.

10. Selfie Booths: How can you make your event memorable? By selfies duh!! Photo Booths have always been the most entertaining part of the event. Adding elements like personalized branded background or funny emojis can make your attendees’ experience even more enjoyable and allowing them to share these pictures on social media can build a buzz around your event.

11. Scribble wall: scribble wall is another fun and interactive space that can increase audience engagement. Attendees can digitally paint or write directly onto the screen and use custom stencils or stamps to create their masterpieces. Once they’re finished, they can print as many photos as they want, and share their creativity on various social media platforms.

12. Gamification: boost your attendees’ engagement and morale by awarding them with virtual badges and points for every activity like attending the conference, participating in Q&As etc. To make this more interesting and worthwhile you can inspire the attendees to participate more by offering them exciting prizes. Take it up a notch by initiating competition amongst attendees by running a leaderboard. ibentos offers a variety of entertaining gamification exercises such as quizzes, trivia, scavenger hunts, giveaways, and much more.

13. Attendee analysis:.A virtual event allows you to do so much!!  You can have real-time access to all event-related data with virtual events. With real-time analytics and data, you can track your attendees' entire activities during the event, enabling you to determine which features were the most and least popular. This allows event organisers to make quick corrections and improve foot traffic and experience at existing and future events.

Looking for a virtual event platform partner?

ibentos is an EventTech partner that offers an event platform for all virtual and hybrid events. The Event Technology Company has been facilitating the events industry with advanced technology and automation for more than a decade now. It is one of the very few companies that is currently offering Virtual Event platforms and are bootstrapped and yet doing phenomenally well globally. The company has worked for various associations and ministries and almost all industries and sectors, making a special mark for themselves in education and buyer-seller meets. During the pandemic, they showed tremendous growth and acquired businesses from India, Europe, America, South East Asia, and Australia. 

Website: https://ibentos.com/

Resource: https://articles.abilogic.com/502416/how-engage-remote-audience-your.html