Tips to Increase Audience Engagement at Events
To continuously host successful events, it is important to increase audience engagement. Hosting event is a critical component of any brand’s marketing strategy because one-on-one is the best way to engage current and potential customers.
This engagement makes the event fun, interactive and makes room for brand growth, awareness and expansion. To ensure that your audience is consistently engaged not only improves attendee experience but also allows marketers to collect rich attendee data from different touchpoints.
Audience engagement does not necessarily start at the event itself, this engagement begins long before and continues well after the event is over. Let’s get you started on the tips to help you improve audience engagement.
The Pre-Event
- Publish a blog post
To promote a future event, you have to blog about it. A business blog is a great way to kick start an audience engagement at any event because it allows marketers to learn about important event information like keynotes and sessions, lunches and dinners, exhibitions, parties etc.
You can create a buzz around the event with your blog. You can also link your event registration to your landing page in order to increase traffic and numbers of attendants.
- Create a Twitter Hashtag
You will need to create a unique hashtag specifically for the event, because it would help marketers promote the event and start filling up the event hahstag with content. Engagements will definitely skyrocket because tweets with hashtags receive 2X more engagement if promoted with the unique hashtag. This means that you will have people talking about it and even tweeting and retweeting about it. The hashtags are also a great way to engage with the attendants during the event and after in order to continue the conversation, long after the event is over.
- Plan for the Room Design
When it comes to designing and diagramming a room, this is the cornerstone of meeting planning. You can ensure peak audience engagement and interaction by strategically organizing and decorating the room.
You can position attendants’ seats in such a way that enhances their cognitive engagement, this will go a long way in framing their ability to make better decisions and engage well with your programme.
- Know your Attendees
It is important to understand your audience before an event commences. Knowing those who will be attending your event will give you leverage on how to prepare and execute it even better thereby increasing engagement. Understand the company they come from, the positions held, their field and how you can help them.
When this is understood, you can find methods to make the event fun, relevant and interesting for your audience. This will ensure that their needs during the event are well tended. When it is fun, they will want to interact with anything and everyone in front of them.
During the event
- Make it Super Fun
This is truly the first step to increasing audience engagement. Make it fun! People who attend events go to learn, discover trends and invariably have a good time. By adhering strictly to these tips, you can be sure that your attendees will have a great time.
- Engage Influencers
Engaging with influencers most especially during the event cannot be overstated as influencers have a wider reach and are more powerful on social media. By so doing, they can spark a larger conversation that can incorporate hundreds of other attendees and get them talking the more.
Ensure to make it known to the influencers how much you appreciate their involvement and continue to engage in discussion with them during and after the event.
- Get Compelling Speakers and Sessions
An event without some first class speakers and sessions is like a well garnished soup without salt. People attend events to learn, network and share experiences, information and tips. No one wants to go to an event that has little or nothing to offer them. Ensure that you have compelling and informative sessions and also top it with well-known speakers in any field you choose to center your event on. This will make attendees show up in mass and the more people you have at your event, the more interactive and engaging it becomes.
- Have Live Polls
When in session, allow the speaker to integrate a live poll. The session will not only make it more interactive, it will give the marketers room to collect data that can be leveraged for future events. By so doing, it will help make the event more relevant and helpful to attendees.
- Make Provision for Games and Competitions
When you prepare awards, games and competitions for an event, it is a great way to increase audience engagement. These games will encourage interesting conversations and help build new relationships. When using games, you allow your audience to be narrators of the story, this makes them have the control over how they play, engage and win. It allows attendees to not only engage with you the host but also with other game participants. Then, it becomes a platform to promote not only your brand but also network amongst attendees. They will sound your trumpet when they are out.
- Alert Attendees about Session
Another way to promote audience engagement is by alerting them about the sessions. Once you are able to customize the event experience for your attendees, it will demonstrate that you care about them.
- Have a Special Perk
You should provide audiences with a chance to receive something in return for being at your event or for visiting your booth. This could mean that you have to give out discount if they sign up for you product during the event, VIP status to after-parties or lunch or even free consultation about your product. Some of these perks will interest the attendees and compel them to want to know more about your product and engage more at the event.
- Have a Great Booth Design
This is important because getting people engaged or visiting booths can be very difficult. But it can be done in many ways such as giving out prices, engage in games like I said earlier and give customized souvenirs. Make your booth look interesting and inviting. Add accessories, this will make them curious. Make it intriguing but stick to the theme, by so doing, you will pique audience curiosity that will lead to an interaction with a potential customer.
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