Tips for Encouraging Engagement During a Virtual Event

Convincing individuals to join a digital occasion is one factor — maintaining their focus as soon as they go surfing is one other. After investing an enormous period of time, cash and energy into planning a digital occasion and attracting attendees, you don’t need that effort going to waste, so you will need to take steps to foster engagement throughout the occasion.

This lifecycle of a profitable digital occasion could make or break how successfully you change occasion attendees into viable leads. Individuals usually discover points with unengaging digital occasions. Boring content material, disorganized hosts/moderators, lack of alternatives for interplay and uncharismatic audio system prime the checklist of main issues related to digital occasions.

In line with Zachary Bosin — Vice President of Product & Progress Advertising at BlueJeans by Verizon — mastering digital occasions issues greater than ever. Whereas digital occasions aren’t going anyplace, they aren’t the one possibility anymore. “The world isn’t going again to a pre-pandemic expertise,” Bosin famous. “With some commerce reveals and conferences coming again, we’re actually going to need to proceed to evolve our method in terms of creating digital engagement.”

Let’s take a look at just a few methods entrepreneurs could make their subsequent digital occasion extra participating, giving them the next return on their funding.

Be Adaptable

The great thing about any sort of occasion lies within the capability to work together with others — even when it happens digitally. Interplay comes with variability, and predicting precisely how a digital occasion will pan out can pose challenges. That’s why adaptability stays a significant ability for any marketer to have prepared and ready.

To foster engagement, you could have to pivot mid-event to regulate the dialog to what the viewers finds compelling. Thanks to speak options, polls and different engagement instruments, you’ll be able to be taught what makes your viewers tick in actual time, enabling you to form the content material all through the occasion.

The host can’t do all of the heavy lifting right here. You’ll doubtless want a group supervisor readily available to interact within the chat, assist information the host in the direction of new dialog matters and handle these enjoyable options like polls.

To remain adaptable, it’s also possible to carry on prime of the most recent developments throughout the strategy planning stage within the digital occasion area. “As a marketer, you are all the time form of wanting on the developments and attempting to grasp what is going on on within the broader world and from a enterprise to enterprise perspective,” Bosin defined, “It’s vital to grasp what’s taking place within the client world and the way these technological shifts and people media consumption shifts are going to have a dramatic affect while you’re reaching out to consumers and determination makers since you wanna mirror those self same developments.”

Use the Proper Tech

Digital occasions are right here to remain, so many companies now search the fitting tech to make their digital occasions a hit. In 2021, 85% of these surveyed indicated that their group faces stress from staff and clients to enhance occasion know-how. An equal variety of respondents cited plans to judge new digital occasion know-how that very same yr.

How can the fitting tech take a digital occasion to the following stage and encourage engagement? With BlueJeans Occasions, you’ll be able to elevate your model by utilizing your logos, background and colours. Branding a digital occasion is among the finest methods to enhance the professionalism of the occasion from minute one.

Along with your digital occasion in full swing, you’ll be able to spotlight a number of presenters with dynamic on-screen layouts, add ticker banners, allow decrease third callouts and benefit from different options that make the occasion simpler to navigate and extra participating for attendees. 

Interact Instantly with the Viewers

Digital entrepreneurs can profit from attempting to reflect in-person engagement ways by adapting them for the digital world. For instance, when somebody attends a convention, they will usually increase their hand on the finish of the session to ask the speaker a query. With BlueJeans Occasions, you should utilize Q&A, chat, polling and hand-raising instruments to present occasion attendees the possibility to interact with presenters and moderators and so as to add to the dialog at any level all through the occasion.

Bosin defined methods to use a few of these instruments to your benefit throughout a digital occasion. For instance, Bosin advises incorporating polls at completely different milestones all through the occasion. “Everybody’s warming up — it is kinda like an icebreaker,” Bosin noticed, “Let’s throw a ballot on the market and see how individuals really feel a couple of sure matter.”

Occasion moderators can enable attendees to ask questions, and the preferred questions can then seem on the display for everybody to see. Not solely do these options give attendees an opportunity to turn out to be extra engaged and make them much less more likely to log out early, however additionally they give them the possibility to be heard.

Key Takeaways

Main manufacturers discover digital success by internet hosting their occasions utilizing BlueJeans Occasions. One success story consists of the Phoenix Suns — a basketball staff put in a tough spot when followers might now not attend video games in 2020. How might the Phoenix Suns discover new methods to convey the in-arena expertise to followers and interact them after a months-long hiatus within the NBA season? They relied on extra streamed video content material that enabled real-time participation. This work enabled the Phoenix Suns to supply distinctive experiences, they usually engaged followers around the globe by means of contests, giveaways, chat, polls and Q&As.

Penske additionally discovered they couldn’t host in-person racing occasions in 2020 and turned to BlueJeans occasions to show its Indy 500 occasions digital and to carry the drivers’ assembly and a partnership occasion. With the assistance of BlueJeans Occasions, Penske delivered best-in-class leisure experiences to greater than 25,000 followers who noticed all 33 drivers of the Indy 500 just about.

With a willingness to adapt, the fitting tech readily available and a need to interact straight with the viewers, entrepreneurs can maintain their audiences engaged just about.