9 Proven Strategies to Boost Virtual Event Engagement

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No matter whether it's virtual or in-person, event engagement is critical to meeting your goals and realizing desired results. But how can you ensure your audience remains engaged throughout your event? Luckily, there are various strategies you can employ - and in this article, we'll highlight several proven techniques for increasing virtual event engagement. 

Most virtual platforms come equipped with analytics and reporting tools designed to measure event engagement metrics. These tools can provide invaluable insight into how your audience members engage with your content, where they're tuning out, and how much direct feedback these tools return. They also provide opportunities and virtual event engagement ideas for improving future events.

People attend virtual events for networking and learning purposes, but these alone won't ensure engagement with your event. Consider investing in social media outreach to build an audience before the event. There are several virtual conference best practices that you should consider while planning your next virtual event.

Make the event a grand success by hiring the best Atlanta event planners. They will help you with the interactive features and strategies to boost virtual event engagement - such as polling questions during presentations, trivia questions, or any other fun activities that engage them. Measure their participation to assess the level of engagement and find out the most valuable parts of the content.

Engagement at an online meeting is crucial to its success, so organizers can use different strategies to encourage attendee participation. From choosing the right virtual event platform to promoting your event the right way and using several event engagement techniques to keep your guests occupied and entertained, there are several virtual event engagement ideas you should know and practice.

Below Discussed are the Top Nine Proven Strategies to Boost Virtual Event Engagement

1. Identify the Virtual Meeting Goals

Establishing virtual meeting goals and driving engagement around them is essential to the success of any virtual event. You can achieve this in many ways, including using your event website as an online resource center with tools and information attendees may require for their attendance. Additionally, provide your attendees with an agenda in advance so they know what to expect at your event and prioritize sessions that most interest them - this may help decrease no-show rates!

Consider including icebreaker activities during sessions to break the ice and help your attendees connect more with one another, increase user engagement, encourage interaction, and generate excitement that they can share on social media channels. This is also a fun way of increasing event engagement. Furthermore, it would be wise to select an event time suitable to the majority of attendees while offering recordings for those unable to join live.

2. Know Your Audience

Virtual events can be tricky to market and convince attendees to invest their time/money in, as they lack tangible returns. To create buzz around your event and generate excitement from attendees, you must understand their demographics and needs. Social media can help drive attendance at your virtual event, but you can take this one step further by creating activity feeds on your event platform. Get in touch with the best Atlanta Event Planners to promote your event the right way!

Understanding your audiences will help you plan your virtual event accordingly. Pre-event polls are another great way to engage your audience and drive attendance at your event. Attendees will gain insight into what to expect at your event while it encourages more attendees to show up! These activity feeds can contain teaser videos, speaker announcements, and welcome videos that set the scene for your virtual conference or tradeshow.

3. Choose the Right Virtual Event Platform

Selecting an effective virtual event platform is integral to planning and hosting an effective virtual event since attendees will use this as their main point of contact with it. A suitable platform must feature an intuitive and user-friendly interface and reflect your brand image so attendees will easily recognize it with just a glance. Consider whether the virtual event platform allows your attendees to network among themselves and engage with content.

A good virtual event platform should include networking and engagement features like video chatting, messaging or group chats, Q&A sessions, live polling sessions, and feedback surveys - among others.

An effective way to increase virtual event engagement is through activity feeds within your event platform. These social media-like feeds allow users to post teaser videos, speaker announcements, and more directly into these activity feeds.

4. Leverage Gamification for your Virtual Event

Game elements and challenges added to a virtual event can increase participation and engagement by helping attendees experience it in an enjoyable yet familiar way. This helps reduce cognitive overload while making information retention simpler for attendees. Gamification also encourages interaction and social sharing, making it a useful way to expand the reach and brand recognition of events and expand brand recognition. 

Gamification can take many forms, from simple quizzes to elaborate interactive challenges; adding rewards or giveaways could increase engagement by adding special badges, food passes, or discount vouchers to keep attendees involved with your gamification strategies. Make sure that the games at your event meet your goals by selecting games that fit well with them. Hiring one of the best Atlanta Event Panners for your event is highly recommended if you are unsure about games.

5. Schedule Breaks During your Virtual Events

Virtual event engagement is key to creating successful events. When attendees have an enjoyable experience at your events, they're more likely to return for future ones - and may even purchase products and services from your business! To carry forward this engagement, you must plan the event breaks at the right time without compromising the flow of your event. It will help your guests stay comfortable and enthusiastically attend your event.

Giving your attendees advance notice of the break times in your events is a terrific approach to letting them know what to anticipate and when. Making an event calendar that lists all the activities you may be planning, noteworthy speakers and the topics they will be covering, Q&A sessions, quizzes, and other interactive activities, as well as the anticipated time of the event's finish, will help you do this. To learn more, talk to your event planner about the best virtual event engagement ideas.

6. Promote Meetings using Social Media

Utilizing social media engagement during and after events is key for creating an unforgettable virtual experience, as this strategy will increase event attendance while yielding tangible returns on your investment. Whether it's an online conference, webinar, or workshop - social media marketing practices such as creating eye-catching event hashtags and interactive polling features that allow attendees to participate in real-time can help promote it and keep your audience engaged.

Send out a post-event survey. This tactic is especially effective if you host an online presentation, as attendees can respond from their mobile devices. Analyse this data to gain insight into your target audience and enhance content offerings; alternatively, use features of virtual event platforms like live polling and Q&A sessions to collect additional participant information. If you are unsure about promoting your event on social media, hire one of the best Atlanta Event planners now!

7. Enable Live Chats

Live chat at virtual events transforms them from passive broadcasts into engaging community experiences, enabling attendees to ask questions or start conversations in the chat. This keeps attendees involved with the event without feeling isolated when attending virtual events alone. Your virtual event can benefit from chat functionality by opening them in their separate tab or page, enabling you or a team member to moderate and interact with attendees without disrupting video streams. 

Live chat is one of the most effective virtual conference best practices that you must employ in your upcoming virtual event. Publishers can utilize chats during events to engage their audience, increasing organic search traffic and retention. For instance, lifestyle publications could host webinars featuring celebrity chefs or guests to increase audience engagement and generate leads before reviewing data from their chat platform to understand which kinds of content resonate best with readers.

8. Introduce Social Walls

If your attendees are active on social media, their photos and posts can be displayed live at the event with a Social Wall to build trust in the brand and increase engagement. This shows social proof, which builds confidence while increasing attendance at your event. Social walls are an effective way of generating revenue through sponsorships, as they allow advertisers to buy screen ad space during your event and display their advertisements during it. 

Social walls make your event memorable even for people who weren't present there personally! Displaying special guests, guest speakers, or celebrities' live feeds on a social wall effectively generates buzz and engages the audience at an event. It can create an aura of exclusivity among attendees that makes them feel part of an exclusive club; this strategy can also boost B2B relationships. Using social walls strategically can boost your event engagement significantly!

9. Invite Great Speakers

To create an unforgettable virtual event experience, it is essential that attendees feel like they received something of value from your session. When this occurs, attendees are more likely to promote it via social media and return for additional events. Present your speakers via interview videos and demonstrate their value to attendees, making them feel prioritized and invested in their success. This will make their success seem all the more promising!

Traditional conferences or congresses typically break sessions into 30- or 60-minute chunks to ease attendees into physical venues, but virtual audiences can quickly tire of hearing the same information again and again. Go for the speakers who can add a bit of entertainment to your event. Speakers discussing different topics can help your guests remain tuned in with your event. Moreover, allowing your guests to discuss the topics live with speakers is a great way to have a grand success.

Conclusion

Conducting a post-event survey seeking feedback and suggestions from attendees is vitally important. This information will allow you to pinpoint areas that require improvement during your virtual event and ensure it provides an engaging experience for participants. With this data in hand, adjustments can be made for future events to improve meeting quality with the best strategies to boost virtual event programs. After all, direct feedback from attendees is a great way to create an impactful virtual event.

Virtual event attendees require a specific approach for effective engagement. By employing these strategies to boost virtual event programs, you can increase their level of involvement and foster deeper, more meaningful connections that will prove advantageous for your company going forward. When your virtual event engagement increases, conversion rates improve along with ROI returns from efforts invested - so put these techniques to use to maximize your next event! 

Reach out to one of the best Atlanta Event Planners to learn more about how to plan your next virtual event and claim your success. Good Luck!

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