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Insights on events, technology, and the future of gathering
Quick answer: To increase audience engagement at your event, hire a social media manager to build buzz, tell attendees how they can participate before the event begins, create and promote an event hashtag, invite influencers to attend, and run live polls during your sessions. Engagement starts well before the event and carries on long after it ends.
At an event, audience engagement is everything. It is the clearest sign to you, the organizer, that your audience is listening, tuned in, and learning something. Engagement reveals how attendees feel about the event, helps them stay focused, and lets them get more from the experience - and when other people are visibly getting into it, their engagement gives your event credibility.
Engaging your attendees starts before the date of your event and carries through long after your last session concludes. These five easy but often overlooked steps will jumpstart engagement with your audience.
Social media will undoubtedly play a role in your event promotion and early engagement, because static flyers and ads alone never give your potential audience the full picture of what your event offers. People need to get excited about attending, and engaged registrants share your event with others and are more likely to show up. Your focus should be on the event itself, so hire someone who specializes in social media and can create a buzz on your behalf.
A social media manager can post frequently about the event, ask questions, gather audience feedback, and give you valuable insight into how to make the event more successful - all before your event starts. Their efforts help you sell more tickets, grow your list of interested attendees, and make you a success right out of the gate.
Every event is a little different. Some have virtual common areas where people can network and interact with each other. Some have social media walls where attendees can share their own content on the event’s social channels. Others offer live breakout rooms and Q&As with the speakers.
Sharing ways to engage before the event creates a more informed audience. Let attendees know how they can participate beyond attending sessions and listening to speakers, then keep encouraging them to use these features to improve their experience.
If you want to amplify your social presence, create a special event hashtag for people to use before, during, and after the event. All the photos and content using this hashtag show up in your event’s social feed - a great source of user-generated content you can reuse to market future events.
Include your hashtag on all of your event promotional material: tickets, emails, flyers, and any other printed collateral that ends up in attendees’ hands. Flash it on the screen during live sessions and have your speakers promote it. The more people use it, the more other people will want to use it.
Events are rarely one size fits all. People want to know that attending your event is the best use of their time and that they will get something out of the experience. An influencer is anyone with a large following who can influence their audience’s behavior - someone popular on social media or a corporate sponsor, for example. Influencers help you get in front of a broader audience, a feat every event organizer aims to conquer.
If you want influencers in your niche to talk about your event, just invite them. Bring in corporate sponsors or hire influencers to promote your event on their social channels. Some charge by the post, others by the hour; either way, it is a worthwhile way to build credibility and get people excited about attending. And once your influencers start engaging at your event, other people will likely follow suit.
Anything goes with live polls - before, during, and after your event. You can capture audience sentiment in real time, gain insight into what attendees are thinking, ask for feedback, and create personalized experiences. Integrate live polls into each of your speaker sessions to keep the audience on their toes.
With the right questions, you can learn everything from food preferences to favorite speakers to how to make your next event even better. Platforms like Canapii offer integrated event marketing and engagement tools that help you prioritize engagement at scale.
Audience engagement is any active participation from attendees - commenting, asking questions, voting in polls, networking, or posting on social media. It shows your audience is listening and getting value from the event, and visible engagement gives your event credibility with everyone else attending.
Before the event itself. Social media promotion, previews of the engagement features on offer, and an event hashtag all build momentum ahead of day one - and engagement should carry on after the last session through follow-up content and social sharing.
Live polls give attendees a low-effort way to take part and give you real-time insight into what they are thinking. Running a poll in every speaker session keeps the audience attentive and produces feedback you can use to improve both the current event and future ones.
Yes. Live polls, Q&A, chat, breakout rooms, and networking all translate directly to online audiences, and a platform like Canapii builds them into one place for in-person, virtual, and hybrid formats.
Canapii builds engagement into every stage of your event - live polls, Q&A, chat, gamification, and networking - and has powered 2,000+ events for 300,000+ attendees across 45+ countries. To see how it can lift engagement at your next event, get a demo.