3 Ways to Increase Engagement During Online Events

The past two years have completely changed how events are run. Countless trade shows, awards nights, and corporate events have switched from in-person events to either online or hybrid-type events. That being said, event planners have been faced with new challenges, one of which is engagement. I have learned many engagement tactics over my years of experience for in-person events; however, I was posed with the new challenge of engaging guests during online events. I wanted to share a few of the valuable tactics I have learned over the last bit that have helped me improve engagement through the online or hybrid events I have been involved in. Remember, an online or hybrid event can be just as effective as an in-person event if you roll up your sleeves and get creative!

Compelling Content

I can’t stress this enough, but compelling content for your event is key to attendance and engagement. Focus on your target audience, research, and use past event surveys to determine what type of content your audience wants to see. Ensuring that the appropriate content is presented is the first step in the engagement process. Better yet, provide recommended content to each guest based on their interests or reason for attending the event! This can be done by asking each attendee to pick topics of interest during the registration process. Once you have compiled your compelling content, you can move on to the next step, which is encouraging networking.

Encourage Networking

Networking can be complex during online events, so guests need to be encouraged. But how do you do that? We sometimes forget that guests attend many events not just for the keynote  speakers or to generate new leads, but many attend to broaden their network and create new connections! Online events can be a bit more tricky as it’s not as simple as going up to a new person and introducing yourself. As an event planner, finding the right way to encourage your guests to network is one of the keys to a successful event. 

First, it’s essential to host your event on a platform that allows one-on-one conversations between attendees. These one-on-one conversations can be encouraged by creating “hot” topics that the target audience would be interested in discussing. Perhaps invite subject matter experts to attend your event to entice other guests to join conversations to learn and collaborate. 

Another networking method is creating topic-assigned groups, where attendees can join a group topic they are interested in and discuss it among other guests, exhibitors, and sponsors (and trust me, the exhibitors and sponsors will love this too). These discussions create new relationships, opportunities, and connections!

Include Incentive

Online events can seem less attractive to guests, and they may be less enticed to participate, so how do you give them the little extra push they may need? Provide incentive. There are plenty of ways to go about this, so I thought I would give an example of two ideas you can implement into your next event:

1. Assign points to guests participating in certain activities. At the end of the event, you can give away prizes provided by the event host or sponsors. These activities can consist of:

• Visiting an exhibitor/sponsor booth
• Joining a group discussion
• Booking a one-on-one meeting with another attendee, exhibitor, or speaker
• Joining a live keynote speaker session

2. Encourage exhibitors and sponsors of the event to do a give-away of their own to entice attendees to visit and interact with their booths. These giveaways will allow your exhibitors and sponsors to collect basic information (name, company, and email) about potentially interested guests, which can turn into leads in the future.

Online and hybrid engagement is different for every event. Contact Planit Events Inc. to discuss ways to improve your next event to ensure your audience, sponsors, and exhibitors experience strong engagement, in turn creating a successful event!

Copyright Lauren Voisin Photography. All Rights Reserved 2016.