Even though everyone is looking forward to the return of normal and things gradually are coming back to their earlier days, there still is a high percentage of marketers who are continuing the virtual route due to its key advantages.
Around 49% of event marketers feel that the virtual event setting is a much better way to engage the audience more as compared to the regular event scenario!
Event professionals must find means to keep their audience engaged and hooked throughout the event to attain their desired goal of hosting the event.
Even though a virtual event set-up has emerged to become a boon for the event industry, they must plan and execute the event well in advance.
In this post, we will tell you about the best virtual conference ideas that you can take into consideration while planning your next event.
Without any further ado, let’s delve into the steps right away!
Best Practices To Increase Engagement In Your Next Virtual Conference
• Invite Relevant Speakers
The speakers are the key figures of a virtual conference and hence, you need to make sure that you invite the prominent ones from your industry. Moreover, the speakers you invite may influence the attendee count of your virtual conference too.
The logic here is that your attendees would be excited to attend the event when they learn the speakers of the event. When you call prominent and famous speakers, your audience will be interested in listening to them, leading to more engagement and interest in them. Moreover, it would push them to stay till the end of the virtual conference.
• Gamification For More Engagement
Another great way to increase engagement from the audience is to host a few games at the virtual conference. People love and enjoy gamification. For more engagement, you can keep exciting gifts or coupons for the winners.
You can host games like trivia, a quiz covering a variety of topics, virtual scavenger hunts, etc. to interest the audience more. Make sure that you reveal the prize to encourage more participation from your audience.
• Include A Social Media Wall
A great option to engage the audience more is by including a social media wall in your virtual conference. Quite like the name suggests, a social media wall comprises social media content from various sources in a customized and unified format.
The love people have for social media is no mystery. Social media users enjoy spending more than 2 hours a day scrolling through their social media feeds. They invest a lot of time to post various forms of content like photos, videos, GIFs, etc. The users use social media as a medium to speak about their preferred brands and products.
Furthermore, aggregating the content and posting it in the form of a social media wall is a great way to engage the audience and keep them engaged throughout. You can host an activity to push your audience to post content.
Motivate your audience to post content on their social media handles using your event’s hashtag. The content can be selfies, videos, or anything they want to post. You can aggregate their content and post it on a digital screen. Your attendees will be delighted to see their content. Additionally, it will push other attendees to also participate leading to more engagement.
• Keep Breaks In Between
Screen time fatigue is totally a thing that is common especially when it comes to virtual events or conferences. Constantly gazing on the screen and listening to the virtual speaker talk can be quite boring and mundane for most attendees.
It may result in a lack of engagement and the audiences may feel the need to leave the event midway. To avoid that, it is mandatory to give your audience a break in between. You can include fillers like a stand-up comedy session, mini jam session, etc. for the audience to refresh themselves in between the session, which would lead to more active participation from your audience.
• Key Takeaways
We are set to conclude the post and you are now aware of the best practices that would work wonders for you in your next virtual conference meet.
Virtual events have become the new way of hosting events and over the past two years, it has become even more popular and more a necessity for event marketers. Moreover, you need to make sure that you plan and execute the event properly to engage your audience.
Include these strategies in your virtual conference planning stage and you will surely see a positive change!
