People organise events for a variety of reasons: training, networking and bringing people together, to name but a few, and the number of organisers doing so for these grounds has increased in recent years. Choosing the right venue and location are stressful enough, but on top of those concerns there are the challenges of running the right activities and engaging the guests once they come through the doors.
A soul-destroying event could spell disaster for your brand and company, but have no fear. Below are six simple ways you can supercharge your event and keep the attendees clamouring for more:
1. Call In Some Content Producers
Content is huge now, so you need to hire some professional content creators to help with the content marketing of your event. This is a superb way to start telling the story of your event, get potential attendees familiar with your brand and, generally, get them enthusiastic for the event. The content contributes to the overall experience of the event. Of course, you’re creating expectations by doing this, too, so you must be sure to deliver the goods on the day.
2. Encourage Social Media Use
Social media is another part of the event experience and is a way to generate excitement before the event, during it and after it. An event hashtag is a given, to help promote the event, and that can get the ball rolling, but if you’re the organiser you should keep the momentum going by encouraging discussion on social media. Ask engaging questions or introduce interesting topics, related to the themes of the conference event itself.
3. Keep Things Simple
Now, your audience won’t be idiots, but you should observe a simple formula to keep them from dozing in their seats. The content should be valuable to them in some way or have a wow factor that makes them sit up and take notice. It should solve a problem, provide an answer to a question or respond to a theory or need. The content should also generate some form of emotion and be something that they want to later share with others at the event and away from it. Professional content producers can help with all of this.
4. Train Speakers in Engagement Techniques
Public speaking is a skill and it takes no small amount of guts for speakers to get up there and deliver their speech or presentation. No one likes to give a tranquilising speech or stare into the eyes of attendees who are visibly bored and have grown irritable, maybe a touch hungry, too, or both.
None of that has to happen, though, if you train speakers in engagement techniques. This gets the audience more involved. The speaker can ask them questions. They can have breakout sessions. They can run activities or workshops that lend themselves to interaction. Boredom shouldn’t be an issue.
5. Use audience engagement handsets
Audience engagement system handsets are useful for a simple reason: they include everyone. A lot of events use websites or apps and present polls in which the attendees can take part, but sometimes internet bandwidth issues can disrupt engagement measures like this. A handset offers more reliability and, to a certain extent, equalises attendees because no one has to be tech savvy to use them. Older members may struggle if they were to have to use their mobile phones to participate and would welcome the handsets if this is the case.
6. Harness the power of analytics
How do you know if a conference is going well? A real time analytics tool can help you gauge it. Implement one of these tools and you can track how attendees are responding to your social media content. You can also have a look at any online feedback forms guests have submitted during the event. This data supplies you with valuable insight which you can use to make changes to the event as it happens or keep in mind when you hold your next event. No longer do you have to hit and hope or look on helpless as an event goes downhill.
A note on presenting at a conference event
If you happen to be one of the brave souls presenting at an event, consider hiring an expert to help you with your presentation visuals. Bullet points do add structure, fair enough, but they can be a bit boring as well, to say the least.
Meanwhile, there are presentation specialists out there who can design your presentation visuals for you. Shoddy visuals can damage your presentation and your credibility. You want to look like a professional, but poor visuals will let you down. Hiring a PowerPoint pro to give your presentation the TLC it needs to shine and keep your reputation intact.
Whether you’re running an event to train people, get people networking or just bring people together, you can minimise the stress of the endeavour by implementing the tips above. They’ll help you and your speakers to keep the attendees engaged, making it an enjoyable event for them and a successful one for you.
For more details on how to make your next event truly engaging, be sure to check out https://responsecrowd.com