Event Engagement Guide for Event Enthusiasts

If there is any must-do thing for an event organizer, it is to make the event extensively engaging! Our today’s blog post is for all those enthusiastic event planners who are looking for amazing event engagement ideas and tips for their next event!

Whenever an event is organized, it becomes a shelter for at least an hour for hundreds of people. It becomes a place of many expectations, excitements, ideas. 

It can be full of technology, vogue decorations, or every possible thing, but it will not be an overall successful event unless it does not draw enough engagement into it. 

Virtual Event Engagement

With the outbreak of a pandemic, all the events occurring in the near future with large gatherings have been canceled. However, you don’t need to worry as you can create a virtual event. Virtual events are different from in-person events however it requires the same level of planning to host such events.

It is totally within your scope to create a thriving and victorious event with great opportunities for attendee engagement. Therefore, you need to keep a good hand on these strategies before you start planning your online presence to drive audience engagement and event success.

Important factors for boosting virtual event engagement

If the attendees at your virtual event get things to do, they will feel more involved and engaged in the event. Also, it should be something unique for your attendees to do that makes them more engrossed.

You can easily boost your online engagement by leveraging the right technology and tools at your virtual event. This way your participants can also receive the similar benefits they would from an in-person event.

Interactive Communication Between Attendees

With a virtual event, attendees do not get a chance to chat in the hallways, however, it allows them to develop a valuable connection with other attendees. The attendees can utilize various communication methods such as discussion forums, chat rooms, and other methods. Based on their interests and experience it will help them develop a great connection.

While inviting folks for your event it’s important to use a business email that reflects your brand for higher attendance and open rates.

Live Polls and Surveys

You can run polls through an event app- it can be anything from serious industry topics to light-hearted commencements. This will help them keep their voice and get a conversation moving that permits participants to network in a unique way.

You can find out what your attendees are looking forward to from your event by conducting surveys both before and after your event. This can also help you refine for the next event.

Virtual Meetups

You can add various networking sessions and meetups in your virtual event plan. organizing a “virtual coffee hours” or video calls, for participants will urge them to fly in and become more acquainted with one another! It will motivate them to stay enthusiastic about meetups.

Must Read: Hybrid Events: Introduction, Benefits and Some Inspirational Examples

Therefore, to organize a winning event, the organizers first have to understand what it takes to make the event remarkable. They have to study the public interests, inquire about the latest trends, and associate every that thing into the event that the public is curious to see and explore.

What does ‘Event engagement’ actually mean? Why it is necessary?

An event can be pronounced successful even by an adequate number of event engagements in a count. But would that be fair enough to call something successful just because of its quantity? Should not the quality of an event also matter? Think about it!

For an organizer, if only the number of engagement matters but not the reactions on the faces of the visitors, one has never been an ideal event organizer.

And if an event is about the number of engagements, it is also about the reactions, expressions, and experiences that the event audience takes away. 

Rather, an event would be more gracefully called a successful event if it has successfully put a smile on the faces, has given goosebumpy experiences to the attendees, and has rendered enough of entertaining, educational, and engaging stuff to the event audience. And this is all an engagement in the event is about.

Once these very basic things are well-understood by an organizer, his plan of action to control and regulate the event will change in an effective manner. The event organizer then would himself sense the change in his approach towards event management. 

Follow the link and know about the best event management tools for 2019!

Now, when we have sensed the meaning of engagement, we can now move towards the ways of creating engagements in events.

How to Boost Event Engagements?

Generating the ways of engagements is not a difficult task, as we are not anyway deficient in it. Initially, it is required to work on the possibilities of an event. Visualize the possible verticals you are going to target in and through your event and monitor the expected engagements and results.

Make a thorough outline of your event. List down the number of opportunities you will be giving to your event audience to engage with your event, the number of sessions and their subject, the content and context for every single thing.

Ultimately, you must have an image already built in your mind for the event and also an idea for how much workforce you have for it. How enthusiastic and pro-active your team members are is also a matter of concern. 

Now, when you get the layout ready for your event, you can induce engagements in two ways, either Technically or Non-technically. 

Must Read: How To Plan A Product Launch Event

The Technical Event Engagement Ideas-

• Adopting Event-apps.
• Creating Online Polls and Q&A sessions.
• Displaying Social media recognition through Social Walls.
• Building Connections, etc. 

The Non-Technical Event Engagement Ideas include-

• Engaging local audiences through banners/posters/flexes, etc.
• Design interactive passes for VIP entries.
• Organize in-hall fun activities and debate sessions.
• Place interactive photo-booths/corners.
• Analyze your metrics to meet the verticals.

It is crucial to understand the interests of audiences and make them participate to make your event successful. And for that, there is a need to spread enough awareness and provide a sound recognition to your event before its execution. 

Let’s explore the above-mentioned ways of engagement, with a precise detailing to understand them at a better level.

Adopt Event Apps to Be in Touch With the Audience

Event dedicated apps are key role players in the case of events. Especially when your event is so full of opportunities and engageable stuff that it is required to create a platform to encapsulate and then serve them to the audience.

You just have to either adopt or develop an application especially for your event, that can notify your connections and visitors about the sessions and event engagement activities by push notifications or in-app messages.

Reportedly, more than 45 percent of event planners use event-dedicated apps in their events out of which more than 75 percent want a better and quick responding application, which means, they have found something worth it.

There is one thing to note that any application is required to be downloaded first. And you can strategically make the audience download the application by offering them giveaways like discounts and free trials for any product with every download and register.

Create Online Polls and Q&A sessions

Once your event has started, you can initiate live polls or Q&A sessions on some trending and hot topics on which, the audience would like to engage and participate.

You can then display the answers and results of Q&A sessions through social walls in your event. Such social media displays are very effective and proved themselves very user engaging, as people feel honored seeing their names and answers displayed on a big screen publically. 

Leverage User-Generated Content Through Social Walls

Such social media event engagement activities can be the drivers for your event engagement strategy if you use them wisely.

By creating social media pages and community channels, you can enhance the number of engagement to your event. Because social media allows you to promote your event-page at a global level, deliver a number of engageable ‘call to action’ buttons like ‘Interested’, ‘Going’, and ‘Not sure’, that are nothing but engagements to your event.

Attractive visuals from the previously organized event can help in making new connections. The higher the quality visuals are embedded to the social media pages, the higher will be the new connections.

You can also add new connections by creating a feed of your previous event, and embedding it into your supporting partner and sponsor’s websites.

Connections are also very important for event engagement strategy. And social media can help a lot in spreading awareness and making connections for it.

Display your Social Media Recognition to Gain Social Trust

Today, every organizer goes digital to spread awareness for his event on social media especially. Facebook-ads, Twitter-ads, hashtag campaigns, live videos, and whatnot are used for its promotion only.

Social walls here can be very helpful for leveraging the user engagement by showcasing all the social media engagements you get in reply to your promoted content. 

It is profitable to showcase that user-generated content including replies, photos with hashtags, etc. and make people realize your social worth by displaying a live hashtag feed at venues!. You can also schedule content on Reels and other social channels to share the event.

The user-generated content related to the event on social media accounts and communities can be aggregated at a place and displayed as a social media wall display in your event.

This can also be a dedicated promotion for your brand /event only.

It is seen in most of the global-level events and summits, that the overall engagements on social media including retweets, replies, reactions to the Q&A sessions, etc. are displayed in the background to build social trust and enhance user engagement.

Engage Local Audience with Banners/Posters/Flexes, etc

No matter how advanced and technology-inclined the audience has become, interactive infographics and animated infographics are still used for near-by local promotions.

Though its usage has reduced with the transformation of offline marketing to the digital. Yet, attractive banners and posters are the traditional ways of spreading awareness.

Though the reach of online promotion has no corner left with its influence, yet the sub-urban and local areas are some regions where social media is not a complete ruler yet.

Thus, posters and banners can help you reach every corner of your city. Make sure to use banner and poster templates to create visually appealing and professional designs that effectively convey your message.

Design Interactive Passes for VIP Entries

Event passes are a convincing way to engage the local audience with your event. You will be showing your local existence to the population in your vicinity. They are also appropriate to invite celebrities and chief guests who have a large fan following.

It will be very engagement enhancing when a celebrity is assured to be one of your chief guests, you can engage a huge audience with their name and charge your event with a lot of attendees.

Organize In-Hall Fun Activities and Debate Sessions

To bring engagement, an organizer must keep the audience engaged through some entertaining and brainstorming activities. 
Indoor games and debate sessions are a great way to get the audience involved.

Event applications and social walls could help you in reminding people about the debate sessions on hot topics.

Reportedly, almost every large-sized event consists of a debate session. And there is always a proportion of population exist that is interested in reciting and sharing their views on the public issue. 

Place Interacting Photo-Booths/Corners

Photo-booths kind of engaging corners can be set up in a dedicated social media theme, for say, in an Instagram theme. With which people can engage by getting clicked behind an artificial large-sized social media theme frame at a corner in an event.

Some exciting props can add some more engagement and excitement to your audience. 

You can appeal your audience to upload their event photo-booth picture with your hashtag, and can display those in your running social wall or a separate social wall that can be set up for this only. 

Analyze Your Metrics To Meet The Verticals

Taggbox Analytics Metrics show you the mirror of your performance and give all your verticals a definite target for the next time.

Thus, to work on the pluses and minuses of your event, one should analyze the metrics recorded through its social media engagements.

It is observed that those who have used analytic tools and worked on their KPIs and metrics have improved their performance and results by 65 percent in the next attempt.

Conclusion

Apart from social media, event organizers should also approach to social life ideas like gaining awareness for social issues and bringing their solutions to the events. Or even the debate sessions on social issues can attract much of youth and pro-active audience to the event. All these event engagement ideas are for event enthusiasts who are willing to take actions for event engagements.

On the other hand, social media aggregators like Tagbox are nowadays considered as real drivers for user engagement. They are not only capable of displaying social walls in events, but they have the capability to reach the entire population with the help of the internet.

Embedding the social feeds on websites, converting the social media posts into shoppable, and displaying live social media feeds on big screens through digital signage solutions are some niche functionalities of them, through which they aggregate the undivided global population to your event. 

Tagbox offers robust analytics with sentimental analysis through which an organizer can monitor not only the number of engagements but also the reactions of the engagers. 

Neither the organizer alone, not the technical support single-handedly can win the game. Now, it is upon the organizer only, to rather incorporate such smart event raising tool and hustle along with it or to choose the other way.

We hope now you have all the amazing event engagement ideas for your next event and it will be a great success using this event engagement tips.