All major event exhibitors, event management organizations, and trade show organizers have adopted a digital-first approach in order to cope with the COVID-19 conditions. Moving trade shows, exhibitions, and fairs to a virtual show platform have to lead to improved customer acquisition, increased profits, happy customers, and increased customer retention.

Various advanced virtual event platforms offer different virtual engagement tools such as live Q&A sessions, chat, polling, etc. These tools are important to make the online event more interactive and engaging. You can take your virtual events to the next level by enhancing your virtual event audience engagement. Audience engagement can make or break your event. So it is key to a successful virtual show. So the main question is how to make a virtual event engaging.

You can improve the engagement rate by constantly offering your audience things to do. In simple words, you need to do something surprising and unique in order to decrease the distraction and boost virtual show engagement. You can also hire a webinar service provider. They offer a wide range of interactive tools that can help you to make your event more engaging and interesting.

Top 6 proven strategies to improve your virtual show engagement 

Offer informative and compelling event

Your content is an important part of a virtual event. It helps to entertain and educate your participants. High-quality and informative content can also improve the engagement rate. It is best practice to add your most relevant and best content and split it into easily consumable parts. Take a cue from the recommendation of YouTube in order to provide personalized content. 

Live and pre-event polling

Many marketing experts utilize tools such as polling in order to enhance audience engagement. This works very well with the virtual event platform. Pre-event polling makes your participants feel that the content delivered at the virtual event will be customized to their requirements. This has the following advantages:

• Your audience will find the information more interesting. This increases the possibility of a favourable event return on investment because you will be able to give more value.

• Your audience is more likely to attend your virtual event because the information will be more pertinent to them. Your no-show rate goes down as a result.

• Live polling makes it simple for event planners to engage attendees.

Note:- The type of polling depends on the size of your audience. If you have a small audience (between 10-15), word clouds can be perfect. And consider multiple choice questions, if your audience is a bit longer.

User-selected presentation paths

Have you ever watched a Netflix movie where you could choose between a few possible options for what happens next? You can use the same principle in the talks and discussions you’ll lead throughout your virtual events. You will gain a few advantages by allowing your audience to choose what will be delivered. For example

• Participant engagement will increase

• Your participant will pay more attention during the virtual event

• The presentation and session will be more relevant to your audience

So it is a unique way to make your event more interesting and make things more relevant to your audience.

Offer interaction capabilities

It is difficult to create interaction and improve audience engagement if you don’t offer capabilities for the participant to interact. It is also important to make sure that you are offering the participants the tools or features to interact with other people.

This can be through a one-on-one meeting, chat or live conversation. In simple words, if you allow participants to talk to other people during the online virtual event, the engagement level will increase automatically.

Gamification

Whether it is a virtual event or an in-person event, gamification always works well in order to hold the audience in your event. In the offline event, there is an exhibition space where business owners have booths in order to promote their products or services. You will be happy to know that you can also do the same with the online show platform.

Gamify the experience of your participants is the best way to increase virtual booth traffic. For instance, a participant will earn points if they visit a virtual booth. Additionally, you might hold a little competition at each virtual booth to encourage interaction between participants and the sponsors. Both your sponsors and your attendees will benefit from this. It’s a fantastic way to break the ice.

Having a system that awards attendees points based on their amount of interaction is another suggestion to increase participation in virtual events. For instance, you might include polling questions in each session of your online event. Participants will score points for participating in a poll.

If you are organizing a small virtual event, you can conduct fun things like virtual background content. The participant with a creative virtual background might earn points and win something. These things will encourage your participants to pay attention to your online event. Most live streaming service providers use this strategy to keep their audience engaged.  

Hire an entertainer for audience engagement

Hiring entertainers is an ideal option for both large virtual events and small virtual events. Normally, entertainers are professional and great at engaging your participants. You can hire experts to contribute to engagement and make the event more interesting.

For example, you can hire a sketch artist for a small virtual event like a round table discussion. The artist will utilize a super creative way in order to create meeting notes. Undoubtedly, your participants will be engaged and impressed and it will offer a unique element to your small virtual event.

Magicians are perfect for large virtual events. You might have some breaks in between your sessions if you are hosting a large virtual event. Undoubtedly, these experts can help you to keep your participants entertained and increase audience engagement.

Final words:-

Select a customizable virtual show platform and keep in the mind the tips mentioned in this article in order to boost virtual show engagement. Your virtual event may be more engaging, valuable, and memorable for everyone who participates with the help of a suitable online show platform. You can design a fantastic, captivating virtual event experience with a little imagination and customizability.