Three Simple Ways to Engage Guests Using Technology

Engaging with your meeting or conference attendees is key to a successful event. Luckily, technology makes it easier to connect with your audience. To help you hit the ground running, we picked three of our favorite tech-tricks-of-the-trade, all designed to enhance attendee engagement.

Conduct Real-time Surveys through Mobile Devices

Live polls not only help attendees feel that they’re part of the presentations, but these real-time surveys also give your presenters immediate feedback. That’s important because when presenters know what the audience is thinking, speakers can adjust their delivery as they go along. This flexibility increases the chances that your attendees will get more out of the sessions.

Do a simple online search and you’ll find polling apps, devices and plugins galore. Most polling solutions will connect with social media to help engage a larger segment of attendees. Some allow your audience members to respond via their internet-connected devices, such as smartphones, tablets and laptops.

Certain presentation apps also go a step further and serve as a PowerPoint alternative, meaning your entire presentation is dynamic instead of static. There are also PowerPoint add-ins which allow you to include polls, whereby your participants respond using a custom polling URL.

Talk with the technology or audio/visual experts at your event’s venue to determine just the right polling tool—some of which are free—for your meeting.

Develop a Snapchat Filter Personalized for Your Event

Most people have heard of Snapchat, the ever-changing multimedia messaging platform and social network. However, unlike Snapchat’s early days, where photos appeared briefly and then disappeared, now you can replay photos and videos and even save them—which makes it a desirable app to maximize engagement with your meetings.

Snapchat users, who tend to be in their mid-30s and younger, are accustomed to seeing Snapchat’s “community geofilters,” or free filters for public spaces. (Think of filters like frames.) But now conference planners are using custom-made filters to encourage attendees to share still images and videos within their social networks. Custom filters range in fees but typically aren’t costly.

If your event includes entertainment or beautiful views or impressive-looking meals—basically anything photo- or video-worthy—a Snapchat filter is worth considering. Go to snapchat.com and click the “create” button.

#CreateYourOwnEventHashtag

Hashtags formerly existed only in the Twitterverse, but now they’re used on nearly every social platform. Hashtags are also helpful in promoting your event before it takes place, as well as during the meeting to report on activities and afterward to thank attendees. Hashtags also help people find photos and conversations about your event.

To create an effective hashtag:

Keep it short, as 10 characters or so.
Make sure it’s relevant and memorable. For example, if you’re hosting an annual celebration for top sales people,
something like “#TopTier2018” could work.
Search Twitter first to see if the hashtag has already been used.

Start your hashtag tending by including it on conference materials and displaying it on venue signage both digital and physical to remind people to use it while posting to their networks throughout the event. Also designate someone to monitor the use of your hashtag so they can thank people in real time for mentioning it.