How to engage an audience at a conference

13 Keys to Engaging the Audience at Your Next Conference Event.

• 1. Choose skilled moderators that are pros at engaging the audience. An engaged audience and good facilitation go hand in hand. Like professors in …
• 2. Switch to more conversational formats.
• 3. Hold a separate Q&A with your speakers.
• 4. Offer attendees 1:1 sessions with experts.
• 5. Finish with a reflection on key learnings.

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Answer

How to engage your audience in your presentation?

Here are 8 proven presentation tips to engage and involve your audience: Record their wish list. In the first few minutes of the presentation, be sure you clarify and verify what’s most important to the audience. What’s on their wish list to solve or accomplish?

How can I effectively engage my attendees at an event?

You can effectively accelerate learning and truly communicate to attendees at any conference by actively involving your participants in the event sessions. Just follow these five keys to engaging the audience, and you’ll be well on your way.

Why is audience engagement important?

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own. Audience engagement is an essential part of important meetings and presentations. Attention spans have become increasingly short. You only have a few minutes to pique the interest of your audience.

How can I make my presentation more engaging?

Sometimes the best course of action is to lead a dialogue rather than give a straightforward presentation. Allow audience members to ask questions. Organize group discussion and encourage feedback. This will keep your audience engaged and involved throughout the presentation.

How do you engage audience in a conference?

Try to hold several breakout sessions throughout a presentation to increase virtual engagement activities. Get creative with your meeting engagement ideas by swapping breakout room attendees each time. This allows for more networking among your audience.

What is the most effective way to engage an audience?

Engage the audience — get them interested, give them a reason to listen. How?Describe a scene or a character.Tell a story.Share a personal experience.Relate to a recent event.Piggyback on a previous speaker’s remark or theme.Point out something important about the audience or the current setting.More items…

What are five strategies or tactics to engage an audience?

These five simple tactics can make a huge difference in your ability to present yourself or your company to any audience….5 Ways To Engage Your Audience During A PresentationAsk questions. … Tell a story. … Use Humor. … Move around. … Memorize Your Presentation.

How can I make my conference more interactive?

But I have a few interaction tips that you can easily implement at your next conference and increase knowledge building of your delegates.Hire a professional moderator. … Leave space for Q&A. … Leverage technology to crowd-source questions. … Prepare your speakers. … Offer interactive alternatives.More items…•

How do you stimulate an audience?

Fresh Ways To Boost Audience ParticipationStart with a natural way to warm up your audience. From the beginning, you want your audience members to feel included in the conversation. … Poll the audience. … Allow audience members to ask questions in private. … Make the audience members the presenters. … Encourage live tweeting.

How do you deliver engaging presentations?

Top Tips for Effective PresentationsShow your Passion and Connect with your Audience. … Focus on your Audience’s Needs. … Keep it Simple: Concentrate on your Core Message. … Smile and Make Eye Contact with your Audience. … Start Strongly. … Remember the 10-20-30 Rule for Slideshows. … Tell Stories. … Use your Voice Effectively.More items…

How do you engage users?

8 Actionable Strategies to Increase User EngagementProvide live chat support.Focus on product experience.Personalize all customer communication channels.Provide real-time assistance using co-browsing.Use gamification to increase engagement.Create interactive and engaging content.More items…•

What are the three 3 ways to engage with customers online?

7 Online customer engagement strategiesBuild a community or group. There are several great ways to build an online community to more effectively interact and engage with your customers. … Host a webinar. … Co-create. … Celebrate together. … Offer exclusive content. … Respond to feedback. … Engage across multiple channels.

How do you keep the audience engaged virtually?

11 ways to keep attendees engaged during virtual eventsSound out your speaker(s). … Pre-event polling. … Don’t skip on production. … Organise a surprise delivery. … Do a dress rehearsal. … Use your intro wisely. … Create variety with virtual rooms. … Make space for audience interaction.More items…

What makes an event engaging?

You can make a virtual event engaging by constantly providing your audience with things to do. For your audience to be engaged, you need to do something unique and surprising. Provide interactive elements so that your audience feels incredibly involved in your virtual event.

How do you engage remote meeting participants?

During the remote meetingIntroduce everyone. The video camera doesn’t show every speaker throughout the meeting. … Have small talk before to start. … Remind of the meeting goal. … Give people things to do. … Be courteous to others. … Ask participants to contribute. … Be engaging.

What is the best way to keep your audience engaged quizlet?

One of the best ways to keep your audience engaged in your presentation is to maintain good eye contact. Many aspiring speakers make the mistake of trying to be someone they are not when they’re on stage. Most of the time this is by trying to be a comedian. You don’t need to tell jokes to make an audience laugh.

Why you should use strategies to engage the audience?

Audience Engagement Strategies That Work. Successfully engaging an audience increases participation, improves learning and heightens satisfaction. Engaged audiences share their experience on social media. They become your brand ambassadors; creating buzz and building referrals and interest for future events.

What are the most important strategies that capture and retain the interest of an audience?

The following are five techniques to capture and hold your audience’s attention throughout your presentation.Surprise. Say, show or do something that is shocking or unexpected. … Cognitive Dissonance. Keep your audience guessing. … Storytelling. Tell an interesting story that complements your presentation. … Involve. … Senses.

What is the best strategy to employ if you have access to the audience during your presentation?

What is the best strategy to employ if you have access to the audience during your presentation? If you have the opportunity, you should consider talking to your audience before the presentation and ask them, What do you want to get out of my presentation?

How to keep an audience engaged?

The Best Ways to Keep an Event Audience Engaged: 1. Choose skilled moderators that are pros at engaging the audience. An engaged audience and good facilitation go hand in hand. Like professors in their fields, event moderators can have a major impact on the engagement in the room, and therefore, the attendees’ learning.

How to address attendees’ needs?

The best way to address your attendees’ needs is to understand what they are. That’s hard to do if you don’t understand who they are. For example, offering on-site child care can make a huge difference in turnout if your attendees are working parents, but not if they’re single 20-somethings. And understanding their music tastes can help you better provide popular entertainment for the event. These tiny details can make a big difference in how successful the event ultimately is.

How to make your contribution count?

To make their contribution count, make sure that you brief your moderators well in advance and involve them early on. It is crucial that your moderator understands the objectives of your event to help facilitate participants’ learning processes. An engaged audience and good facilitation go hand in hand. Click To Tweet.

Can vegetarians attend an event?

Okay, by now most event planners know that it’s important to ask if there are any vegetarians that will be attending, but unfortunately, you may need to ask much more than that. Vegetarian, gluten-free diets, and allergies all may prevent your attendees from being able to enjoy what you’re offering. A hungry guest is an unhappy guest. If your event simply isn’t big enough to accommodate so many special needs, just be sure that attendees know what you will be serving so they can plan accordingly if they can’t eat it.

How to get your audience engaged in a presentation?

A direct way to get your audience engaged with the topic is to have them participate in your talk. One way to do this is through an audience response system (ARS) – this is an electric voting pad that collects responses from a group all at the same time. Rather than relying on an inaccurate show of hands or trying to take responses individually, you could impress your audience by including their feedback in your own presentation.

Should a presentation be boring?

Even if your presentation is on a fairly dry subject there’s no reason that it should be boring. Have some fun with the audience – tell a few jokes and keep the talk light hearted. This is especially true if your presentation is later in the day; people who have been at a conference for a long time won’t be in the mood to listen diligently through a serious talk so give them a reason to engage with you.

Can you use an ARS at a conference?

Here’s a second chance to make use of an ARS at the conference. After your presentation is over you can invite people to take a post-event survey. Not only is this a great chance to reinforce what you talked about but it’s also a great opportunity to collect contact details. It’s much quicker using an ARS than a traditional pen-and-paper survey too.

How to keep attendees engaged at a conference?

This can be done by adding lounge furniture, coffee stations, WiFi connectivity, and charging stations to your common areas.

How to develop a connection between attendees?

Develop a connection between attendees by turning your table assignments into teams. Kick your event off by having each team create a unique name and sign for their table. From there, you can implement activities like team projects, group discussions, and problem-solving scenarios.

Why do people have offsite events?

One of the best reasons to offer post-event entertainment options is to keep attendees engaged after hours instead of letting them retreat to their hotel rooms. Popular options for offsite events include happy hours, sightseeing tours, and sporting events.

Why do people pay big bucks for conferences?

Attendees who pay big bucks for a conference do so for the experience. This means they want access to things they can’t read or achieve on their own. In the end, it is all about interactivity, and here are some great ideas you can implement into your conference to ensure you are meeting your guest’s expectations.

What are some good additions to hallways?

Art displays and other conversation pieces are also good additions to the open space found in hallways and staging zones. The goal, of course, is to keep your guests on-site between sessions, instead of running to their cars and hotel rooms.

1. Educate Your Conference Speakers about TED Talks

Because TED-style talks differ — significantly! — from standard business presentations, you can’t just tell your conference presenters to develop a TED talk, and expect them to do it without support.

2. Create a Speechmaking Calendar, with Check Points

One reason that most business and academic presentations are so unbearably dull and dry is that (a) they’re written at the last minute, and (b) speakers deliver them without practicing.

4. Encourage Presenters to Use Strong Visuals

If you’re truly going for a TED-style presentation, boring visuals are the kiss of death — and there’s absolutely no need for them.

To Engage Your Conference Audience, Get Engaged Yourself!

As you can see, creating a TED-style conference is more complicated than just lining up the usual subjects and letting them do their usual thing.

How to keep your audience engaged in a presentation?

Allow audience members to ask questions. Organize group discussion and encourage feedback. This will keep your audience engaged and involved throughout the presentation.

Why is audience engagement important?

Audience engagement is an essential part of important meetings and presentations. Attention spans have become increasingly short. You only have a few minutes to pique the interest of your audience. Every time you take the stage — whether in a small boardroom or large auditorium — you compete against dozens of distractions.

What is the best way to capture attention?

Speeches, presentations and meetings are best used to capture attention, share broad ideas and pique an audience’s interest. If you plan to share detailed information, create a report or handout. Your audience will be better equipped to review and understand such information if it’s written.

How to speak more highly of yourself?

Instead, let your actions speak more highly of you than your own words. 2. Slow down. If you feel stressed or anxious, you may speak too quickly. Remember to slow down your speech, enunciate your words and look your audience in the eye. When you’re calm, you’re less likely to stumble over words. 3. Be vulnerable.

How to engage and captivate an audience?

Use these 10 tips to engage and captivate any audience: 1. Be authentic. Entrepreneurs who think too highly of themselves may be perceived as arrogant. Share your successes and achievements, but do so in an authentic way. Success does not equal superiority. Don’t claim to have qualities you don’t possess.

How to be a good speaker?

4. Communicate clearly. Words are powerful but only if they’re understood. Don’t talk over people’s heads. While you may be tempted to show off your extensive vocabulary or knowledge of industry jargon, be sure to use only words and terms that your audience will understand. 5. Tell jokes sparingly.

Why is it important to share a personal story?

A presenter who shares a personal story can immediately connect with an audience. By showing others that you’re human, people can relax and better connect with you. Don’t be afraid to share a story or two about how you failed at something and what you learned in the process.

How to Make Conferences (Online and In-Person) More Interactive

As mentioned, the success of all events, virtual or in-person, comes from audience engagement, where you give attendees opportunities to interact with each other and connect to your brand. After all, events are meant to spark networking, questions, and learning.

Below Is a List of Our Top 20 Interactive Virtual Conference Ideas To Ensure Your Online, In-Person, or Hybrid Event Is a Success

Your audience likely uses social media, like Facebook and LinkedIn, to engage with their friends, family, and professional network. That’s exactly why this sits at number one on our list of virtual conference ideas.

Which Interactive Conference Ideas Will You Use to Make Audience Engagement a Key Component of Your Virtual or Hybrid Event?

Now that venues are opening back up, you can implement these interactive conference ideas to transform your next event into a truly hybrid experience for your audience.