How to Create Content That Drives Event Engagement
Creating successful corporate events is the desire of every event planner. One of the primary considerations is keeping your attendees engaged throughout the event for maximum return on investment. Without engagement, event planners do not get much value from the meetings. This will be a waste of time and money.
Engagement is essential to the event's overall success, and this begins by creating quality content that will keep your audience engaged. With many meeting attendees losing focus on their devices and getting distracted during events, you want to apply effective strategies to keep everyone fully engaged and have a lasting impression and experience with your events.
What is Event Engagement?
Event engagement refers to attentive interaction between presenters, brands, event teams, and attendees that creates a flow of communication throughout the event. It is about attracting your audience's attention to keep them focused on the event without getting distracted.
Why is Event Engagement Important?
Increased event engagement enables you to achieve your meeting goals in real-time. It addresses various areas of your interest and helps you address each item to meet your organization's goals.
When there is increased event engagement, you will likely experience knowledge transfer between the presenters and attendees. Everyone gets involved which makes them retain information better. Event engagement enhances peer-to-peer and peer-to-presenter communication and exchanges.
How to Create Content that Increases Event Engagement
"Content is king" is a common phrase with most businesses. It is the force behind successful events, especially virtual and hybrid events. The value of your content will determine whether the attendees stay engaged during the event. Here are tips for creating content for increased engagement.
Determine Your Event Goals
The first consideration when planning an event is to create the goals you want to achieve. This can help you provide content that drives engagement and focus. Here are several questions that can help you run engaging and successful events.
- What do you expect from your attendees?
- How do you plan to hold the event?
- What type of meeting technology suits your needs?
- What are your key performance indicators, and how do you plan to evaluate them?
- What platforms do you plan to use for your events, and why do you want to use them?
- What measures will you implement to keep all your attendees engaged during the event?
Answering these questions can help you hold successful and highly engaging events. It is about getting the basics right before hosting your events. This can create seamless processes and help you determine what is best for your event.
Create Quality and Interactive Content
Every event is unique depending on the type of event and the targeted audience. It is important to create content that speaks to the needs of your attendees to keep them highly engaged during the event. The content should also encourage interaction. In this case, you should include interactive videos, quizzes, graphs, infographics, tools, and image sliders, among other content.
Quality content will captivate your audience's attention and keep them focused throughout the event. There should also be content that creates a dialogue between the presenter and the attendees. This creates a seamless flow of communication and enables people to share important insights during the event.
Be Clear with Your Content
Your content should define your event. It should inform your attendees about what you should expect from them and what you plan to achieve in the long run. Ensure you capture the information clearly to help the event attendees know what to do and make informed decisions.
If your primary goal is to create brand visibility, market your products or services, gather clients in one place, or rally people around your cause, you should go straight to the point and let your audience know your expectations. No one wants to come to an event without a clear definition or objective. This can affect the engagement and your ROI in the long run.
Create Customized Content
Depending on your expected event attendees, creating content based on the audience's demographics is imperative. This is an easy way to identify the needs of all your attendees and solve them in real time. In this case, you should determine your expected attendees' age, sex, income, and purchase behaviors to enable you to create customized content.
Check your analytics and get the demographics of your expected attendees. You want to ensure that everyone stays focused during the event and that no one gets bored because the content does not speak directly to their needs.