Keep your guests invested, making of your event the most memorable from the rest.

Audience engagement is a critical indicator for the success of any event – but what it looks like will vary hugely depending on what it is. If you’re hosting a party for bloggers and influencers, it might be measured in tweets, Instagram posts and Youtube video views. If you’re holding a training event or conference, perhaps success in interaction looks like lots of questions asked and Q&As participated in.

Essentially, event engagement is your attendees doing what it is that you wanted or intended for them to do, and whether they walk away satisfied.

We’ve got some top tips to help you do so:

Why does engagement matter?

Fundamentally, there’s little point in organising an event if your audience doesn’t engage with. Whatever your aim, you’re unlikely to achieve it without a degree of engagement. Engaged audiences will learn better and retain more.

It’s also better for them – this isn’t all about how well the event works for your business. If attendees don’t get anything out of your event, they won’t return, and engaging with the event is a great way to ensure they feel it has been useful and worthwhile. You’ll have a competitive advantage over competitors with a less engaging offering.

Decide on what success looks like

Before your event is booked or planned, think about the ways in which you want your audience to interact. Everything else about the planning process should follow on from this, and if you make the decision far in advance, you can ensure that it stays in the forefront of your mind.

Look at the strategic aims of your organisation or business and think about the ways that engagement at your event could help to fulfil those aims. Bear in mind that if you’re facilitating a networking event or teambuilding activity, interaction and engagement between attendees might be just as important as engagement with a speaker.

Measure your engagement

The way that you measure engagement with your event will differ depending on the kind of engagement that you’re tracking. You could use surveys, social media statistics, the number of questions asked or qualitative analysis with a few members of the audience.

Whatever you do, make sure that you measure it against similar events that you have organised and over time. That way, when you notice dips or peaks in engagement, it’s easier to take a closer look at the data and refine your events to capitalise on that. Perhaps the decision to hire a celebrity speaker resulted in a greater number of questions asked? Build on this, and book more big names in future.

Increase engagement in future

The golden ticket is increasing engagement at your events – and the best way to do that is to increase the interactive elements. Encourage questions, have activities your audience can take part in and utilise technology like social media.

Mike Piddock, Founder and CEO at event engagement technology providers Glisser says a focus on speakers is important: “First and foremost, understand that your event can be made or broken by your presenters. They are the glue that holds everything together and it is paramount to make sure they are well-prepared, confident and articulate.

“Combine that with an effective usage of some innovative event tech and you’re well on your way to keeping your audience hooked.”

Quick tips on how to make sure audiences engage

• Audience engagement is what ensures an event works for you and your audience.
• To increase engagement, you need to know what success looks like for you.
• Measuring engagement will let you see what works and what doesn’t, and capitalise on that.
• Increase engagement with more interactive elements to your event.
• Great speakers are an easy shortcut to better engagement with your event.

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