It is important to ensure that attendees have a positive experience. This will not only help your event succeed, but it will also encourage long-term engagement and keep participants coming back. There are many ways to increase audience engagement, from networking to streamlining registration.
If you’re looking to enhance your audience members’ experience at your event, below are some clever and affordable conversation-starting ideas that will make your event more memorable and engaging:
Multisensory Ideas
Use more of the five senses to enhance your event and increase your attendees’ experience.
- As an alternative to written materials, notes or an event schedule, use a visual moodboard, marker artist’s drawing, or a large mind map.
- Ask guests to choose a surprise cocktail based on color, shape, sound or concept.
- Hire mobile food trucks or serve breakfast or coffee outdoors to make the most of the outdoor space. This can also double as a session for networking.
- You can wire presentations into the main room, the pool, or the lounge to allow attendees to move freely and make the most of the space.
Crowd sourced Installations
Installations based on crowd-sourced ideas instill a sense ownership among participants, who will then spread the word.
- Create a graffiti board or cork board for guests to share messages, attendee biographies, business cards and other information.
- Use a hashtag on social media to gather attendees’ opinions about a topic or question.
- Organize a rapid-fire series of 20-slide presentations of five minutes each, allowing multiple speakers to quickly share their passions or bold ideas.
- Pinterest can be used to create a large visual backdrop and then display it at the event.
- Write down the goals of your attendees on tags or other props and then use them to create a display.
- Create merchandise, program content or publish the results as a memento of the event.
- Create a mobile application for your attendees so they can share their thoughts and participate in Q&A sessions in real-time. You can also streamline the registration process.
- Use contributions to create viral marketing campaigns before and after events.
Get Personable
In order to create a lively and engaging environment, it is important to foster connections and break the ice between event attendees. At TED2012 they used an innovative method to encourage guests to socialize and connect without the “first meal syndrome”, where people grab a plate by themselves and eat. TED2012 instead assigned each person a random number, and arranged picnics in the grass. You would search for the picnic basket with your assigned number, then sit down and make connections with others. The picnic set-up encouraged spontaneous conversation, turning strangers into friends.
TED2012’s oversized nametags were designed to encourage conversation. On each name tag, attendees were asked to list up to three topics that they would be open to talking about. This simple but effective strategy allowed people to easily initiate conversations. It also made attendees feel more comfortable and engaged.