Digital events are part and parcel of the modern workforce, but they sometimes suffer from not having the same power as real-life events. According to Tech Republic, keeping attendees engaged is the key problem, given the distractions of home life and the fact that being present in-person gives you a social cue to listen to the message at hand. Tackling the causes of poor digital event engagement may be more simple than businesses at first think, and it starts with the selection of a digital events platform in the first instance.
Establishing a platform
Picking your platform has as much to do with engagement as anything else. It forms the basis of the technology you’re powering your event with, and can be as stripped down or as fully featured as you need. Increasingly, these events need to have a complete digital experience for their audiences that can replicate the real-life convention center. Forbes highlights the essential elements of this – emulating meeting rooms, seminar side-rooms, major halls, and networking spaces. This is accomplished through having flexibility and high capacity events software that allows people to have resting areas where they can remain when idle, and easily accessed chat rooms for people that want to have private conversations. Retain engagement by looking to emulate the social norms present in every networking event.
Promoting accessibility
Digital technology typically has a beneficial impact on accessibility. However, more can always be done. The University of Illinois has highlighted issues in some of the biggest video conferencing platforms concerning this, and Tech Republic has added extra food for thought on the engagement front. As well as ensuring staff is completely equal in treatment, measures as simple as providing subtitles have been found to improve engagement – even among the staff who are able to hear the presentation on hand. Giving people multiple ways of engaging with your event will help to ensure that nobody feels left behind and that they can get all of the relevant information they need.
Remembering the objective
As you hurriedly set up technology and make sure it’s configured to the needs of your audience, it can be easy to forget the actual goal of events and corporate networking. It’s important, even with the digital facade, to retain normality and deliver the same messages and events that you would have done in a completely physical way of interfacing. Focus on the clarity of your message, focus on how the event would engage your attendees regardless of any barriers to their attendance in-person, and look to see how you can make use of the technology to put on a really good event.
Retaining that normality is the key in these logistically troubled times. Quickly changing to the new ways of working is difficult, but with the right application, it needn’t have a big impact on the conduct of your events. Planning is important in that you ensure you have the right platform with all the functionality to support your events, but delivery is always the deciding factor in a good or poor event.
Leave a Reply