How To Make A Virtual Event Engaging

Highly popular amongst businesses, virtual events remain a place where individuals have the opportunity to connect and network with others.

Virtual events have been on the rise since 2020, and when you consider that 40% of marketers’ events were projected to be virtual in 2022, their popularity is still evident.

That said, making a virtual event engaging is essential to keeping your attendees interested and entertained, and will have a positive impact on attendance rates at future events you host.

Tips for making a virtual event engaging include, but are not limited to:

1. Offer communication opportunities
2. Hire a virtual event production company
3. Make use of interactive elements
4. Encourage audience participation with polls

1. Offer Communication Opportunities

When you consider that the potential of making connections through networking is what encourages many people to attend events, to make your virtual event engaging you will want to offer real-time communication opportunities.

As virtual events happen online, offering ways in which your attendees can communicate with other audience members, as well as organisers is crucial as the networking opportunities aren’t as easy when compared to in-person or hybrid events.

You can enable communication during your virtual event in several ways, including break-out rooms on platforms such as Zoom.

Not only does this allow your guests to collaborate and engage with each other, but also adds a personal touch to an otherwise online event.

By enabling your virtual guests to talk and converse with one another, then, you’ll create both a personable and valuable experience attendees are sure to remember.

Virtual events have been on the rise since 2020, and when you consider that 40% of marketers’ events were projected to be virtual in 2022, their popularity is still evident.

2. Hire A Virtual Event Production Company

The next tip to making your virtual event engaging is to hire a virtual event production company.

Many components go into creating and hosting a virtual event that you might not be aware of. In fact, considering that ‘74% of surveyed event leaders said their organizations are looking to hire talent with the right skills to get their desired outcomes from their virtual events’, the challenge of hosting successful virtual events is emphasised.

As such, it is highly recommended that you find a virtual event production company to help you pull off your event.

At Buffoon Media, we have years of experience in virtual event production. The majority of your virtual event is produced ahead of time in our remote studio, so you can concentrate on what’s important on the day. That said, there’ll be direct communication between the studio, location and virtual contributors before and during the event to ensure everything runs smoothly.

We can stream to a wide range of platforms including Zoom, Teams, YouTube, Vimeo, Facebook, Twitter, and more to make your event as accessible as possible.

We also offer split payments over three months to give you the option to pay monthly and to help spread the cost of your virtual event. If you’re interested in our virtual event production service, be sure to get in touch today.

3. Make Use Of Interactive Elements

Another tip to make virtual events engaging is to make use of interactive elements.

In fact, a remarkable ‘61% of marketers use videos as an interactive element to keep people engaged’, highlighting the importance of giving your audience something to do during the event to keep their minds occupied.

Interactive elements can include questionnaires and fun quizzes that put your audience’s knowledge, as well as what they’ve learned during your event to the test.

You can even offer prizes to provide your audience with an incentive to participate in the interactive element of your virtual event.

After all, there’s nothing like a bit of healthy competition to get people interested and talking.

A remarkable ‘61% of marketers use videos as an interactive element to keep people engaged’, highlighting the importance of giving your audience something to do during the event to keep their minds occupied.

4. Encourage Audience Participation With Polls

Lastly, a good way to maintain engagement throughout your virtual event is to encourage audience participation with polls.

Pre-event polling is great for two reasons. Firstly, it makes your audience feel like you’re providing content that is both relevant and tailored to their needs, helping you to provide an event of value.

When you look at the fact that ‘over 80% of people take part in virtual events for educational purposes’, the importance of getting your audience’s feedback to garner information on their interests and to add valuable content to your virtual event is highlighted.

Secondly, pre-event polling can be used to help improve attendance rates. As they’ve engaged and know the content of your event is relevant, your audience is therefore more likely to attend.

Live polling is also a very simple but effective way for the organisers of your event to engage and interact with the audience.

When you look at the fact that ‘over 80% of people take part in virtual events for educational purposes’, the importance of getting your audience’s feedback to garner information on their interests and add to valuable content to your virtual event is highlighted.

After reading this article, we hope you have a better understanding of how you can make a virtual event engaging for your audience.

We’re Buffoon Media: a bilingual media production company based in Port Talbot and London, producing and live-streaming content across the globe. Learn more about our podcast production services, as well as the other services we provide on our website.

Written by Jemima Thomas for Buffoon Media.