Use Technology for More Engaging Events

Keeping participants engaged during a conference or other live event is an important task. Guests will have a much better experience if they get to participate and be active instead of just being talked at. As the world becomes more digital, opportunities for attendee engagement have widened, and there are many tools available to help you out.

Hashtags are a great way to get attendees involved on social media. Before the conference, create a hashtag that's unique to the event. Include the hashtag in your promotional materials before the show and explain how and when to use it. Doing this gets attendees to interact with each other and with you. There are a ton of ways you can utilize hashtags, including:

• Holding contests on social media sites where the participant needs to include the hashtag in their post to win.
• Having guests submit questions to speakers and panelists via Twitter with the hashtag included in their tweet. If you have the budget, you can set up a screen so that attendees can see the tweets show up in real time.
• Having guests post pictures from the conference on Instagram or Facebook with the hashtag included in the post.  

As the event organizer, you are able to watch all of these interactions happen and find about what people are thinking about the event. People who didn't attend the conference will see also be able to see the posts, which is free publicity for you that could help gain attendees for your next event. It's pretty much a win-win.

Another way to engage guests during events is to use polling programs. There are many options available online that allow you to propose a question to your guests and have their responses show up within your presentation in real time. Attendees will love the opportunity to pull out their devices and voice their opinion. A speaker can ask about points on the current topic and use the results for an immediate response or to determine the audience's preference for further topics, which keeps the crowd interested. If you're doing awards or choosing a winner for a contest, attendees can vote for their favorite option, which makes them feel that they had an impact on what happened.

There are also numerous phone apps that have been designed for employee engagement at events. Within these apps you can not only embed your floor plan and schedule, but you can include social media channels, photo galleries, speaker profiles, and messaging systems so that guests have a variety of different ways to connect and stay updated.

Have you tried any of these at your events?