social media Archives - Mainstream | Live Video Agency

How to Improve Your Virtual Events: Tips To Drive Audience Engagement

Nick Bacon — Thu, 10 Nov 2022 13:02:32 +0000

This post was originally published on 8/6/19, and was updated on 11/10/22.

“DE-FENCE!” “DE-FENCE!” “Na na na na na na naaaahh!” “Encore!!!”

Whether you’re cheering on your favorite sports team, singing along at a concert or clapping at the end of a presentation, you don’t just experience the events you attend. You’re an active participant. In doing so, you elevate the experience not just for yourself, but for everyone around you. Participation can even alter the outcome of an event. So why is audience interaction such an afterthought when it comes to virtual events?

Making your webcasts interactive is one of our most important tips when it comes to improving your virtual events. Encouraging audience participation creates a more engaged community and a better viewing experience. So let’s take a look at some tips and tools that allow you to do that.

How to improve your virtual events

The basics: chat

One of the most basic ways to improve virtual events is a chat feature. Chat threads connect the audience to other viewers, creating community around your brand’s messages. Connecting viewers demonstrates that they are not in a vacuum: there are others, scattered around the world, who share common interests.

It also gives audience members a chance to engage with your brand directly, by giving them a chance to ask questions, click on any links you share, and more.

While a chat feature is one of the easiest ways to give your virtual events a boost, it does take some time investment on your part. An unmonitored chat feed can easily go awry, and too much chat clutter can overshadow the broadcast itself. Moderation is critical: it’s important to keep discussion healthy, but focused. Through thoughtful input, event producers can guide the conversation. Help steer conversation by establishing clear guidelines upfront about what types of communication will not be allowed.

Pinning a comment to your Facebook Live event keeps the audience focused.

If your webcast is running through social media, then chat is likely already endemic. But if you’re running an event through your website, you might need to leverage a third-party chat app. One embeddable solution we’ve used is Chatroll. Offering both free and paid models, it also includes branding and customization features that enable a live event producer (with some front-end web development chops) to create a chat application that matches brand style guidelines. Also important, audiences can log in with either social credentials, SSO, or a semi-anonymous “Guest” account.

More advanced: Q&A, polling, and real-time feedback

Audience feedback can influence an event’s outcome. Just like when the crowd’s chants drive a baseball player to hit a home run, a skillful event producer can take feedback from the audience and incorporate it into a webcast, making the event work better for everyone watching.

One easy way to gather that feedback? A Q&A feature. Giving attendees a chance to ask questions during your keynote or panel discussions means your event content will be even more tailored to their interests and needs. And it’s an easy add—most of the time, including a Q&A means simply adding 10-15 minutes at the end of your run of show.

If your live stream has natural breaks, like ad rolls or live video playback, then a Floor Director can relay one or two comments to your talent.

What is often overlooked is the best way to send the best questions to your presenters. If your webcast has an in-person component to it, then your digital audience’s questions can integrate seamlessly. Appoint a Q&A moderator who is physically at the event, and when the time comes, pass them the microphone to communicate any questions from your online community.

But if there’s no physical component to your event, it might feel stilted for presenters to scroll through a feed of questions or have an offscreen voice projecting questions. Mainstream normally solves this issue by monitoring questions that come in throughout the event and dropping them in a shared Google Doc. Then, we’ll display the Doc on a reference monitor just offset. An added benefit for this method is that Q&A moderators can be remote, allowing clients to participate from an offsite location.

Polls, another interactive webcast tool, serve a similar purpose to Q&A: they provide a limited set of data back to the presenters, who can analyze and interpret that information during the event. Like Q&A, polls have two components: the question, and the (collective) answer. When incorporating polls into a webcast, be sure to include plenty of time for your audience to respond to the initial survey. At minimum, you’ll want to give attendees 5 minutes to respond to each poll question.

You’ll want to avoid using polls if your poll data has a clear “correct” answer: due to heightened anonymity, polls tend to elicit more mischievous responses. Put simply: expect trolls.

As a webcast production company specializing in interactive content, we have leveraged (or built) many tools for polling, Q&A, and other real-time dynamic data displays. The best tool we’ve used is Sli.do. Importantly, it functions very well on mobile: real-time interactivity works best when it’s coming from a second screen. As with Chatroll, Slido easily embeds on your website. While pricier at $200 – $1,000 per event, Slido’s ease of use makes it worth the price.

The unexpected: unique ideas to improve virtual event engagement

While chat and Q&A are important for any virtual event, we’ve all attended enough events to expect these features at a bare minimum. So how else can we capture our audiences’ attention and get them to interact with us in new ways?

We recently collected unique virtual event ideas from event experts and Mainstream customers around the country, and they did not disappoint. From at-home dance parties to virtual competitions featuring audience voting, leading event planners are finding creative ways to drive audience participation and elevate what virtual events look like.

Check out the full list of ideas here >

Counterpoint: is simple better?

Interactivity creates engagement, but is it worth dividing your audience’s attention? Given too many distractions, your audience can lose focus. An even greater risk is asking your audience to participate by using a second device or looking at a different screen: when they look elsewhere, it can be a challenge to bring them back.

Amazon simplifies the interactive webcast into one screen, combining a live feed with a chat overlay.

Our recommendation is to leverage one activity at a time. Asking too much of your audience will drive them away. Also, focus their attention! For example: when you’re looking for messages in the chat, pin a moderated comment to the top of the chatroom. Afterward, remove the pinned comment. Last, stay away from duplicate tools. Q&A and Chat operate similarly, so only choose one.

Our recommendation is to leverage one activity at a time. Asking too much of your audience will drive them away. And focus their attention! For example: when you’re looking for messages in the chat, pin a moderated comment to the top of the chatroom. Afterward, remove the pinned comment. Last, stay away from duplicate tools. Q&A and chat platforms operate similarly, so only choose one.

What have we learned?

Adding interactivity to your webcasts can help bridge the gap between virtual and physical events. Tools like chat, Q&A, and polling create a more compelling live event experience for your global audience. When producing a webcast, try to leverage the built-in tools available on your platform: comments, live chat, and Reactions are all endemic to a live social experience. Drive optimal engagement through focused interactivity, and your audience will continue to grow.

Mainstream produces professional virtual events that engage, enrich and entertain.

Learn more >

6 Best Practices for Running a Facebook Live Event

Nick Bacon — Wed, 23 Aug 2017 20:38:11 +0000

Streaming on Facebook Live

Live video streaming is a remarkably engaging tool that brands, content producers, and events can use to connect with followers and grown an audience. While a bit later to the game than other social media platforms, Facebook has made a significant push to incorporate live streaming into its platform. In 2016, 16% of marketers reported using Facebook Live – and with an engagement rate 3x that of traditional videos, it’s easy to understand why!

With a few dozen streams on Facebook Live now under our belts, we have identified a few best practices that can help increase your viewership and drive engagement with your audience. Whether you’re streaming a press conference, an annual meeting, an interview series, or a live music festival, these practices all apply.

(If you have any specific questions, give us a call or shoot us an email – we are always happy to walk people through their first Facebook live setup!)

Promote Your Event Beforehand

If you were having a party and didn’t tell anyone about it, you wouldn’t expect anyone to show up, right?

The same is true for a Facebook live event. In order to reach a high-quality audience, you need to promote it beforehand. This is especially important if paid promotion is a part of your marketing strategy, as you are currently unable to boost a Facebook Live event. Make sure you include event specifics in your promotion posts, such as when the event will occur, who will be involved, and how you want your audience to engage (like, share, leave questions for your presenter, sign up or register, and so on).

Run the Event Through Your Brand’s Facebook Page

If you have already built up your brand’s presence on Facebook, then you should absolutely run your event through your brand’s page. There is no need to create an event for your broadcast or run it through your personal page. Depending on time and duration of your broadcast, you can normally expect 10-25% of your total followers to engage with your content.

If you have only just begun growing your audience on Facebook, you may want to consider partnering up with a more established page in order to drive more viewership. For example: if you work at a university and want to stream an event for your department, work with your school’s social media team to stream the event through its main Facebook page.

Schedule Your Post

Facebook Live allows you to schedule a stream up to 7 days in advance. We recommend creating your live post 24 hours before you plan on going live. Viewers will be able to like and share your post prior to the event, as well as set a reminder so that Facebook alerts them once you go live. That way, your audience is already in place when you start your show!

When you schedule a Facebook Live post, it will automatically go live at its scheduled start time. You must begin your broadcast within 10 minutes of your scheduled start time, or your event will be cancelled – so make sure you are prompt!

Pin your event to the top of your Facebook page so any new visitors are alerted to your broadcast. That way, you can continue to post content prior to your event as you normally would without your stream being lost in the feed.

Keep Your Intro Brief

Unlike on other platforms, you do not want a long hold screen while your audience is settling in. Keep your hold screen up for under one minute, or your audience will begin to tune out.

If you need a bit more lead time, consider shooting pre-recorded content you can show prior to your stream starting. You could also set up a behind-the-scenes camera shot that the audience can watch while you are getting ready.

Engage Your Audience

Once you have begun your broadcast on Facebook Live, keep your audience engaged! Pin a message to the top of your comments so newcomers know what they are watching.

Your audience wants to feel like they are a part of the event. Encourage your on-screen talent to address the Facebook audience directly. It’s also very helpful to have a representative engaging in the chat, liking and replaying to your audience’s posts in real-time.

Encourage your Facebook audience to interact with your stream. Strategies may include asking questions to your presenters, participating in a raffle or give-away, voting on the content using Facebook emojis, or all of the above!

After the Event: Keep Engagement Going!

Once your event has concluded, Facebook will archive it in your video library. Your archived recording can be a powerful post-engagement tool (which, unlike your live stream, can be promoted through a paid ad campaign).

One trick that often gets overlooked: always, always, always add captions to your Facebook videos. There are highly accurate captioning companies such as Home Team Captions or 3Play Media which can help you with this. 85% of Facebook videos are viewed without sound, so captions are essential. Studies have shown that adding captions increases a video’s average watch time by 12%.

If there were some moments during your Facebook live broadcast that your audience found particularly engaging, cut those segments out and re-upload them as short clips. You can repurpose these shortened videos on YouTube, Instagram, or other social media channels.

Conclusion

A properly optimized Facebook Live event is one of the best engagement tools in the digital marketing tool belt today. If you are considering producing your Facebook Live event, contact us today and let us know – we are here to help!