A Wider Net

Raise your hand if you’ve attended a virtual event. Now raise your hand if, while attending that very event, you switched over to read email, browse something else on the web and, perhaps, even forgot that you had the even open in another window. Herein lies the greatest challenge the virtual even industry will face as the market becomes more comfortable with the idea of going virtual: engagement.

What is Engagement?

Engagement consists of behaviors exhibited by the event attendees that demonstrate an active level of involvement in every aspect of the event. That means that:

• promotion and registration are part of the engagement
• the experience of entering the event and being guided through content are part of the engagement
• each presentation’s ability to hold the attendees attention is part of the engagement

In short, engagement isn’t something that happens in moments.  It happens over time across many channels and permeates the event experience.

So how do you plan for quality engagement?

Think like an attendee and create the experience first.  Map out, start to finish, what the entire experience will consist of from registration to pre-event gaming to the event itself and even the follow up.  Once you’ve mapped out the entire experience you’re ready to start creating a project plan that includes specific tactics to bring your experience to life.

How do we do it?

Glad you asked. We here at Cramer have a methodology for thinking about engagement during a virtual experience that we call eCAST. You can learn more about eCAST and hear an in depth discussion about engagement during virtual events in a video we produced specifically about this complex problem.

So how do you engage your attendees online?