From the Experts, Your Event Career
Corporate Event Planning Course Sample: Audience Engagement 101
If you’re thinking about getting started in the corporate event planning industry, there’s no better time than now. We’re not going to lie: it takes a lot of hard work and the stakes are high. More than ever, companies are taking advantage of ways to broaden their reach and increase attendance and participation. To succeed, you need to know what AV providers are offering clients and how to use them to better the events you plan. What does this entail? Take a sneak peek at our corporate event planning course and find out!
Unit B:
In the corporate event planning course, unit B explores the three biggest components of modern corporate events: venues, catering, and audiovisual requirements. Before you can make any decisions for these components, you’ll need a solid understanding of the company’s goals and needs.
Check out this short video snippet with QC instructor and tutor Alyssa Perna. She’ll explain what audience engagement technology is, its uses, and its value in enhancing corporate events!
Recap:
Audience engagement technology is exactly what it sounds like. It’s finding new ways (using technology) to hook audiences to/at your event!
Three ways to use audience engagement technologies:
Alyssa addresses three basic ways to use technology to engage audiences:
- Providing attendees with information
- Example: Many music festivals now release mobile apps to help attendees get the most out of their experience. From artist line-up information to festival ground maps to GPS tracking of friends while you’re there, more and more features are added every year.
- Companies can receive information from attendees
- Example: Some university classrooms integrate live-polling during class. The professor would ask a question during their lecture and students must use an app on their computers to answer. The answers and the number of participants are displayed in graph-form on screen at the front of the room. The professor effectively engages students and has an idea of how many people are actually paying attention!
- Pro-active communication between users
- Example: This feature is closely related to the use of an event-specific app. Features such as direct messaging, push notifications, and contact address books allow people to communicate with other people using the app.
How can it enhance corporate events?
Alyssa addresses a number of ways that audience engagement tech tools can enhance corporate events. Some of these enhancements are obvious for guests, but enhancements also come in side-benefits for stakeholders.
- When choosing to integrate technology in your events, your client is able to show that they are up-to-date with innovation. Using existing tech in new ways or testing new applications sets the event organizers apart as event industry leaders. You’re showing that you’re technologically apt, and a step-up from what others in the industry are doing. It attracts more interest in the event.
- Even the most engaging TedTalk speakers may lose a few people to their devices. Capitalize on the knowledge that people will be on their phones at the event anyways. When you integrate the use of phone apps at an event, you can change a distraction to a tool, helping you draw audiences back to you!
- Attendees may also use the app after the event to engage with other attendees. Any professional connections can continue to foster on the app, eventually leading to outside partnerships.
- Audience engagement tools are another avenue for marketing and promotion of a brand. Whether it’s the use of a logo during a webinar or livestreaming event, or live-Tweeting using an event- or brand-specific hashtag created just for the event. They create visually-engaging ways to deliver the company’s or sponsor’s brand message. In the case of live-Tweeting, you’ll generate social media buzz, too.
Many companies are building their own apps:
Planners increasingly incorporating audiovisual technology in different ways as part of their events. AV providers used to just provide the screens and projectors. Now they’re expanding their services to provide digital décor, branding prospects, and increased engagement opportunities. Corporate planning professionals need to be on top of it all if they want to succeed in the industry.
But don’t just use technology just for the sake of using it. If it doesn’t add value to your event or the brand, there’s no point. Especially with the extra money and resources you’d need to get the technology up and running if there’s no return on the investment, it’s a waste of everyone’s time!
This article goes over event technologies to engage guests at physical events. But events aren’t just held in physical venues now. Learn more about handling virtual attendance and livestreaming events here!
