When you close the doors after the last guest leaves your live event, you hope everyone had an amazing time. You might find yourself considering what you could have done differently to increase engagement. And even though you’ll be sending out post-event surveys, you’ll wonder whether your event met everyone’s expectations.
What if there was a way you could improve engagement and gain real-time insights into your attendees’ thoughts in one simple step?
As impossible as that might sound, it’s actually very manageable. The answer lies in incorporating live polling and Q&A sessions into your next event.
Live Polling and Q&A Sessions: What Are the Benefits?
As you plan your next event, you should always be on the lookout for ways to help guests find a more enriching experience. Incorporating live polls and Q&A sessions can help your guests have a better time in several ways.
Fosters Interaction and Learning
When your guests have the opportunity to participate in a poll, they can see in a concrete way how their opinions and experiences differ from others. Live polls also encourage guests to chat with those around them, giving them a chance to network—something nearly every guest hopes to do.
Similarly, live Q&A sessions allow guests to learn from an expert in an entirely different way than they can from a typical speaker. When a guest has a question, chances are others in the room are wondering the same thing. These Q&A sessions help guests retain information better.
Boosts Participation and Excitement
In a Q&A session, not only do guests remember answers better, but speakers also get the chance to demonstrate their knowledge in a dynamic environment. It forces them to think on their feet, impressing guests and showing them that you, as the event planner, know how to pick incredible speakers.
This exciting environment also serves as a great way to break up the monotony of other sessions. Whether a typical speaking session or a networking event with cocktails, there’s nothing quite like mixing professional topics with a unique opportunity to learn and network all at the same time.
Offers Real-Time Critiques
While most of your planning is done before the event, you can use live polling to your advantage to understand more about your guests’ opinions and preferences.
Whether you use this information to tweak your current event or to plan a more tailored event for the future, live polling offers a wealth of insights into your attendees’ minds that you can (and should) incorporate into your planning.
Tips for Planning Polling and Q&A Sessions
As exciting and interactive as live polling and Q&As can be, don’t forget that not all sessions are created equal. While many of these sessions are left up to the speaker, you should still have a degree of planning and control to ensure that each session meets or even exceeds guests’ expectations.
Plan Questions Beforehand
Planning your polling questions ahead of time can help increase engagement. You can ensure that your questions are relevant, clear, simple, and varied.
Introduce Perks
Increasing engagement while keeping things authentic can be a tough line to walk. One way to keep interest high is to offer incentives through raffles or prizes for random participants. This can often produce a high number of genuine responses and keep guests invested in the results of polls and Q&As.
Share Results
One mistake many event managers make is not sharing the results of their polls with guests. Much of the reason attendees participate is to see how their answers line up with those around them. When you host a live survey, make sure to share results with your audience. You can do this in a variety of ways; sharing results on your event’s landing page is a simple yet effective method.
Choose the Right Software
Whether you’re sharing poll results or displaying questions, you need a live event software program that can take in hundreds or thousands of answers in a poll. It should have many other qualifications as well.
What to Look for in Your Software Program
When you choose your corporate event software program, there are several things you should look for to ensure it will provide a top-notch polling experience for your guests. Here are a few qualities your software program should have:
- Real-time data collection: Whether you’re anticipating a few dozen responses or a few thousand, your platform should be able to reliably process and display every response in real-time.
- A user-friendly interface: From the IT crowds to the technology-shy, every guest should be able to easily navigate your platform’s layout. This will allow them to quickly send responses and receive any necessary help. On your end, a simple interface will allow you to easily build polls so you can spend more time on other aspects of event planning.
- An anonymous voting feature: Especially in intimate settings, some guests may feel uncomfortable sharing their poll responses with the rest of the group unless everything is anonymous. This goes beyond concealing guests’ names—consider an option that doesn’t display responses until the first several have been given.
- Engaging visuals: Remember, keeping attendees’ interest is vital for giving them an excellent experience. When your live polls include exciting visuals (not like your typical PowerPoint presentations), guests will be much more engaged and attentive.
- Data preservation and analysis: Many polls will give insights into guests’ preferences and opinions. Choosing a platform that preserves and analyzes their responses can give you a valuable understanding that you can use to tailor future events.
Take Live Events to the Next Level
When you choose a user-friendly yet powerful software program, incorporating polls and Q&A sessions into your events can provide an exciting new experience for your guests. Additionally, you can gain useful insights into your attendees’ preferences so each event you host is even better than the last.