Daily Q&A – Day 18 – 3 Tips for Boosting Online Engagement at your Event


Shared experiences around a subject matter rarely come more targeted than a well-organised event. And, at a well-organised event you continue the experience that often began online, as the build up and anticipation stoked on social media takes physical form in a room full of people, ready and eager to take part.

So, how do you build on that online anticipation during the event? Today’s post in the Daily Q&A challenge offers you three tips for boosting online engagement during your event.

1. Be the cheerleader, give your audience the credit they deserve

Most successful events include a visual display of the live social media content generated by the event. Consider creating a visual leaderboard to recognise and reward your top social contributors, inside and outside the venue.

2. Plan to live-tweet, and do so creatively

It pays to have someone dedicated to sharing exclusive content from the event on social media as the event progresses. Not only is this a great way to archive what is going on, but it provides a channel for building that personable, and authoritative voice so valuable to a brand online.

3. Provide smart device charging points within the venue

This seems obvious but, is it? Smartphones and tablets run out of power, eventually. Consider providing charging points for your attendees at strategic parts of the venue. No one wants to have to wander up and down unknown corridors to find a quiet place to charge a phone. Make it easy to take part in the event and charge a device at the same time, and watch your audience’s online engagement soar!

There you have it, three simple tips for boosting online engagement at your event. Use them wisely!

On the subject of visual leader boards, you could consider using a question board, before and during your event to invite questions from your audience and create even more of that pre-event buzz!

A question board? What’s one of those?

Well, we’ve built an interactive platform for asking and answering questions in real-time at assenty.com. It’s free to post and vote for questions, and incredibly easy to use, simply log in with Twitter, visit the relevant question board and post your question in seconds flat. And, because questions can be rewarded, the ‘asker’ could nab Gold, Silver or Bronze question award, something to tweet about!

Assenty makes it easy to track questions and their answers; by using a question board hosted on the platform, each question is permanently linked to its answers, and the hashtag automatically added whenever a question, or the question board is shared on social media.

So, perhaps you’d like to see how one looks, or even perhaps ask a question about this post through one!

I’ve put together a question board with some questions about boosting online engagement during an event. I’d like to invite you to add yours if you have one.

How to add your question:

Here’s an example from the question board, embedded into this blog post:

Stay in the loop

We’re blogging and tweeting our way through the Daily Q&A challenge. For updates, follow @AskWithAssenty on Twitter or like our Facebook page.

Want to run your own?

Fancy running a Q&A yourself? It’s easy to create your own question board. Details here.

Image credit: Sli.do