Engaging with your audience, and more importantly having your audience engage with you, is a feat as old as time. Instead of the Parthenon, webinars, conferences and endless social media platforms are now what we use to connect with our audience. Time may have changed our arenas for communication, but it didn’t change the main objective we have when presenting to our clients, prospective clients, and our colleagues: captivate and engage.
But how, especially in the midst of recovering from a pandemic when we’re faced with conducting Zoom meetings and hybrid events online and in person?
If you’ve asked this question yourself, you’re not alone, and you’re in luck. You don’t have to be a scholar of Aristotle or Socrates to produce effective, engaging content. Capturing the attention of your audience across multiple platforms can be as easy as 1, 2, 3.
Ask the Audience
Want to build traction on your social media platforms? Are you trying to set the tone for a webinar? Do you need to foster a warm environment amongst office personnel?
Ask! The! Audience!
No matter your platform for presenting, warming up your audience and getting a read of the room is incredibly accessible with a polling question. Regardless of the subject matter, most people have opinions, and strong ones. Allowing your audience to tell you how they feel about myriad material shows that you care about their thoughts and opinions, and it allows you to get a grasp on what to emphasize or avoid.
Polling questions, true/false/fill-in-the-blank—they all work! Taking a moment to pause your presentation to assess your audience and whether or not your subject matter is reaching them could make all the difference in the world between a successful pitch or CLE and a total flop. These pauses and check-ins also ensure your audience stays alert and engaged, so tell them all to meet you at the metaphorical polls and set yourself up for success from the start.
Build Your Own Network
One major drawback to socially distanced presentations is the lack of connectivity; however, you can change that. There are innumerable online hosting tools, and most include break-out rooms and sessions that you can set. Letting your audience know that human interaction will be part of your event builds excitement and pushes your audience to prepare, further increasingly likelihood they’ll be more engaged.
Networking on your social media platforms is easier than ever with all of the “live” features available to us. Whether you plan and promote a time to go live or you hop on to speak off-the-cuff, you can see which of your followers has joined you, and you can acknowledge them directly, even pausing to make virtual introductions between your audience members.
Remember, “if you build it, he will come,” so build those networking opportunities to increase audience engagement.
Friendly Competition Increases Engagement
The only thing people are more passionate about than their own opinions is their competitive drive to win, and introducing games or contests in your presentations and on social media guarantees that your audience will tune-in and engage (especially if prizes are up for grabs—people love free stuff).
Trivia, multiple choice quizzes with compounding points throughout your presentation, or a good old-fashioned “show and tell” can really spark enjoyment and for sure engagement.
It’s all fun and games, until… until nothing, because games are a great way to succeed at engaging with your audience, so it’s all fun.
While you contemplate which platform is best to reach your audience or if you have enough followers on your social media, you’re overlooking the point. A business page on every platform and tons of followers are great, but your focus should be on engaging with the audience you have and building relationships with them through their interest in your content, and you can easily do that through any medium by using the tips we’ve shared here.
