Encouraging engagement during virtual sessions can feel intimidating. While the atmosphere at an in-person conference can help to pull attendees in, at a virtual conference, organizers might worry that attendees won’t feel inspired to join in the chat and ask questions. While opportunities for in-depth virtual engagement are crucial, it’s also important to provide ways to make engagement and attendee feedback as easy as possible.
Whova’s new session-specific polls can help jumpstart sessions and encourage interaction in an especially easy way for attendees. It just takes a second to input an answer to a poll, but that moment of interaction can help pull attendees into the session, take a stance in the discussion, and even help the speaker interact with the audience as the session progresses, ensuring that they won’t be tempted to start scrolling through another tab during the presentation.
Fuel the discussion in real time with insights and feedback
Session polls are more than just a tool to get attendees interested — they can give attendees an active voice in the discussion that speakers can respond to. For instance, a speaker might set up a poll for a session before the event even begins with questions like How many of you are entrepreneurs? or How many of you are students? Once the responses come in, the speaker can get a better idea of the demographics of those interested in their session and then tailor the talk to their interests!
Likewise, speakers can also run polls during the session to gauge the audience’s opinion on a topic as the session progresses, and choose to display the results and ask attendees to react to the responses. This can prompt conversation and discussion among attendees as they explain their answers or ask questions about others. Speakers can also run polls after the session is over to collect feedback on the session to take into account for the next event.
Encourage conversation and engagement with a variety of poll types
There are a variety of different types of polls that speakers can choose between, such as word clouds, starred ratings, checkboxes, and multiple-choice options. Depending on what the purpose of the individual session will be, these types of polls can be employed in a number of ways.
A speaker might start a session with a word cloud poll by asking attendees to each submit a word that describes leadership. When the word cloud is quickly created, they can use those words as a starting point to encourage conversation, ask the audience questions, or discuss the results.
Meanwhile, multiple-choice polling is a great way to quickly gauge the audiences’ thoughts on an issue or even quiz them to see how much they know about a topic, and starred rating can help quickly get their thoughts on an issue or see how they feel about a particular session.
Increase response rate with automatic pop-ups and gamification
Worried that the attendees won’t participate? Organizers can choose to use some of Whova’s gamification options, such as the Leaderboard, to encourage participation by incentivizing attendees to interact with engagement opportunities in order to earn points and compete for a prize.
Speakers and organizers can also easily increase the response rate by choosing to have the poll automatically pop up as soon as attendees enter the virtual session, encouraging them to express their thoughts right away.
Easy set-up for both speakers and organizers
Polls are simple to set up through all stages of the event! Speakers can start implementing polls right from the very beginning by creating polls directly from the speaker set-up page while building the session. They can also continue to add, edit, and delete polls throughout the event with just a few clicks on the session’s agenda item from both mobile and desktop to adjust to any changes as the event goes on.
Organizers also have full control over which polls are run in sessions by adding, deleting, and creating themselves. They can also choose to have all polls need to be approved by an organizer for an extra level of moderation!
Answer on both the mobile app and web portal
Accessibility is key to engagement, so Whova makes it easier than ever for attendees to share their thoughts through polling from any platform. Session polls are immediately embedded beside the session video, in a sidebar next to the session on desktop and in a tab beneath the video on mobile. Attendees can pull it up while watching on either device, or even fill out the polls on one while watching on the other!
Make sessions feel alive
Polls are a great way to keep sessions stay engaging and educational throughout the event. Whova can help you give attendees a voice and allow speakers to implement thoughts and feedback before, during, and after the sessions in more effective ways than ever.
Interested in how else you can increase engagement and interaction at your upcoming virtual or hybrid event? Reach out to Whova today for more information and a free demo.
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