Audience engagement is the largest concern for event organizers when it comes to virtual events. People are more likely to get distracted when they are watching a session at home rather than in-person. Speakers and organizers need to work a bit harder to hold attendee’s attention. Otherwise, attendees may find themselves scrolling on their phone or completing some household chores while only partially paying attention to sessions. 

Polling is a great way to promote audience engagement during virtual event sessions. Polls can draw attendees back in when they’ve started to lose focus by giving them a specific action to complete. They also help the speaker gauge attendees’ interests to better tailor their session content and conversations to topics that will keep their audience engaged. 

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How to Incorporate Polls into a Virtual Event Session 

Polls can serve many purposes throughout a session. Here are some ideas on how to incorporate polls: 

  • Conduct a light-hearted poll to break the ice: Think of a funny question to break the ice at the start of a session. It can be something about the attendees such as which region they are joining from, or a silly question like does pineapple belong on pizza. This is a great way to get people acquainted with the polling function and start some casual conversation in the chat before diving into the meat of the session. 
  • Gauge Attendees’ Current Knowledge: It can be helpful for speakers to ask a question at the start of the session or before diving into a new topic during a session to understand the level of existing knowledge that the audience has on the topic. You don’t want to assume everyone knows all of the vocabulary or basic concepts and later figure out that half of the audience felt lost during the session because you didn’t lay a proper foundation. 
  • Identify Attendees’ Interests: Conduct a poll to learn more about why your session participants chose to attend this particular session. Ask polls on what they hope to get out of the session, which topic you’ll be discussing that’s most interesting to them (and consider allocating more time to a particular topic if there is a standout favorite),or ask about their job role or background to understand how to provide examples that will be relevant to your audience. 
  • Check the Pulse on Attendees: Schedule or create a poll in the middle of the session to make sure everyone is still paying attention. This can be a content-related question to check how much information attendees are retaining, a silly question, or to solicit feedback on the session itself (audio, video, pacing, etc.) to ensure attendees are able to hear and understand everything. 
  • Survey Attendee Opinions: If the speaker is discussing a topic with multiple viewpoints, they can conduct a poll to see where attendees fall on the topic and encourage people to share their thoughts in the chat. This is a great way to spark an interactive dialogue. 
  • Comprehension Quizzes: Speakers can also use quizzes at the end to gauge whether the viewers understood or retained the information shared in the session. 

It’s a great idea to mix up your polling usage to include different types of polls so that attendees don’t get bored. The goal is to keep them engaged and varying your approach to polls and content delivery is a great way to keep them on their toes

Social27 Virtual Event Platform Polling Features 

On Social27 Virtual Event Platform, speakers have flexibility when it comes to polling. Polls can be pushed out to attendees as soon as they are created or scheduled to appear to attendees at a specific date/time.  

Speakers and moderators have a lot to juggle between hosting the session, monitoring the chat, and responding to attendee questions. Scheduling polls in advance helps them have one less thing to set up during a session.  

Scheduling polls is especially helpful during simulive sessions; sessions that are pre-recorded but broadcasted in a live session where everyone is able to view it together and participate in a simultaneous chat. Since speakers will know ahead of time exactly where to place polls throughout the session it is easy to schedule them in advance – and it allows the speaker to focus on audience engagement in the chat during the actual session broadcast. 

On Social27 Virtual Event Platform, polls can be created by users with the following roles:  

  • Event Owners  
  • Moderators  
  • Speakers assigned to the session the poll appears in  
  • Booth representatives assigned to the booth the poll appears in  

When attendees respond to a poll, the page will reload to display their response. Anyone, attendees, included, can view the poll results. Moderators can click ‘View Results’, whereas attendees simply need to navigate to the ‘Polls’ tab in the chat sidebar to see how all respondents have answered the poll. These results are updated in real time as attendees respond to the poll. Viewing the poll results helps attendees learn about one another too! 

Social27 Virtual Event Platform Has Tools to Keep Your Audience Engaged 

Want to create a truly engaging virtual event? It starts with choosing the right virtual event platform!  

Social27 Virtual Event Platform gives event owners and speakers the tools they need to put on an interactive virtual event that attendees won’t forget! With in-session polling, Q&As, and Social27 Stream, it’s easy to get attendees involved in your sessions on Social27 Virtual Event Platform.  

Ready to host your own event, and try out these virtual session ideas? Book a demo today to learn about Social27 Virtual Event Platform and see how you can build a virtual event that will keep your audience engaged throughout every session!