When hosting an event or conference, audience engagement is hugely important. Hosting a conference with little engagement can be disheartening, especially for those businesses that rely on these conferences to reach their desired audience. 
Ensuring that your audience remains engaged helps improve the conference experience for both attendees and those hosting the conference. But how do you increase audience engagement and meeting productivity during a conference? 

At Venton, we have worked with a wide variety of businesses to manage standout conferences and events that are engaging and interesting, so we have accumulated a few tips that will help your next conference tower above the rest. 

1. Creating an Agenda 

When beginning to plan an event, conference or meeting, audience engagement may be your biggest concern, but focusing on the event agenda should be the first item on your to-do list. 

Conferences that lose audience engagement tend to be those that come across as unprepared or that veer from the original topic. These issues can be annoying and seen as a waste of time by audience members, leading to a lack of concentration and engagement for the rest of the event. 

Creating an agenda and organising speakers, topics and activities is the ideal solution, allowing you to plan the majority of your upcoming conference ahead of time, and troubleshooting any issues you may foresee occurring surrounding the topic, speakers or engagement of talks.

2. Selective Invitations 

Selective invitations may not sound like an option to choose when trying to spread news of your upcoming conference, it is however an approach that narrows down your audience to a specialised group that will be the ideal target audience for your conference or event. 

It can be tempting, when planning a large event, to invite as many big names and businesses as you can think of, but it doesn’t always work out. When providing an in-depth conference on a particular topic or subject it is in your best interest to advertise to companies and individuals that will take an interest in what you are offering. 

Narrow down your guest list by only inviting those that will have a vested interest in your conference or event, and avoid inviting those that won’t. This isn’t to say that you should not also advertise open tickets or invitations on your website, but those that choose to purchase those tickets or accept those invitations are much more likely to be interested and engaged throughout your conference. 

3. Include In-Conference Entertainment 

Entertainment does not mean including a live theatre act or a band in your setup or conference agenda. Adding some form of entertainment to your event can help to up conference and meeting productivity and engagement as attendees pay more attention due to the games or activities included. 

Simple activities, like conference bingo or scavenger hunts, are an easy way to boost audience engagement and ensure that attendees are paying attention. 

Discover Venton’s Conference Centre Today

Enjoy productive meetings at Venton Conference Centre, putting your needs first. Our event management team are on hand to help make your next event go on without a
hitch, using our incredible technology and conference space. Get in touch today to begin planning your next effective business meeting.