How to use audience activation tools to your advantage?

Everyone with event experience knows how hard it is to catch the audience’s attention. So how to use all the existing audience activation tools to your advantage?

Here is a shortlist of favourite activation tools. We concentrated on the most used features and most common use cases. So you don’t have to worry about thinking which one to choose and how to use them!

Here are Worksup activation tools you will learn more about:

In the end of the article, we will give you some tips on what to keep in mind before planning what activation tools to use?

Polls

What does it look like?

Single or multiple choice questions

Use cases:

  • Pre-event questionnaire

Get the audience excited about the event topic already before the event. Incorporate some questions in the registration form (to use later for better networking). Or get answers about your product to learn how familiar the audience is with the topic and your company. 

  • Icebreaker in the beginning of the event

Use some tasks and questions to warm up the audience. Get them prepared on how to use the technology throughout the rest of the event.

  • Engagement during speeches

Incorporate the polls into the content of the speeches to get the audiences input. But pay attention! This requires preparation from the very beginning, when onboarding the speaker. Inform them about the possibilities early on. Give some concrete examples from the platform. Make them feel inspired on how to use it to make the presentation more lively. 

  • Feedback questionnaire

Allow the participants to give feedback on the event. Motivate those who have filled in the form or answered the fastest.

Create questions for rating speakers and your event. Use them to measure your KPIs and get suggestions for future events.

Options to present results:

  • Bar or pie diagram
  • Download Excel file to analyze the results later 

Text tasks

What does it look like?

Text box where the input is short or long text. 

Use cases:

  • Workshop or teamwork results

Use the text tasks for input from participants. Ask them to submit workshop or teamwork discussion results as text. Gather all the information to later show the results on screen and discuss with a wider audience.

  • Search for keywords

Use the text task to get insights from the audience. Ask about their feelings or thoughts on a topic. Make them submit related keywords that are relevant to the presentation and event.

For example

“How are you feeling today” or “What kind of event is environmentally friendly – answer with keywords”

Options to present results:

  • Answer-by-answer
  • Timed slideshow
  • Wordcloud
  • Download results

Image tasks

What does it look like?

Upload and submit images from desktop or mobile device. 

Use cases:

  • Collecting emotions during events

Use the image task to ask the participants to send a picture of their setting. They could send a picture of their home office or from where they are viewing the event from. Collect the images to show them to others. This way you can still connect people although they are participating virtually. 

  • Capturing visual results of teamwork

Ask the participants to upload a picture of the team poster or other visual presentation.  View together with a larger audience to make conclusions together. 

  • Drawings or other visual materials

Let the audience submit their visual ideas by drawings or post-it notes. Not everybody is articulate in their text. Sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words!

Options to present results:

  • One-by-one
  • Timed slideshow
  • Download results

Quizzes

What does it look like?

Answer choice questions or submit text answers. The winner is either who responded the fastest or who answered the most questions correctly.

Use cases:

  • Summary of content/presentation 

Test how well the audience was paying attention during the presentation.  Give them the motivation beforehand by announcing a competition prize. Make 3-5 questions about the presentation and test their knowledge. Best if the questions are a bit tricky to see who was listening carefully. Most people are competitive by nature so use it to your advantage.

  • Sponsor and supporter awards

Give the sponsor or supporter a chance to give away prizes too to gain more visibility during your event. Ask the audience to answer a few questions about the sponsor or their product. Give the winner prizes to how you choose to present the results. Everyone loves free stuff :).

Options to present results:

  • Lottery wheel for raffle results

Lottery wheel enables you to choose a random winner or winners of your quiz. You can spin the wheel among the correctly answered participants. As more answers are coming up, refresh the data to spin again.

You can also spin the wheel and give the chance to all the participants.

  • Podium for competition

In case you wish to inject some energy to your audience, you can use the podium output instead of the lottery wheel. With this option you can choose the quickest who answer your quiz and give out prizes.

In both cases, when the winner is announced, they will receive confetti showers!

What to keep in mind when planning for which activation tools to use:

  1. Who is it for?

Make sure you use tools that your target audience is familiar with. If the audience has never experienced using event tools before – start out easy! 

  1. Think in advance!

Think about the tools already before you reach out to a speaker to present at the event. Be informed yourself first, then you are also able to sell your activation ideas to the presenters. 

  1. Think about the flow!

    Think the whole flow through – from all sides. Starting from how the speaker will incorporate the tool into the presentation. Continuing with how the participant is informed how to use the tools. And think about yourself – how you as the organizer are able to present and download the results.
     
  2. Don’t make it complicated!

The idea of activation tools is to have fun and engage with the content. Don’t overcomplicate it :).

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