As I’ve written before, emotions matter in virtual events. When you host a virtual event, you’re not just blandly conveying information and checking boxes on a checklist – you’re hopefully connecting with your audience on a deeper and more memorable level.
Your choice of a virtual events platform can make a big difference in the capabilities available to turn a ho-hum event into a more impactful and interactive experience. Virtual events providers like Social27 can offer a range of features to enable your attendees to express feedback and register their emotional responses to the content – both during and after the event’s presentations.
With some of the features available on today’s virtual events platforms, you’re no longer limited to a simple range of expressions “Happy face,” “Sad face,” “Applause,” etc. One of the best examples is the mood-o-meter from Social27. With the mood-o-meter, you can give your attendees a full range of emotional options… bored, happy, agreement, surprised, etc.
There are benefits to both the audience and the event organizers from using features like the Social27 mood-o-meter at your next virtual event:
- Get more in-depth feedback from your attendees: One of the traditional challenges of hosting a virtual event is that 93% of communication is non-verbal, so you can’t expect your audience to directly “tell you” what they like (or dislike) about your event. This makes it imperative to find new ways to collect feedback in a manner appropriate to a virtual event. One of the biggest advantages of using a tool like the mood-o-meter is that it helps you create emotional profiles of your attendees, with a wider range of response options. You’ll be able to find out which parts of a presentation hit the mark (or miss the mark) with your attendees.
- Keep your attendees more engaged in the event: One of the best ways to keep attendees plugged in to what is happening during a presentation is to give them greater flexibility in how to respond to the content in real time. When people only have a few limited options to express their feelings, they are more likely to become bored or disconnected. When attendees have a richer array of feedback options, they are more likely to participate and interact with the presenter and with each other. Tools like the Social27 mood-o-meter help improve individual autonomy in responding to what they see and hear from your event. In the era of social media, instant feedback and self-expression, offering anything less is likely to make your attendees feel stifled. People are used to sharing how they feel, about anything, anytime. Give them that same freedom as part of your virtual event, and you will be rewarded with better feedback and better attentiveness.
- Obtain detailed data: A good virtual events platform should not only provide excellent capabilities for use while the presentations are in progress, but it should also give you some robust data collection and analysis tools. The Social27 mood-o-meter makes it possible to save and review the results of the feedback and instant polls from each presentation. Gauging your audience’s emotional response is part of developing business intelligence and measuring ROI for your presenters, sponsors and exhibitors at every stage of the event.
- Improve planning for future events: Once you’ve analyzed the results of the mood-o-meter for the various content and presentations delivered at your event, you’ll have a much more detailed idea of what works and what needs to be improved. Whether it’s a matter of improving the content, changing the lineup of speakers, or adjusting the format of the event, the mood-o-meter gives you a chance to find out which parts of your virtual event generate the best (and worst) responses from your attendees.
About Ike Singh
Ike Singh Kehal is a seasoned business professional with 15+ years of marketing, sales, and business development experience. His latest company, Social27 was founded in 2007 to take advantage of the growing need for social media and game dynamics integration in virtual events. Prior to starting Social27, Ike drove numerous startup projects, including Indiabulls Retail, where he was CEO. Previously, he held various business strategy positions at Microsoft, spread over a seven-year period. Ike is a committed member of the virtual events community and contributes regularly to the discussion at http://www.virtualeventshub.com
Join the conversation. Agree with me? Good. Disagree? Even Better! Tell me why…
What are some other advantages (or disadvantages) of improving your attendees range of emotional expression and real time feedback for virtual events?
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[...] Virtual event platforms like Social27 offer a wide array of interactive tools like instant polling, the “mood-o-meter” to gauge the audience’s emotional investment in the material, and other benefits that go beyond cost savings. The quantity and quality of data tracking and [...]
[...] are heavily attended or widely ignored. You can use intricate interactive features like the Social27 “mood-o-meter” to track the emotional engagement of your audience in real time – and you can use instant polling and game dynamics to keep your audience energized, [...]
[...] So make the most of the interactive features offered by your virtual event platform. For example, Social27 offers the Mood-o-meter to gauge the emotional reaction of your audience during each presentation or keynote. You can also do other types of instant [...]
I really like this post Jeff and it is chgllenaing me quite a bit. Just how do you market to people’s emotions when you don’t know what they might be? Demographics are easy but what does someone want to get out of an event emotionally or personally, that’s tough. But where there’s a will there must be a way.I think it would be interesting to see event websites addressing the different needs people have. Perhaps our Attend menu could be broken down into Information Gatherer, Information Spreader, Uber Networker, Been there done that’er. Pick one and you get content that speaks to the emotional needs of that attendee.Maybe I’ll try it on my next event and let you know how it goes.
[...] social proof: Use instant polling and voting tools from your virtual events platform (like the Mood-o-meter from Social27) to take the pulse of your audience and figure out how they’re responding to each stage of the [...]
@Jeff Cobb Thanks for adding to the isicussdon. Yes, event organizers and education professionals have to start thinking about the education design of their learning experiences. In the meetings and events world, that is often an extemely important strategy that is overlooked or unknown. Integrating technology into face-to-face and community experiences is causing a shift in many meeting professionals thinking.@Sam I just love it when you start sharing education learning tidbits with us. Now, we just need to discover creative ways to get more social and informal learning strategies into face-to-face conferences and events, as well as our virtual experiences. @VelChain I like point number three to make sure that the marketed outcomes are met. I think the challenge is to define some outcomes that can be met with audience engagement, and not depend entirely upon the sage on the stage but the guide on the side. @Midori Ok, so you don’t like my term vindicated. I chose it because I was seeing a lot of backlash against adding virtual elements to a face-to-face presentations. Also, I was seeing people stating that virtual took away from or watered down the face-to-face education. I do like your term vitalized. Also, thanks for sharing some of your background. I think those of us that have entered the meetings and events world that came from an education background view the meeting experience differently. We tend to focus on the education design of an event, whether virtual or face-to-face. What a great experience you have with a mix of education, meetings and events, AV and the green eco-friendly lifestyle. Thanks for adding to the conversation.
[...] hosts/organizers a much more detailed and insightful array of metrics and instant polling (like the Social27 Mood-o-meter) to track attendees’ interests, responses and emotional reactions to the virtual event content at [...]
Another very thoguht provoking post, Jeff! Also, great additions from Midori!For the most part, I get and agree with what you wrote here. Here’s a few more thoguhts:1) When you have a mix of skill level in attendance novice to expert you really need to be sure that the conversation and interaction is targeted to one side or the other. If the minority are expert, but they control the dialogue, you could end up with a session that bombs. Identify, structure and promote the session for a primary target audience. I’m thinking that novice to intermediate learners, are more likely interested in hearing an expert and soaking it all in. They’re sponges! Conversely, intermediate to expert learners will get more from the multi-directional conversation. 2) I love Live streaming and twitter chat, but not when it distracts the in person attendees or presenters. I think a happy medium is to have a moderator monitor the twitter stream and engage the speaker with pertinent questions and feedback. Education needs to be prepared primarily for the in-person attendee and secondarily for the virtual participants.3) If session outcomes are well defined (should be), it’s real critical to make sure that the interactive learning doesn’t short change attendees from receiving the advertised outcomes. 4) I attended a session on Second Life Virtualis in DC last month. To my surprise, the session included two additional panelists who spoke to us virtually from their office. It actually was way cool seeing their avatar and hearing their voice while sitting in a meeting room worked real well!Looking forward to following additional comments on this topic!Dave Lutz @velchain
[...] each piece of content, using instant polling and gauging emotional responses with tools like the Social27 “Mood-o-meter.” With a standard in-person event, you have only a subjective sense of how well each presentation [...]
[...] Splurge on tracking: As part of your goal-setting process for the virtual event, spend some time creating metrics to measure the results of the event. Do you want to change the attendees perception of your company? Do you want them to remember a certain product name? Do you want to drive home a key sales message or selling point? Find out what you most want your attendees to remember, and then ask them whether they remember it. Virtual event platforms like Social27 give you powerful tools to track the attention, engagement and information retention of your audience at every stage of the virtual event. You can find out which presentations are most popular, which of your sponsors and partners get the most traffic, and which messages resonate most strongly with your attendees on an emotional level (using tools like the Mood-o-meter from Social27). [...]