An event app feature which rarely fails to boost audience engagement during speaker sessions is Live Polling. Delegates love being able to weigh in, especially anonymously, and it can be a life-saver when it comes to gauging attendees’ opinion of the event. However, your speakers may be sceptical about using live polling through the event app. Communication with your speakers in the lead up to your event is critical for getting the live polls integrated event sessions successfully.
Carrying this off successfully will also help you to integrate your event app with your event, rather than alienating it.
The steps below will show you how to promote the live polls, excite your presenters and help them get people to participate.
1. Email Communication
Include information about live polls in your pre-event communication. The earlier the better, but ideally start about three to four weeks before the event. This way, your presenters will have enough time to think about how to space the polls out in their presentation.
Give information on how you plan to use your event app in general and perhaps some suggestions for how they could integrate polling into their session.
2. Co-host a Webinar
In most cases, it is not needed to go this extra mile. But if you do, co-hosting a webinar with your event app provider is the ultimate way to help your speakers get familiar with the live poll feature and gain confidence about using it.
To make the webinar as relevant as possible, dedicate about one-fourth of the time to the Q&A where you can address speakers’ specific questions. Record the session and share it afterwards.
This pre-event discussion allowed us to be in perfect sync on the day of the event.
3. Meet Onsite
Once onsite, meet your presenters and moderators personally and go through the sequence and timing of the live poll to make sure that they’ll be displayed at the right times. Make sure the speakers are familiar with the event app too.
Also, if any of your speakers forgot to provide their poll questions or want to edit the existing ones, now is the good time to do it.
At this point, it’s also important to brief the A/V team about the specific times when the live poll should be displayed on the big screen, so they can agree on the cue.
4. Introduce It on Stage
Before your speakers step onstage, encourage them to get your attendees on the event app.
Collecting votes in the first poll can take up to 30 seconds as people need to get the hang of the tool. It’s a good practice to provide extra context to help people understand the question and encourage them to submit their votes.
Finally, sit back and enjoy the interaction between your speakers and the audience.
