2022 will be the year to witness a rise in virtual meetings. The reported Covid variants have pushed back physical gatherings of people. It is now evident that virtual meetings would again dominate the corporate industry. Surprisingly, the idea of virtual workspace is growing widely, which pushes people towards hosting online meetings. For instance, businesses now prefer hiring a remote team to take over their projects. But, gathering these remote teams for a meeting is challenging. Therefore, global attendees are invited to participate in interactive virtual meetings.
With remote hiring of employees, businesses have started working on strategies to improve their online team interactions. Online connections and communications seem like the only way to successfully collaborate with remote teams. As a result, meetings take place on a regular basis. Wondering how that’d work? Companies create interactive and engaging virtual sessions for employees to mingle with the entire workforce.
Let us now consider some ideas to set-up interactive virtual meetings.
Attendee Interaction Ideas to Follow
If you are a remote company operating in different countries or cities, you must be familiar with the hassle of gathering the team on a single platform. So when hosting a virtual meeting through a virtual events platform, companies need to engage the audiences in the meeting rather than have their attention on the subject. Here’s a list of ideas to follow to encourage interaction among online attendees.
Pre-Engage Attendees to Build Excitement
The best way to go about an online meeting is to pre-engage the audience. For a starter, you can build excitement for the attendees by mentioning the segments, speaker sessions, activities, gamification, or virtual goodie bags. Moreover, in the week leading up to the virtual meeting, you can run a poll or survey to account for attendees’ views. This ensures that there are no surprises for the audience when they attend the virtual meeting.
Also, it might be the first experience for some of the audiences. You could also generate reminder emails before the meeting. So, it is highly suggested to pre-engage all the attendees who have signed up for the meeting. It helps build excitement and gathers the interests of individuals to kick off a successful event.
Employ Ice-Breaking Activities
The moment attendees join the virtual meeting, they should get a proper briefing about the setup and segments. Once they know their way, it would be easier to approach each other. Ice-breaking introductory sessions can take place where the attendees introduce themselves and share a fun fact to aid their interactions. In other instances, you can get the teams to give a virtual tour of their house to induce a formal to informal interaction.
Furthermore, some ice-breaking activities include taking a picture, two truths and a lie, and choosing your favorite or trivia game. In fact, an ice-breaker can be anything that steers a wave of joy or laughter among your attendees. For instance, you can;
- Inquire about their best job
- Ask them to share their pet-peeve
- Make them talk about their phobias
- Inquire about their favorite vacation destination
- Make them share their most embarrassing moments.
Once the audience starts to mingle, it is easier to have their full attention on the presentation. Likewise, these activities highly encourage interaction not just for the speakers but also for the attendees.
Begin With an Engaging Presentation
How you welcome the attendees speaks a lot about successful interaction among them. Your first presentation should be a mood booster for the audience. The attendees might be disinterested when they do not receive individual attention. So, plan out the initial sessions where appointed individuals from the team or the project managers formally introduce themselves to the audience and randomly engage with one or two. This is a great chance for the attendees to build interest and know what they are doing.
The opening presentation should address the audience and engage them through visually appealing graphics, videos, and a virtual tour through the office space. So, stuff it up with graphs, images, charts or videos. Do you wish to tap on the success of the presentation? An easier way to determine this is by engaging the audiences in live polls. When they can respond to the inquiries and the entire presentation, the chances are that you would know the direction. The more short and concise the sessions are, the more engaged the audience.
Spice-Up the Experience with Gamification
Remember how physical meetings get bland and tiring? It is because there are no warm-up or refreshing activities planned out for the audience. Most organizers do not realize how difficult it can get to devote attention to presentations and speaker sessions at the meeting. The back to back sessions could easily bore the audience. You do not want your attendees yawning, right? Adding gamification features to virtual meetings can save the audience from this problem.
Games would help refresh the attendees for the next sessions and have them interact with each other better. Any of the following games would work best when engaging the attendees, such as;
- Scavenger hunt
- Poll competitions
- Time traveler
- Video charades
If you wish to induce a healthy competition among attendees, set up prizes for the competitors. Come on; this is 2022! Gear up and do anything and everything that helps your online attendees interact with each other.
Employ Chat and Networking Tools
Virtual event software is one such tool that helps event organizers design a compelling networking environment. Virtual meetings use advanced networking tools that allow interactions at each booth, lobbies, halls and meeting rooms. In the case of virtual roundtable conferences, the employee base can easily approach any individual through private chatbots. The user-friendly user interface allows chairs and attendees to build quick connections and networks through direct messages, group chats or private sessions.
Moreover, the live audio/video conferencing tools allow easy interactions throughout the meeting. Another important tool to the network is meeting schedulers. To ensure that speakers are not disturbed during the sessions, attendees can schedule meetings with them in the available time slots. Likewise, breakout rooms are a great option to practice when there’s a need to conduct interactive virtual meetings in smaller groups. Also, with the profiles of each attendee displayed, it gets easier for attendees to approach each other.
Encourage Two-Way Communications
The best trait of a good speaker is the way they engage their audience. Getting the audience’s attention for the session does half the job. But how the audience receives the information and reacts to it counts-. Make sure you get constant feedback from attendees. One easy way to do this is through a thorough temperature check. Offer mood buttons at the portal to help attendees share a record of their feelings, how they feel about a certain topic or their agreement on a specific decision.
Furthermore, to spark a healthy conversation, allow the audience to comment on the last subject and further nominate an attendee to speak on the subject. This shall maintain the interests of all and keep them attentive to share their views on a given topic. If you wish to employ this strategy, make sure you pre-brief the team, attendees and chairs to prepare them to interact throughout the sessions.
Wish to Top-Up Virtual Meeting Experience?
Make virtual event experiences exceptional for the attendees by doing the unexpected. 2022 demands you do something extraordinary! Invite a comedian or entertainer to the online meeting and surprise your attendees. These comedians own the art to interact with thousands of attendees at once. So, get the names of inherently fun attendees and let the comedians engage them in some spiced conversations.
Although one thing to remember here is that the jokes should not exceed the limits of decency as it’s an official meeting. Overall, this shall be a healthy addition to the meeting and would spark laughs and smiles all over the place. What else could you ask for!
To Summarize
There are a million ways you can spark interaction among the attendees. However, some of the takeaway ideas are mentioned above. 2022 demands new strategies to engage and entertain the audience to stand out in the marketplace. Virtual Days Platform is one such beast that encourages businesses to host interactive virtual meetings through their esteemed platform. So, begin jogging through an exquisite virtual experience!
Sign up for a free demo of the Virtual Days Platform today!
