Velocity XD recently hosted a series of Floating Spontaneous Think Tanks for the members of the popular event community Club Ichi. Here is what we learned…
The question was posed to their merry band of unicorn jockeys (yes that’s right, the think tanks were held on giant floating unicorns in the Adriatic Sea off the coast of Split, Croatia).
TOPIC: What actually makes content engaging for attendees? What they said:
Think like an entertainer
Tell good, relevant stories
Engage with mixed media
Give the audience time
Think Like an Entertainer
Your audience isn't just a bunch of people in a room that you can trap and spew words at for 90 minutes. They are real people with REALLY short attention spans and a million and one other things they need to be doing. So, step up your main stage game and treat it like a Broadway show or a TV show. Break it into entertaining and educational segments to keep your audience captivated and curious.
Tell Good, Relevant Stories
People will sit around the campfire and listen to long ghost stories. People will listen to hours on end of podcast episodes. Heck, people are STILL binge-watching Grey's Anatomy 20 years after it first aired. It's all about the stories. Engage your audience by employing the time-tested method of great storytelling.
Engage Attendees with Mixed Media
Intersperse your content with video, interaction, even live polling if you have to in order to help attendees switch modalities. The "sit and get" content will only fly for about 20 minutes. In fact, 25% of participants in one study couldn't get through a 1-minute video without losing interest. On average, people only read about 28% of the words on a web page. The average mobile user checks their phone 150 times a day. The average student's attention span during a lecture is 10-15 minutes before a decline in focus. So, if your content is more than 20 minutes long, you HAVE to change it up to keep people engaged.
Give the Audience Time
Your morning sessions will have more engagement because attendees aren't yet feeling frazzled by emails, Slack, and Teams messages piling up. But your afternoon sessions lose people due to the tyranny of the urgent. Consider giving your attendees a 45-minute co-working break, with no content, so they can catch up and feel like they can actually pay attention when they go back into the session rooms.
See the video clip here.
About Velocity Experience Design – Velocity XD is an award-winning creative agency focused on the power of live & digital experiences to accelerate brand growth. Our services include overall event strategy, experience design, creative direction, content development, and turnkey production management. www.velocityxd.com
About Club Ichi – Is the #1 place for B2B Event Marketers to connect! More than five thousand industry professionals sharing insights and tactical advice, asking and answering questions, and exchanging ideas about what's working (and what's not) in the event landscape. www.weareichi.com/
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