Whether it’s mingling casually with peers in a virtual environment or meeting industry experts face-to-face to network and brainstorm, event attendees crave interaction and socialization.

Facilitating meaningful interactions is a critical component of event planning, as audiences value meeting like-minded peers in their industry and exchanging ideas.

It’s easy to set up virtual 1:1 chats or direct attendees to join a Q&A during a speaker session, but fostering memorable interactions requires careful planning and creativity.

With this in mind, below are some tips for designing events that foster rewarding interactions and a deeper connection with your central theme.
 

Make Time for Collaboration During Your Event

Giving attendees the chance to collaborate and form their own brainstorming sessions can help create a stronger sense of community and keep your audience immersed.

Building time into your event’s agenda, including during featured sessions and panels, for audience members to break into brainstorming groups allows attendees to guide their own conversations.
 

Further, giving them the opportunity to share their ideas or questions throughout the session can encourage participation and contribution.

It’s one thing to finely tune your theme and content offering to be more stimulating, but directly giving attendees the chance throughout your event to exchange ideas and contribute to the conversation can facilitate a more notable and productive experience.
 

Establish Expert Meetings During Your Event

Inviting industry experts or influencers to attend your event is a great way to foster memorable experiences and interactions.

Allowing attendees to schedule time to meet with their favorite experts or influencers helps bring your event’s content and sessions to life.
 

Beyond listening in on guest panels, offering the chance to interact with featured experts face-to-face gives guests the chance to create lasting memories and connect to your event’s content on a deeper level.

Further, promoting these opportunities ahead of time on social media and marketing materials can help drive sign-ups and create increased anticipation around your event.
 

Supercharge Your Event Sponsors

When it comes to sponsored meetings and content, striving to create a more interactive experience can help keep attendees engaged and maximize returns for your event’s sponsors.

It’s important to weave in interactive elements, including incentives and branded competitions, as sponsored sessions can sometimes feel like a sales pitch if your audience is not kept in mind.
 

Further, scheduling sponsored meetings directly after anticipated or high attendance sessions can help keep your audience’s attention, and if aligned with your event’s theme, help sponsors drive brand awareness and communicate their message effectively.
 

The Power of Organic Interaction

At the forefront of the event experience is organic interaction. Whether it’s bumping into peers on the conference floor, or reaching out virtually, giving attendees the space to freely interact facilitates connection, networking and ultimately, a sense of community.

When conversations happen naturally, attendees have the chance to socialize with like-minded individuals and form lasting connections.

Giving your audience a themed or sponsored lounge to meet up and chat is one way to facilitate organic interaction at your event. This creates a quieter place for people to connect without distractions, away from the conference floor.

For virtual audiences, consider a more immersive experience to facilitate spontaneous interaction. This could include virtual conference floors with topic-based chat rooms, options to invite others directly to video chat, and blocking off time for one-on-one networking.

Empowering attendees to interact in an unstructured way can foster personal connections and improve the overall event experience.

To plan events with lasting impact, it’s essential to facilitate meaningful and worthwhile interaction between attendees at every touchpoint. To keep people coming back year after year, event planners must give attendees the opportunity to form lasting connections and build their network.

By catalyzing more productive and thoughtful interactions, attendees will leave your event with a sense of fulfillment and lots of new connections. Honing in on interactivity not only keeps attendees engaged throughout, but creates a stronger sense of interconnection surrounding your event and brand!

Want to learn more about how to design immersive event experiences? Reach out today to schedule a demo of Notified Event Cloud and learn how to create events without limits - whether virtual, hybrid or in-person.