The best parties are those with people there
In this unusual time where we are giving most of our waking life to screens, the prospect of spending any more time with people in a virtual space, staring at ourselves (because, let’s admit it — it’s very distracting) and talking about what we’ve been up to/excited about/are most grateful for, is pretty unappealing.
We’ve been working with a range of clients over the past few months thinking about online engagement, and in this second piece on the topic, we will be exploring how to get people to an online event, and how to make sure they keep coming back. Whether it’s for the zoom quiz you’ve set up with your in-laws, or the girls’-night in complete lockdown on different continents, or indeed for work — we’ve condensed some thoughts into this piece on ‘recruitment and retention’ that will have you covered.
Part One — The Invitation
I like a party. Food, dancing, people, noise, clutter, mess, chaos. And yet, in the lead up to any party I am overcome with the dread that no one will show up. The anxiety builds in me like I’ve left the gas on and gone on holiday, until I’ve completely convinced myself that I have forgotten to send any invitations.
In last week’s post, I spoke a bit about planning for an engaging event. So, assuming that you have a fun party lined up, before you send the invitations, it’s worth taking some time to ask yourself the following questions:
- Who am I trying to engage in this event?
- What is the purpose?
- How will attending the event benefit my guests?
- What are the key details (when is it, how long will it go for, what is expected of guests)?
Assuming that you’ve answered these questions and that you still feel your event is worthwhile promoting, then it is worth considering the ways your stakeholders like to receive information about events, and the most appropriate for this event.
a) Existing channels
The last thing anyone needs is another app/platform/digital-thing to add to their day of screen time. If your stakeholders read newsletters, bulletins, blogs or you have an intranet — use these. Likewise, if your stakeholders are external, try and tap into shared resources at your disposal.
b) Electronic Direct Mail (EDM)
Look, it’s an email. I’m not going to spice it up for you. You can however set up useful analytics to understand who is reading your material, on what devices and what they did as a result. For large events with new stakeholders, EDMs are effective.
c) Social Media
Not everyone uses every platform, and when they are, they might not be connected to you in a professional sense on Social Media. So, before you set up accounts for your events, think about the power of ‘influencers’. While you might not be the drawcard for the event, others will be, so get them supporting and promoting for you. In corporate events, the power of influencers is no less than in travel or entertainment.
Part Two — Be my mother at Christmas
The thing about holiday season is it happens every year, and if you have familial obligations, it’s the same every year, too. There are a range of different tools and tactics parents use to entice us to keep coming back year-on-year. If you’re my mother, you may make false promises (You will have your own space. It’ll be completely relaxing. You don’t have to engage in the morning triathlon training sessions) with a heavy helping of guilt (We hardly see you. Two days? Is that all you can handle). While it probably isn’t appropriate to tell your co-workers that they are letting you down, there are some of my mother’s tactics that can be reformulated to make your online engagement series of events continually interesting for your stakeholders.
a) Sticks and carrots
In an online environment, rewards can be used as incentives to sustained participation. We find that gamifying processes of engagement works for all sorts of stakeholders. You can make continued engagement and participation competitive and provide a reward. Often in work environments, it is possible to mandate attendance. However, attendance doesn’t necessarily lead to participation. Linking mandatory attendance to professional development or performance appraisal can be useful.
b) Make it interesting
We’ve got limited attention spans for online engagement — and understandably so. It’s tiring to continue attending the same meeting with the same people when nothing is changing.
- Change the time
- Change the content
- Change the structure
c) Shoot the messenger
No one needs another one sided presentation about anything. Make sessions interactive with breakout groups, physical warm-ups, polling, games, questionnaires. Find ways to shift participants from listening to doing.
d) Share the glory
Everyone runs out of ideas. Crowdsourcing content from participants will keep things lively and ensure shared ownership. Enrolling participants with other responsibilities will take them from being passive to being active. Some tricks we find useful are: rolling facilitators, rolling note takers and rolling agendas.
Connections between colleagues are vital at this time, all jokes aside. And finding ways to make the building and maintaining of connections between people is something we can all commit to. These are some of the things we’ve found to be useful, and if there are others you would recommend, please reach out and let us know.
