Competition is Key 🔑 6 Ways to Win Audience Engagement
By Lexi Godfrey September 29, 2020
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Looking for ways to keep your audience engaged in a virtual landscape? Competition is a great way to surprise and delight your attendees. We've got six exciting ideas for you to use!

With the recent shift to virtual in the work/event landscape, marketers and planners are seeing increased instances of “Zoom fatigue.” Yes, it’s a real thing! In fact, Google searches for “Zoom Fatigue” increased 25x from January 2020 to May 2020. 😱

We get it! It’s hard to stay engaged when work, play, and relaxation are all happening on the same screen. Events aren’t exempt from that. 85% of marketers say that audience satisfaction is how they measure an event’s success factor - so how do you ensure audience delight and engagement at your virtual event if “Zoom fatigue” is worse than ever?

Competition. 🏆

Competition is an excellent, albeit often overlooked, tool for engagement. It incentivizes attendees through fun variety, prizes, and recognition. When events and employers utilize competition, attendees and employees benefit from increased productivity, skill improvement, and general camaraderie.

But, what does competition look like in a virtual setting? Don’t worry, we’ve got some ideas for you. 😉

1. Social Engagement

If your top priority is for your attendees to form genuine, lasting connections with each other, incentivizing social engagement is your best bet. You can encourage your attendees to interact with each other in group chats or on social platforms by assigning points to different social actions (posting, commenting, liking, etc.). The person with the most points wins a prize! Not only does this lead to friendships being formed amongst your attendees, but it demonstrates that you are truly committed to creating the best, most engaging experience for your audience. 🤝

2. Video Storytelling

A video storytelling contest is a great way to cultivate an honest and vulnerable environment for your attendees. Depending on the subject matter of your event, share a prompt with your attendees and encourage them to post and share a relevant story of their own. The funniest/sweetest/most compelling video, as determined by highest engagement through social actions, takes the cake. We love making it personal. 🥰

3. Quizzes

If your focus is to ensure that your attendees are absorbing the material presented at your event, quizzes are the way to go. You can incentivize your audience to pay attention to the important information shared through leaderboards, rewards, and wide-spread recognition. This is a great (and sneaky 🤫) way to track where gaps in knowledge might exist for your attendees. You can leverage this insight to follow up with your attendees after the event, or how you set up future events to succeed.

4. Appointments

If a main focus of your event is networking, host a contest based on your attendees setting appointments with vendors/companies/leads/etc. It’s effective AND yields higher engagement. 👌🏼 The audience member with the most appointments set within the time frame wins! Your attendees will appreciate the extra incentive, and everyone will appreciate the new connections.

5. Games

If you’re looking to spice up your event with a little extra fun, games are for you! Games are great for inspiring camaraderie, teamwork, and productive rivalry amidst your attendees. Plus, the added fun allows your audience to blow off some steam and come back refreshed and rejuvenated. Here are some fun virtual games to play: 👇

6. Exercise

If you want to ensure the wellness of your attendees for the duration of your event, you should incentivize exercise. Create a contest to have your attendees rack up the most steps. Or a social contest - whoever checks in and posts a selfie at the gym the most wins. This is a perfect opportunity to demonstrate that you value your attendees' health and wellness, which will lead to increased trust in you and your event. 😎

Here at Cadence, we encourage all types of competition. And with the Cadence Compete feature on our app, you are able to personalize the competitions to your specific event. After all, who doesn’t love friendly rivalry? 😉

If you’re new to Cadence, you can start building your event here. If you’re interested in getting started with Cadence Compete, check out this “How To” video in our Knowledge Center.

Lexi Godfrey
Lexi Godfrey
Lexi is a Content Marketing Manager at Cadence. She loves crafting strong brand messaging, and her Mean Girls meme game is strong #grool. Her dream event is a surprise party for herself, and she never gets tired of listening to Yacht Rock - it's 5 o'clock somewhere!
Lexi is a Content Marketing Manager at Cadence. She loves crafting strong brand messaging, and her Mean Girls meme game is strong #grool. Her dream event is a surprise party for herself, and she never gets tired of listening to Yacht Rock - it's 5 o'clock somewhere!