Slido’s Abi Cannons shares her top tips on maximising audience engagement

Following the recent announcement of our partnership with Slido, Abi Cannons, Slido’s Key Relationship Manager joined us at our April Masterclass to share her top tips for boosting audience participation and engagement with the live Q&A and polling platform. 

Abi, alongside our marketing manager Richard Shafe, highlighted four ways to maximise engagement with Slido.

1.  Always run a warm up poll
Running a warm up poll at the start of a session is a great way for people to get familiar with Slido and sets them up for the rest of the event.  It helps build user confidence and breaks the ice, especially if it’s light-hearted and memorable.  The most popular type of poll for a warm up is a multiple poll with 3 to 5 options. 

2.  Seed questions from speakers
To get the Q&A going and avoid an awkward moment if there is no feedback, you can seed a few of your own questions at the beginning of the session.  Ask your speaker what type of things they would like to be asked, this allows the speaker to start the Q&A strongly, providing them with an opener to the conversation they are relatively familiar with.

Seeding in questions from the outset will also give confidence to other attendees and set the standard for following questions.  Once the first question is posted, further questions will follow.

3.  Get feedback whilst people are still in the room
While you have people in the room it’s the perfect opportunity to ask for feedback on the presentation.  Keep questions simple and quick to respond to. 

4.  Engage with your speakers at the right time
This tip can apply to other forms of polling and Q&A technology, such as conventional event apps or keypad voting systems, but the principle remains that there is always an ideal time or window when your speakers are more likely to adopt the use of engagement technology in their sessions. 

The best time to approach your speaker is during their idea development phase, not after they have prepared their content and slides.  Allow them some thinking time and then approach and define what audience engagement you want.  Remind them of your event objectives and explain how the event technology you have chosen can help you achieve this.  Explain the benefits and why it’s being used to get your speaker onboard.

Avoid that OMG! moment

If you don’t have the time or resources in-house to deploy event technology successfully at your next event, then that’s where Crystal Interactive come in.  If you are struggling to manage a hundred other tasks or you may be organising a large or high-profile event where the reputation of your speakers depends on the successful use of technology, and you don’t want to be the person responsible for it not working, then our pre-event advice on meeting design and onsite services will help you avoid that OMG! moment. Our expertise in building the use of technology into an event and then delivering the technology onsite to maximise the outcomes of the event perfectly complements a brilliant piece of software, such as Slido.

For further information on our services please call +44 1483 927 900.