How Facilitators Can Dramatically Boost Attendee Engagement

Attendee engagement has always ranked high as an event success metric, yet in today’s fast-moving and fluid hybrid events environment, it ranks even higher. After more than a decade of studying attendee behaviors across thousands of events, our teams have curated dozens of proven strategies that are sure to boost attendee engagement for digital, in-person and hybrid events.

Today, I’d like to take a closer look one engagement driver – Facilitators

We’ve found that utilizing a facilitator to encourage peer-to-peer conversations around education is an outstanding way to add value to the education experience.

With a capable facilitator accompanying your presenters or subject matter experts, we’ve noticed quite a few valuable benefits – namely:

 

–  Attendees are more invested in learning and less prone to distraction

–  Chat box activity runs 2-3x higher, plus the quality of exchanges is richer

–  Attendees remember more of what they learned (measured in post-event testing)

–  Satisfaction scores for individual sessions and the overall conference run higher

 

One important caveat – you’ll notice, we said “capable” facilitator. Bring on a less competent facilitator and the entire experience could unravel.

This crucial facilitator role is part emcee, part content weaver, and part event experience steward. Strong facilitators are masters of multi-tasking, plus they’re attuned
to the audience’s expectations for education. They’re outstanding listeners and equally adept at posing smart questions that reveal insights your audience appreciates.

Keep in mind, many facilitators are also willing to train your volunteers to help them become stronger facilitators so they can cover this role.

NOTE: We have a short list of outstanding facilitators, curated from the hundreds of events we’ve managed. if you’re looking for recommendations, contact Molly
mklatka@digitellinc.com and she’ll send you this list.

Best in class facilitation is rarely about bells and whistles – more often it’s about mastering the basics. And when you get that right, you’ll be amazed at the impact it has on attendee satisfaction scores.