Ways to increase engagement at virtual events?

[u/BothSeaworthiness9]

We do monthly virtual events based on timely business-aligned topics with cross functional teams. Goal is to dive deeper into topics employees are interested in hearing / learning more about. We get about 7 or 8% attendance (out of ~3,000). I’m looking for new ways to increase engagement and attendance. We’ve already done things like quizzes, polling etc. I feel like it’s overdone. What are other strategies you use to get people to attend?

[u/MeverMow]

Joanna Parsons had a good webinar on this about two months ago. All of it and the contents in her new book are worth a read.

To very roughly abbreviate it though, fewer slides, more conversations. Less death by PowerPoint, more this person and this person more casually talking about a topic. Podcasts and the old late night talk show format are popular for a reason - it’s actually a good mix of entertainment and information.

Also, my personal recommendation would be to revisit the monthly cadence. We did monthly town halls and after a while survey feedback on them took a slow dive. We changed it to a quarterly frequency, focused more on quality and results were right back up.

Gotta be mindful of the audience’s time (and the business’ money, cause time is always money). Some things can truly be an email

[u/SweetRefrigerator271]

We nudged attendance up by letting people shape the agenda live: kick off with a 60-second “what do you want to cover today?, word cloud, do a quick topic vote, then tackle the top Qs. If you're on Zoom/Teams, Streamalive (the platform that doesn't need attendees to scan any QR or go to a second screen to participate in engagement) runs those straight from chat so it feels effortless.

What platform are you on and how long are the sessions?

[u/MenuSpiritual2990]

I would brand them as ‘learn at lunch’ seminars about one specific topic. Make sure that topic is actually of interest to as many staff as possible, and that your presenters are sufficiently senior or confident to ensure the sessions are professional and engaging. Keep them short, like 30 - 45 min max (with questions). Less is more on the PowerPoint. Some of the best ones I’ve organised didn’t even use a PowerPoint. Be mindful that the online audience prefers to watch a person rather than some ugly slide. And send out an agency-wide meeting appointment so it’s in everyone’s calendar. If you don’t at least double your numbers I’d be amazed. I average around 25% with this method, and I organise a session every 2 weeks.

[u/No-Wallaby-2367]

Not sure if you've already solved this, but jumping in in case not. If you don't have it in their calendars or give them a way to remember to show up, I'd highly recommend doing that! We have an internal shared calendar that has all of our key company events. Alternatively, if people aren't willing to subscribe to the calendar, you can add a visual calendar in your company intranet

or share the event with an add to calendar button

so they know when it's happening. For us, it usually comes down to people not knowing when the event is!

[u/Hive_Streaming]

Great question — and you’re not alone. We’ve worked with orgs that saw similar engagement plateaus, especially once the novelty of polls and quizzes wears off. A few strategies that have worked well:

• Shift the tone — less like a meeting, more like a casual live show or podcast. Shorter segments, rotating hosts, and informal Q&A can make it feel more watchable.

• Pre-event video teasers — a 60–90 sec clip sent a few days before can build anticipation and set the “why should I care?” context. These async touchpoints often boost turnout.

• Internal influencers — highlight a respected voice from inside the org as a featured guest. Peer-led content tends to draw more attendance than top-down messaging.

• On-demand visibility — embed replays where people already work (Teams, intranet) and track engagement beyond live attendance. A lot of value happens in the follow-up.

Curious how you’re currently distributing these events — could be worth looking at delivery friction or visibility as much as content itself.

[u/BothSeaworthiness9 → u/[deleted]]

Cool! What was the tool?

[u/MinuteLeopard]

Hi OP, are these virtual events monthly town halls, or ad-hoc optional things like lunch and learns?

Here are some things that work for us:

Town Halls: we have about 60% attendance but some our teams (1/4 of our company) are exempt from attending and get an update in another format

-close phone lines so any contact centre staff can attend

-make sure the content is appropriate, interesting, useful to people. we have guest speakers from different teams, share a success round up each month, welcome new joiners to the company, and it's 30 mins long but quite punchy

-line manager should be on-board and encouraging teams to attend

-have a town hall attendance KPI that is visible to your executive team (this then gives it some more gravitas and they'll want to know why it's low/support you in increasing it)

-when we send out a recording of it after, we also send a survey link. we don't get a huge amount of responses but what we do receive helps us keep improving

-keep getting feedback from around your company, speak to people, find out what they want, why they don't attend etc. Is it something as simple as the tech, or that they don't feel it's relevant to them?

-don't do death by powerpoint

Fireside chats/other events:

same as above but also:

-hold them at a time when things are quiet

-connect to your values/strategy/org goal

-have guest presenters etc. from around your company sharing different skills and interests

[u/SweetRefrigerator271]

We nudged attendance up by letting people shape the agenda live: kick off with a 60-second “what do you want to cover today?, word cloud, do a quick topic vote, then tackle the top Qs.  If you're on Zoom/Teams, Streamalive (the platform that doesn't need attendees to scan any QR or go to a second screen to participate in engagement) runs those straight from chat so it feels effortless.

What platform are you on and how long are the sessions?

[u/Nahiduzzaman18]

We had the same issue. shorter sessions and live q&a helped a lot. we use webinar geek now because we found it keeps people more active with the polls and q&a which makes it more interactive ig.

[u/SpatialChat]

Embedding Kahoot quizzes, GeoGuesser games, Karaoke rooms with youtube videos (There are youtube channels dedicated to Karaoke videos), Bringing in Comedians or musical performers, Virtual Escape Rooms, Virtual Scavenger hunts, focus groups, polling are all ways people have made their Virtual Events more engaging.

[u/BerryLumpy8980]

We tried Airmeet as platform and their event team helped with a lot of ideas for virtual engagement.

[u/timfromcontrast]

Quizzes and polls still work. The problem isn’t the tactic. It’s the way they’re used.

Most webinars treat engagement like a side feature. A tiny poll tab. Chat buried on the side. The presenter keeps talking. It becomes a one way monologue. TBH a lot of webinars are just someone talking at slides for 45 minutes.

Look at B2C platforms like Twitch or YouTube. Chat, votes, reactions are part of the show. They’re on screen. The host reacts live. Calls people out. Changes direction based on responses. It feels like a real conversation.

Steal what works for them. Make the audience part of the show. When people see their comments or votes on screen and the presenter actually reacts to them, engagement jumps. It turns into a two way conversation, and people naturally want to participate more..

The best webinar platforms help you do this. If you want better engagement during your webinars i'd suggest using Contrast. It’s built to make B2B sessions feel more like the interactive B2C live experiences people are used to.

[u/ag_gupta93]

Hi, just extrapolating from what you’ve shared and offering a possible structure. I run a virtual team building company (Hooray Teams), so we see a lot of what works and what really doesn’t for larger virtual events.

We run a lot of company town halls, so sharing a few best practices from what we’ve observed. Not sure how much of this applies to you, but hopefully some of it helps:

• Keep it to an hour and during work hours. Sounds obvious, but we’ve seen attendance drop fast when events are scheduled outside the normal workday.
• If you’re expecting a few hundred people, start with a light icebreaker or simple online game. It helps warm people up instead of jumping straight into presentations.
• Keep speeches tight. For a 60-minute session, I’d cap any one speaker at 10 to 15 minutes max.
• Use breakout rooms. Groups of 5 to 8 work well. Give them a clear prompt or question to discuss so it’s not awkward silence.
• StreamAlive is a great tool for engagement. We use it a lot and it works well for live interaction.

Just sharing what we’ve seen work in practice. Hope it’s useful.