8 Tips for Creating Awesome Interaction with Your Audience As an Emcee
I recently did an “Ask Me Anything” over on my Instagram and received a great question I’d like to share my answer with you today.
“What are the best ways to get an audience to interact with you?”
Now more than ever people need to be seen, connected, and feel like events are places where they can be themselves.
Check out my tips for interacting and engaging audiences as an emcee and speaker!
Ask them to Interact. Whether the event is in-person or virtual when you are in charge of the audience whether as an emcee or a speaker you have their undivided attention (we hope) so use this as an opportunity to request for them to interact with you. Be sure that they know interaction is not only appropriate but welcomed.
Be Yourself + Be Vulnerable First Being yourself and honest and open will help a crowd to warm up to you more quickly and be more likely to interact with you. Especially if you are vulnerable enough to share some personal anecdotes and quirks with them.
Give Multiple Opportunities to Interact Sometimes it takes people a bit of time to not only get comfortable with you, but also with other audience members and with themselves enough to interact and open up. Keep this in mind and give them multiple opportunities to interact so that they can warm up to the idea.
Shout Them Out by Name If you know the host or other attendees' names give them a shout out. Maybe warn them ahead of time, or not if you know them well enough to put them on the spot.
Have Folks Supporting the Chat with Links + Comments When it comes to virtual events this is key. Having support personnel that are there for the sole purpose of inserting links and answering or pointing out comments and questions is super helpful to ensuring audience participation and interaction. This will help your virtual attendees to feel seen and heard.
Share Openly Resources + Recommendations Once someone interacts with you and is validated by your sharing their resources and recommendations especially virtually this can go a long way to helping others want to and be willing to share as well.
Use Verbal + Written Requests for Interaction It goes without saying for a live event that you would verbally request interaction, but for a virtual event, you may also want to insert written requests for interaction in the chat feature as well.
Give Them Time - Especially Virtually. Ask them to give their opinion or personal story while folks type. Just like when we mentioned having multiple opportunities to share sometimes it genuinely takes someone time to share especially in virtual events where the option to share is through chat. It will take them some time to type up their response so give this consideration.
I hope that these tips are inspiring and helpful to you as you seek to gain interaction with your audience as an emcee and speaker. What ways have you tried in the past to interact with your audience or what has worked well for you? Share your ideas in the comments below.