I was reading a post by Roger Courville where he encouraged virtual event hosts and presenters to encourage multi-tasking during webinars. In particular, I like this point that Roger made supporting the multi-tasking idea:

“You can keep an eye on it.  If you establish the Twitter hashtag or other locale, it gives you a chance to see an respond.  Arguably this is better than being unaware of the audience whispers.”

This is by far the biggest benefit of encouraging attendees to “pass notes” during your virtual event. Attendees will comment on what’s going well and on what could be improved live.

By far, Twitter is the best platform to use. Create a hashtag, ask attendees to add the hashtag to their tweets, then let them go to town.

Get Pressing Questions

As a host, I’ve used attendees’ tweets to gather questions that I could ask the speaker during the Q&A segment of the session. After hosting a dozen sessions back-to-back, the mind stops working and seeing tweets from attendees with thought provoking questions has really helped to save the day many times.

Create a Sense of Belonging

Reading attendees tweets during the live virtual event also helps to create inclusion. Not only will attendees remember key messages, as Roger write in his blog post, but they’ll feel as if the host really cares about their contribution to the session. Including their thoughts by way of tweets creates a sense of belonging and this feeling can be measured by how eager attendees are to help the host out with various virtual event tasks, such as welcoming new attendees or helping others find downloadable handouts.

Solve Problems Quickly

Lastly, you can spot trouble as it’s happening. During one of the sessions during my 2009 Social Media Telesummit, I became aware that the bridge line service changed the host call-in number (with no warning I might add) due to the tweets from attendees on Twitter. I kept seeing things like:

“I hear someone talking, but it ain’t Leesa.”

Or, “Is the session supposed to be happening now? All I hear is silence.”

Thankfully, the guest expert and I were able to quickly switch over to the new phone line and re-start the session.

My advice to all virtual event hosts and organizers is to encourage attendees to use interactive tools to share ideas about what they’re hearing on the live virtual event. Don’t fear these tools because at the end of the day, the feedback you get can help save your virtual event.