We all love the convenience of a virtual party, where guests can check in from the comfort of home whether they live near or far! The downside of connecting through a screen, though, is that we can’t know what distractions might pop up in their homes. Engaging your online guests and keeping them tuned in takes some careful consideration and strategies.
Attention Span Challenges
When you’re working with a virtual audience, you aren’t just competing with distractions like their barking dog, busy children, or ringing doorbell — you’re also competing with other things they may be seeing online.
If you’re holding your parties on a social media platform, your party content is going to be surrounded by a whole load of unrelated posts competing for attention. And every notification that pops up is an opportunity for your party guest to take the exit door straight out of your event.
It doesn’t take long for a digital attention span to slip. Professor Gloria Mark of the Department of Informatics at the University of California, Irvine reported that in a study of digital distractions, American workers switched their attention every three minutes on average in 2004. By 2012, this had dropped to one minute and fifteen seconds — and when the study was repeated in 2014, the time it took for a study participant to switch attention had dropped again to just 59.5 seconds.
Thankfully, with a little advance preparation and the right party platform, you can spice up your virtual parties so that your guests stay engaged for longer, without even realizing the minutes are ticking by! In this article, you’ll learn about four easy ways that you can use Sqweee — a platform built specifically for online direct sales events — to add fun and excitement to your virtual parties.
Add Personality in Your RSVP
Adding personalization to your party can help you take it from dull to dynamic. And you don’t have to wait for the party to begin! When you’re partying on Sqweee, you can use the RSVP survey to begin adding some fun and personality before your guests attend the live event. When you’re building your survey, be sure to include some “just for fun” questions in addition to the usual, more business-oriented info you’d like to know. For example, add a quick trivia question or two about your company, your party host, or about anything you like to turn your survey into a game.
You can even include a question that reveals a bit of your own personality. For example, have guests pick their best guess for how you most like to spend your Saturdays: relaxing, hiking, socializing, going out on the town, and so on. When your party guests see you as a relatable person who is about more than just business, they are more likely to want to spend time with you at the party!
Keep Interaction High With Party Games
Once you have your guests’ attention in a party, virtual party games help make sure they stick around by giving them frequent opportunities to interact. Some popular virtual party game themes to consider for your post graphics include:
- Would you rather?
- This or that?
- Word scramble
- Guess how many
In Sqweee, you can also use interactive post types to create games and other opportunities for interaction. The Shake Ball post, for example, can be used for engagement questions related to your products, or to add a seasonal theme to your party, such as “What will your holiday elf do for you this year?” This unique post type will get guests sharing and chatting about their answers.
Sqweee’s Spin the Wheel post also adds a lot of excitement and energy to your virtual parties, with a spinning wheel animation and virtual confetti. This added interaction, along with the excitement of seeing which wheel slice they land on, helps to keep guests tuned in and following along. For that reason, it can be helpful to add a spinning wheel between other posts where your guests typically tune out.
Add Eye-Catching Motion
The more you can add motion to your party, the more you can catch a wandering eye! Parties that include video posts are often more successful for a number of reasons, but your motion does not need to be limited just to video.
Of course, the shaking ball and spinning wheel add a lot of motion — and you may not be aware that Sqweee’s support for animated GIFs means you can include motion in your graphic posts, too. Whether it’s adding a little sparkling shimmer next to your favorite product, a moving arrow pointing to information you don’t want guests to miss, or an animation added just for fun, GIF graphics add some much-needed spice and energy to an otherwise 2D moment.
Use On-Demand Animations
Your party guests will respond to you when you are responsive! Responding to guest comments promptly is a well-known standard when it comes to virtual parties, but if you’d like to take it up a notch and add some extra excitement to your parties, Sqweee has you covered! Add spice to your virtual parties by using on-demand virtual confetti, fireworks, or balloons to celebrate:
- The start of your party
- A moment of appreciation for your host
- A party guest booking their own party date
- Reaching the time to shop
- And more!
Keep an eye on the conversation that’s happening at your virtual parties, and look for organic opportunities to respond to your guests with on-demand animations. This element of surprise alone can help keep attention on your party.
Bringing It All Together
As consultants, we can’t control what goes on around our guests as they attend or host a virtual party. But we can plan ahead and take a number of steps to make sure that our parties are fun, dynamic, and entertaining. Because, it’s not a party if no one is having fun! If you’re ready to explore on-demand animations and other ways to interact with guests, watch this quick video to learn more about how to add more live engagement on Sqweee.
