How live survey tools can really boost authentic engagement

Whether it’s your organisation or a community impacted by your project, use live survey tools to boost engagement, avoid groupthink, and hear from everyone – not just the loudest person in the room.

The first introduction to live survey tools can be dated back to final years of university. Lecturers are on the money, nearly everyone in class has a smartphone and are able to answer course-related questions, provide feedback or ask a question and quickly receive an answer, simple.

Live survey tools such as Mentimeter are a great way to formally and informally engage both internal and external audiences.

Internally, we have found that integrating online survey tools into everyday communications mechanisms is a great way to build culture, hear from the quieter voices in the business and build a real-time feedback model where the anonymous features of the platform allow employees, stakeholders and followers to express themselves.

One of the most effective ways we have used online survey tools was to build internal culture between two geographical sites where business requirements meant that employees were unable to come together. Using online engagement tools gives you the freedom to be creative in how you apply their diverse functionality. Not only can you target audiences from as few as two people, but you can also engage audiences of over 10,000 or more participants. At the same time, you give individuals a voice and a platform to actively participate in organisational discussions.

Participation is simple, employees can simply navigate to a webpage or input a unique code into their smartphones. From there, the engagement options are endless, you just need to be creative in how you apply them. For example, we have used word cloud features to both celebrate high performing individuals and to undertake an exciting analysis of a project. Our favourite feature, the quiz competition, can be used as a knowledge management tool and as a fun way for my team to socialise and have a bit of fun during COVID- 19.

Externally, there are also some great benefits of using online engagement tools at an event apart from the obvious, collecting attendee feedback. We have all been impacted by the global pandemic and our capability to engage with our colleagues and peers both professionally and socially has taken a hit.

You can use online survey platforms to engage with geographically separated audiences at virtual events, meaning that the audience can engage with the presenter or topic, ask questions, provide comments and feedback, without being in the same room.

While collecting feedback in real-time is a valuable exercise in understanding sentiment in the moment, there is also a long-term benefit in taking the feedback from previous sessions and adapting how you engage in the future. Organisations that use online engagement tools can leverage their connections with their audiences, stakeholders, and employees to open an honest conversation and use the feedback to inform change.

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Have you found any interesting ways to use survey tools to boost engagement? We want to hear about it.

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