What is Video Engagement and How to Leverage it for your Business?

What is video engagement?

Traditional video conferencing software was built with a few limitations. These platforms fail to successfully engage audiences and provide a complete solution for engagement. Clunky IT problems, outdated use cases, and limited communication methods make it clear that the old way of video communication needs a change.

To address these problems, Livestorm created the world's very first video engagement platform. Livestorm focuses on video and all of the engagement features surrounding it.

Definition of video engagement

What is a Video Engagement Platform (VEP)?

Online events are ubiquitous in 2022. We no longer have to commute to attend a conference, wait in line to see a seminar, or be in the office to host a meeting. Instead, the world is just a video stream away. As a result, an army of video conferencing tools has risen to facilitate passive communication.

Video engagement platforms (otherwise known as VEPs) differentiate from these solutions because they do more than connect one person to another.

How to measure Video Engagement

Livestorm's Video Engagement Score™ (VES) calculator is a new way to evaluate the success of your online events. Through VES you can see if your event was truly a success by looking at key factors, including not only how many people attended but how long they stayed, how many of the polls launched impacted engagement, and how many overall messages, poll votes and questions were sent. Each factor is assigned a rate in order to calculate success, offering hosts an entirely new outlook on how to measure success. Calculate your video engagement score now!

Whenever you need to spark customer delight, motivate an entire company at once, or simply showcase the benefits of your product – a video engagement platform will help you meet your goals with ease.

The evolution of video engagement

As our consumption of video increased, the scope of video engagement changed. From being a simple social media KPI to providing a broader business impact, the definition of video engagement evolved. Let's dive in!

Video engagement in social media

Video engagement metrics were originally used by content creators on YouTube or social media channels such as Facebook or Instagram. Engagement was key to ensuring that fans and followers interacted and liked the content shared.

The video engagement rate was calculated as follows: the sum of all engagement types such as likes, shares, link clicks, comments, or view counts, divided by the number of video impressions.

Video engagement in web conferencing

But the definition of video engagement evolved as businesses were forced to look for new ways of remote communication. During the pandemic, their usage increased significantly: in 2021, 68% of professionals reported increased use of video conferencing, according to a Livestorm survey.

Businesses started using video as a way to connect and collaborate, for internal meetings (for example, all-hands meetings, 1:1s, and employee onboarding sessions to name just a few) or external events (like customer trainings, hiring sessions, live events, or product demos).Indeed, professionals needed to understand how registrants, participants or team members engaged with their events before, during and after.

Why should you use a video engagement platform?

Nowadays, millions of virtual meetings, webinars, or virtual events are hosted on a weekly basis. With the overwhelming amount of information communicated through video and the attention span of virtual attendees decreasing, tracking the number of registrants or participants of an event is not enough to measure the event performance.

Event organizers should track the performance of their event based on the engagement of their audience, which can be measured by the number of chat messages, the number of polls answered, the amount of questions asked, or the average attendance duration during the event.

How to choose your video engagement platform?

Now that you understand the importance of video engagement data for companies organizing virtual meetings, webinars, or virtual events, here are a few tips to get started.

Must-have characteristics of the best video engagement platform

With so many web conferencing and webinar software available, it's hard to choose the best platform to host your online meetings, webinars, or virtual events.

There are a few different things to take into consideration when you are selecting a video engagement platform. Here's below a list of features that you should consider to get the right video engagement platform for your business:

• Browser-based: Platforms that don't require a download are popular among professionals. They remove the barriers to entry for the participants and lead to a higher attendance rate.
• Ease of use: Avoid clunky platforms that will require a long adoption time for your team or the involvement of the IT department.
• End-to-end features: Prefer platforms that allow you to create registration pages, send emails or reminders, host your events, and track performance - all-in-one place. It will be easier to run your events with a single software!
• Engagement features: Look for handy features that will let you engage your audiences before, during, and after your events. For example, automated emails, CTA buttons, and recordings are all powerful tools a VEP should have.

Top video engagement features to have

Once you make sure that the platforms that you've short-listed are browser-based, easy-to-use, and allow your team to organize an event from end-to-end, make sure to check out this list of must-have video engagement features.

Engaging before your event

• Branded registration pages: Create a registration page with a banner, your company logo, social channels, and speaker's information, without any coding skills.
• Custom registration forms: Customize the fields of your registration form to capture insights on your audience.
• Invitation emails & reminders: Create, customize and send your invitation emails and reminders from the same platform.

Engaging during your event

• Polls: Create polls during your events, publish them, and see the answers in real-time.
• Q&A: Reply to your audience's questions listed in a specific tab for an easy overview.
• Question upvotes: Choose the right questions to answer based on the number of upvotes from your audience.
• Emoji reactions: Allow your audience to react to your live presentation with emojis displayed within the event's room.

Engaging after your event

• Unlimited replays: Automatically record your event and send it to all registrants.
• Analytics dashboard: Access a dashboard gathering the video engagement data of your registrants and participants.
• Automated emails - Schedule your replay to be sent to registrants and plan follow up emails in advance.

How to boost video engagement in your online events?

Using a video engagement platform (VEP) is a great way to communicate internally and with your external audience. Whether it's for hosting engaging online meetings or to break the ice, a video engagement platform will give you the possibility to connect, engage and collaborate at scale.

Video engagement for virtual meetings

When creating an informal 1:1 meeting with only a few participants, you may not need all video engagement features and data. However, that's another story, as soon as your online meeting becomes a business objective.

Think of all-hands meetings or compliance training, it will be essential for the leadership team or the organizers to understand who took part, attended the whole meeting, and engaged with the presentation. Video engagement features such as Q&A, polls or, emojis reactions will be essential to increase the participation of your audience.

>> Discover how Freshly uses Livestorm for all-hands meetings and company-wide training sessions

Video engagement for webinars and virtual events

Video engagement is also key when organizing external webinars or virtual events for prospects or customers.

By leveraging video engagement features such as registration pages, branded emails, polls, Q&A, question upvotes, and the analytics dashboard, you can easily capture your audience's attention. Moreover, events organizers can dive into the video engagement data after the event, synchronize it with their CRM, and leverage it in their marketing and sales follow-ups.

>> Discover how Recruitee uses Livestorm to establish their brand and generate leads

Conclusion

You now understand how the definition and scope of video engagement evolved over time and how to track your video engagement performance.

If you need a powerful video engagement platform to get started, Livestorm is made for you: it is browser-based, easy-to-use, and provides all the features to run your events from end-to-end.

To test Livestorm and get started, simply create a free account.