5 Ways to Increase Engagement at Your Continued Medical Education Conferences

Your continuing medical education conference attracts many medical professionals, but you don't see as much engagement as you'd like from attendees. Without an audience that's excited enough to spread the word about your event, you may not reach your growth goals. Here are five tactics to boost engagement at the next event you organize.

1. Optimize the Room for Engagement

Are your room layouts holding you back? Some configurations hinder engagement, such a room far too large for a particular session or one that makes it difficult for everyone to see and hear the person talking. Examine the seating arrangements in the room as well. Pull chairs into small groups to encourage interaction between attendees, and clear out space around the speaker's area so attendees can easily go up to the front if needed.

Some sessions end up with more attendees than expected, or problems elsewhere in the event cause a room shakeup. Do as much as you can to retain room optimization, and track your results to discover what works best for your CME event and venue space.

Sign up to view the MedEd Manager CME LMS Demo

2. Find Out What Attendees Want Out of Your CME Event

Are you missing the mark on what your participants actually want when they come to your conference? As part of your pre- and post-event follow-up, create a poll to learn more about what medical professionals expect, whether their experience lived up to these expectations, and what they felt was missing.

3. Encourage Q&A From Participants

Speakers only have limited time for their sessions, and they have a lot of information to cover. Medical professionals may have questions that don't get answered during the main part of the course. Help them get personalized answers by allocating the time for a Q&A as a standardized part of the schedule. The additional information provides more value for attendees and also helps speakers and educators improve their courses.

4. Integrate Mobile Apps

Add a mobile companion app to your CME event's roster. You gain a lot of flexibility with this strategy, as you can connect with attendees before, during and after the event, provide them with resources to improve their chances of having a good time, and build engagement methods into its functionality.

For example, your app could include a complete schedule capable of keeping medical professionals up to date with relevant course information. If they need assistance from event staff, they can reach them directly through the app. Feedback forms and chat features open up a communication channel with the attendees.

5. Put Live Updates on Social Media

CME event hashtags improve your visibility on social media, especially when you encourage participants to use them. Photos, key quotes from prominent speakers and other attendee-generated content encourage engagement and build your social presence. You can use a single official hashtag for the conference or complement it with session-specific tags.

Let your event staff get in on this tactic as well. You can build a lot of momentum for your tag when you ask everyone to post about their favorite experiences, behind-the-scenes photos and other content.

Need help with coordinating a continuing medical education conference or executing your healthcare marketing strategies? The MedEd Manager CME learning management system provides you with a powerful platform for organizing your event and improving attendee engagement.