Review of a Cool Tool Called MeetingPulse & Meeting Engagement Tips from a PRSA Programming VP
When virtual meetings jump-started in 20201, it was unclear if the new culture would linger. Perhaps surprisingly, online meetings have persisted as a critical medium for media interviews, panels, client get-togethers, and company meetings.
Given this trend, it is essential to ignite your virtual meetings. There are many ways to make them come alive. Tara Thomas, Vice President of PRSA Silicon Valley Programs and co-founder and chief marketer of events management company The Meeting Pool, offers the following tips on using tools to run virtual and in-person events.
Thomas is also the fractional CMO for MeetingPulse, a company and name of a valuable engagement and interaction tool. The PRSA SV team reaped the benefits of using MeetingPulse for a major event in 2023.
These tips for before, during, and post-meeting from Tara Thomas aim to promote engagement and solidify the messages conveyed at an event or meeting.
BEFORE — Communicate strategically beforehand. Provide content without sending 80 emails. Instead, include briefing docs, speaker biographies, and data sheets in a single content area on the event site or app. In the MeetingPulse web app, this is the Materials Area.
Offer people who signed up to attend the ability to ask questions about the content before the meeting. MeetingPulse has a module that enables this. “Well-informed is well-prepared,” said Tara Thomas.
DURING — During the event, use questions from the audience to keep them engaged. Thomas says that questions from the audience are foundational. And equally critical: allowing audience members to engage with each other and upvote or downvote questions they want answered. This allows all members of the audience to participate and for event moderators to prioritize the questions most important to the audience as a whole.
At the 16th annual PRSA Silicon Valley Media Predicts in 2023 —which happened to be in person but the same tips apply — attendees effectively got their questions answered during the journalist panel. They could even comment on others’ questions using MeetingPulse. The app uses word clouds and polling to continue engagement during the meeting whether it’s in person or online.
AFTER —Make sure to close the loop with your attendees and speakers. Find out what worked and what didn’t. Address any concerns or questions quickly. Treat this third phase as an essential opportunity to get return on investment or ROI out of your event, and generate leads, momentum, and lessons learned for your organization.
MeetingPulse can be used post-event for evaluation. The app collects and assesses input from the audience. Hosts can ask, “What did you think? Did the content resonate with you?” The review site G2, which gives it 4 out of 5 stars, says MeetingPulse is special because it gives a voice to those who don’t typically speak up.
Using collaborative tools like MeetingPulse can enable meetings to not only succeed but also stand out in their preparedness, organization, and engagement.
MeetingPulse is a freemium app that you can download from the mobile app stores or the website: MeetingPulse.
PRSA Silicon Valley President-elect Jeannie Entin comments, "The PRSA Silicon Valley board thanks Tara Thomas for encouraging us to use MeetingPulse to run Media Predicts 2023. She expertly and enthusiastically guided us in its use.”
Igniting your virtual meetings with increased audience engagement using tools like MeetingPulse can help you achieve your communications goals.
###
Peri Plantenberg, a member of PRSA Silicon Valley's Marketing team, is a second-year UC Berkeley student and a former sales, marketing, and business development intern at Unlocking Growth. Before that, Peri co-led the nonprofit Silicon Valley Youth Climate Action.
Sign up for our newsletter
