Why is letting people add goofy pics of themselves to your online event spaces a surefire way to boost attendee engagement?
Humans have evolved to detect faces, and read what we find there, because it’s so important to us socially. We’re curious about each other, and highly sensitive to appearance, emotion and non-verbal cues.
It’s why we love emojis when texting. It’s why an online photo gallery that features delegates having fun with oversized sunnies or a handlebar moustache is a great way to get people’s attention and help them feel at ease. Plus, the act of creating their own fun image will trigger positive emotions in attendees, putting them further in sync with your event experience.
Let’s delve into how Jomablue is making this possible…
New Feature: More fun with Photo Booths for virtual events
You can now offer attendees a fun, online Photo Booth where they can add backgrounds, stickers and frames to a picture of themselves.
Your attendees can choose to share their embellished image with the entire audience by adding it to a gallery (known as a Photo Gallery) that’s visible to everyone with access to your online event. Attendees can also save and download the image for use elsewhere, for example as their Community profile pic or via social media.
Examples of photo booth visuals include: funny hats, moustaches, glasses, firework explosions, confetti, emojis, frames or branded elements. Jomablue provides a range of options that organizers can select from, or you can design your own.
Photo Booths and Gallery can be featured on any Canvas Page designed in Jomablue Community.
What’s Jomablue Community?
Our online space for building websites and hosting live-streamed sessions and other content for virtual and hybrid events.
What are Canvas Pages and Blocks?
Canvas Pages are fully customisable pages in Jomablue Community where event sessions and exhibitor content sit. You can build-out a Canvas Page by selecting from multiple ‘blocks’ such as: live stream and pre-recorded video, Q&A tools, live chat, video tables, links, downloads, image slideshows, and now Photo Booths and Gallery —as well as other third-party tools.
Why did we build Photo Booth and Photo Gallery blocks?
We’re always innovating, and we know that bringing added interactivity and joy to virtual experiences is a priority for event organizers. A virtual photo booth and image gallery offers an unstructured opportunity for delegates to get involved—outside of viewing presentations or formal networking activities.
How do the Photo Booth and Photo Gallery blocks work?
- You can add the Photo Booth block and the associated Gallery to the same, or separate pages, within your online event space. For example, you could include the gallery in the Lobby, but the booth on a dedicated Networking page.
- Once a Photo Booth block is added to a page, organizers can select from available stickers, frames, and backgrounds or add their own.
- Virtual or hybrid event attendees exploring your online space can launch the Photo Booth to upload a photo of themselves and mix and match visual elements at will.
- Attendees can either save their photo directly to the event Photo Gallery, or download the image. Any attendee can view the photos that have been uploaded to the Gallery.
- Organizers can choose to moderate photos before they appear in the gallery, or automatically have them included. Whether you decide to screen images will probably depend on the maturity and size of your audience.
Four ways to use a Photo Booth and Gallery to drive engagement online
- For virtual events: Add a photo booth and image gallery to your virtual event’s Lobby or Networking page to give attendees a break from core content and enliven their virtual event experience.
- For hybrid events: You might host useful content online for all attendees, such as agendas and speaker notes. Including an online photo booth and gallery lets both in-person and online attendees interact in a light-hearted way. It also makes virtual attendees’ seem more ‘real’, and therefore makes the event feel more significant.
- For online sponsors: A valuable sponsor benefit might include the chance to have a photo booth on their virtual exhibition page to drive attendees to interact with their brand in a playful way. Or you might offer a sponsor the right to brand the official event photo frame.
- For employee or networking-focused events: If you’re bringing people together with the specific goal of building connections, such as for staff meetings, community engagement, member networking, or similar—encouraging people to create and share smiling or silly pictures of themselves is a great icebreaker.
Fun isn’t trivial: it helps attendees feel engaged. Get serious about engagement at your next event with the marketing-leading event platform for virtual and hybrid events.
