Audience Choice Award and Audience Award voting has always been an important part of the event industry. Whether it's a film festival, startup conference or corporate event, it's important to engage participants in supporting the best of the best and thus take the industry further. Audience opinion matters, especially if it's a concentrated audience of fans and specialists.
So, let's dig a bit deeper into the topic and take a look at the 5 main reasons why audience award voting is so valuable to events and event organisers.
1. Audience award voting gives people a voice and shows that their opinions matter
Analysing the audience behaviour and data from different events we can clearly see how audience activity increases each time people know their opinions really matter. People want to know that you care about what they think and that by participating in an activity they can make a difference.
It's also a matter of transparency and trust when it comes to selecting the best of the best out of the selection of creative projects, films, business ideas, or anything else. If there were only juries, it would look very closed circle. After all, it is the involvement of bright people who are a magnet for the public. This way, everything looks closer to the regular people.
2. Audience choice is valuable know-how that can help boost your industry's growth
What's really important to acknowledge is that competition leads to progress and innovation. And winning the competition is so much more valuable if the win was decided by the real people in the audience.
The human side of the argument is that we all need decent feedback from time to time to build confidence and develop professionally. And this is relevant to any professional industry—filmmakers, artists, architects, entrepreneurs—they all have so much to gain from feedback shared by colleagues and like-minded people.
Audience Choice Awards will be even more important in the future. Let's take film festivals for instance. Not only are the winning films getting instant feedback and the audience feeling their opinions matter, all cinemas around the world use that data to generate their programmes.
3. Meaningful audience interaction that provides more visibility to sponsors
It has become evident to many event organisers as well that more audience activity means more clicks and impressions, which can be converted into better sponsorship deals. Audience award voting is a great way to give both the audience and sponsors what they want—meaningful entertainment and participation. The interactivity layer added to your event and integrated into the event's programme enables to create an immersive experience that is really similar to any social media environment. The only difference is that both your friends and celebrities are in the same room with you.
4. Provides data that events can use to improve and have a dialogue with the audience
Audience choice award voting is technically a huge feedback poll that provides extremely valuable data that event organisers can later use to improve future events, programmes and lineups. The great thing about a digitally-engaged audience is that you have live data about what your engagement rates are. This enables you to make changes in real-time if necessary.
5. Digital voting helps reduce an event's ecological footprint
It is more and more important for the global event industry and event organisers to think about sustainable planning and production. Digital tools in general support every event's sustainability aspirations and help reduce the ecological footprint.
For some festivals, it's still a question of whether or not they should implement digital tools for audience award voting or continue using paper ballots. Most film festivals have already taken the environmentally friendly route and cut down on paper usage. Switching to digital voting allows film festivals to go green and put an end to paper ballots. Counting by hand is also rather time-consuming compared to digital voting.
How can Votemo help?
Votemo offers a platform for audience award voting that seamlessly integrates with any event setting and size. Many festivals and conferences, such as Montclair Film, ImagiNATIVE Film, Black Nights Film Festival, and European Metaverse Summit & Awards run audience awards digitally on the Votemo platform.
With Votemo you can
Set up digital ballots for hundreds of contestants with a one-off data import;
Customise the Live Polling interface with unique header images, texts, colours, and a set of options;
Add interactive advertising solutions and banner ads for your sponsors;
Use Votemo Client Admin to easily manage the voting during the event;
Get data reports on a daily basis and after the event.
If you’re not sure where to start, Votemo is here to help you with brainstorming ideas and developing an audience interactivity strategy for your event. Our service packages include demos, personalised assistance and support, training for your team and much more. We can also help you with managing the voting during events and help your team on-site to make sure your event goes smoothly.
Reach out to us at hello@votemo.eu in case you have any questions or ideas you'd like to discuss, and let's schedule a call. We'll show you how you can implement the audience award voting technology for your event.
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