We are a few days away from the new year, and as we close the curtains of 2021, let’s take a sneak peek at the improved chat features we have been preparing for you next year. 

RumbleTalk has always designed its chat features with convenience and ease-of-use in mind, both for the owner, and the user. So,  we have been working on a few improvements to create a more seamless overall chat experience for you and your audience. And now, we are happy to launch them soon!

Here are four exciting features that we can all enjoy next year, check them out below. 

Express your emotions better with a new set of emoticons

Quality communication is more than just words on your screen, it’s also about building connections. As basic as it sounds, non-verbal conversations can easily lead to misinterpretation, which can wreak customer service havoc. Thankfully, emoticons are here to fill in those missing social cues! So, online event organizers and customer support teams are taking advantage of this feature in a bid to humanize the conversation and build better relationships.

Next year, expect a new set of emoticons that will help you express your emotions even better. We’ve added an impressive library of emojis so that every emotion is at your fingertips. From new smileys and food, to hand gestures and animals, whatever you have to say, we’ve got you covered. Moreover, you can use this global language to instantly change the meaning of your sentences, to emphasize a point, or simply to create a friendly, open tone.

Emojis might just be a few colored icons, but those universal pictures can make a world of a difference in every conversation.

Limit the number of messages at a time with Slow Down Chat

For chat rooms with thousands of users and multiple rooms, the influx of messages sweeping across the screen may begin to hurt your eyes and lose your focus. Well, we developed the Slow Down Chat specifically to solve that issue.

With this new feature, you can limit the number of messages that can be sent into your group chat in a period of time. With this, you would be able to respond to all of your audience in the chat room and to better moderate what is happening in your online community.

Keep everyone posted with a better way to show the poll results

Polls are a great way to create a more inclusive environment where everyone can be involved and feel valued. With this feature, event hosts are able to collect real-time feedback about any topic. Wouldn’t it be nice to share the results with your audience in a better way?

Right now, the poll results are shown as pop-ups. However, this may be distracting as it covers the conversation and lets you focus on something else. Next year, the poll results can be posted inside the group chat, making it appear as part of the conversation. This simple update is designed to create a better experience for both the host and the audience.

Get creative with the new Design Tab

We’re making some major upgrades to the Design Tab. This easy point-and-click design-builder would make your life tenfold easier with pre-made templates and customizable fields. So, you can make your chat room look as if it’s taken straight out of your branding standards. From the chat window style to the background, to the fonts and icons, change everything with just a few clicks.

Moreover, having the ability to personalize your chat with its full CSS capabilities makes your design options limitless!

Get a free demo call now!

There are plenty of things to look forward to in 2022. Surely, next year would be a continuation of our goal. It is to provide businesses with a better, more efficient group chat platform. This is to help them connect, engage, and build lasting relationships with their users. Set up your free Rumbletalk Chat now or email us at support@rumbletalk.com, we’d love to set up a demo call with you or walk you through setting up your chat.

From a participant’s POV, there is no interaction in live events. In online sessions or video conferencing, people can see you so they have to participate and be alert. However, live streaming with thousands of viewers can feel overwhelming and there’s limited interaction. The use of a live streaming chat helps in these instances.

Even when the content is substantial, participants feel there is little to no engagement. So, this dilemma makes it harder for event organizers to capture the same feeling and interaction when compared to an in-person event.

People are influenced by others. These tend to leave a mark, making the event more memorable. Because of this, event organizers are thinking of new ways to engage and interact with the participants. They are trying new things to make the event more relevant.

Without the benefit of physical interaction, event organizers need to develop new strategies and tactics and use these to facilitate their online events.

Communication and strategy for virtual events

For virtual events, an all-in-one communication solution should be present. This will help replace the face-to-face interaction happening in in-person events. The RumbleTalk group chat platform has all the communication features that you need in a single space, including our latest feature: Polls.

In the RumbleTalk group chat platform, everything is readily accessible in one platform such as group chat, chat moderation, Q&A, and polls, all that next to the embedded live stream platform.

Engaged and full of interaction

• Q&A sessions are held to measure engagement and interaction
• Polls can be used to get feedback from the audience
• Chat is in real-time as the event is ongoing
• Login options made easy with social sign-in (Facebook/Twitter) for a seamless chat entrance

Read more here: Overview of main RumbleTalk chat types and features

Interaction in the live streaming chat

A basic chat is available on some live stream platforms. However, there are few personalization options, making the chat lifeless. RumbleTalk live stream chat has been made to start meaningful conversations, not forgetting the users’ side. We made sure that every user has personalization options, ensuring everyone has a face to go with their profile.

Participants can create their own profiles, complete with an avatar and their username. Emojis are also available in the chat room as they add color and fun to any conversation.

Participants can also start their own discussion in the chat room. Since large events have too many people in one chat room, they are allowed to create their own threads. Other attendees can answer them. If the speaker is not available at the time, moderators and participants can answer.

To enable this feature on your RumbleTalk chat room, choose Moderated Chat. Moderators can watch over the chat and see that the chat is still on topic.

Here, moderators can approve or delete questions and answers. Only approved ones will appear in the chat room.

NOTE: Moderators can send messages normally, without needing the approval of another moderator.

After the live stream session

After the live stream broadcast, participants can still continue the discussion if they want to, without needing moderators. Change the chat type to Group Chat so anyone can join in.

For event organizers, if you want to keep a copy of the chat transcript, click Export on the admin panel. Alternatively, you can also click Export chat transcript directly in the chat room.

Keep this copy and see what your participants have talked about. Use it to enhance your future live streams.

More than just live stream broadcasts

Engagement in a live event is not determined by how many people have attended your event but the effects after. Moderated Chat and Group Chat are just two of the many features of the RumbleTalk group chat platform.

Because of the oversaturated market of online events, it’s more important to ensure communication is two-way. Enabling your participants to connect in real-time will help create a community and look back on it as a memorable virtual event.

Since the pandemic, virtual events have increased in popularity. As we know event trends, Zoom was the top contender. However, there are many others, such as Dacast, who also saw an increase in their sales since the previous years.

However, virtual events are still not known to many companies. Prior to the pandemic, they have not even hosted one. To stay relevant through 2021 and the upcoming years, check out these event trends.

What contributed to the increase in virtual events?

It was technology that paved the way. Even before virtual events were a thing, online meetings and conferences were.

With the rise of virtual events and webinar platforms, communication tools also saw increasing popularity. What previously were to take years, now it only took months to boom.

Virtual event and live chat providers were at the right place and at the right time when the pandemic hit. Now that it’s becoming normal again, how can these platforms still be a part of the trend?

Organizers and how they engage attendees

Based on feedback from attendees and users, we have found that the best ways to keep the audience engaged are through Q&A sessions and open communication.

Another strategy is to interact with the audience before and after the event to introduce networking. This helps the companies and participants stay in touch even after the event for partnerships and solutions. This included freestyle chatting, live discussions, sharing materials, and more. Usually, attendees do come for the virtual event itself, but they find it more interesting when they attend the chat room wherein they can connect with other people, which is what people are craving now. The great news is that RumbleTalk group chat can provide that on any kind of virtual event, even with hundreds and thousands of attendees.

Strategies companies can use going forward

Because of event trends, companies have learned and used this as an opportunity to plan for future events. Here are some strategies going forward.

Platform

When companies shifted from in-person events, they saw that some strategies cannot be used. So, they had to adjust their format to suit the virtual event.

With that, they saw the pros of having a virtual event such as saving on travel costs and venue, having an international reach, getting more speakers to join, and communicating through chat platforms.

RumbleTalk is one of the chat platforms that you can use for any virtual event. Since it’s a web-based platform, you can embed it on any website. Here are the steps that you need to take if you want to use it for your event.

1. Sign up on the RumbleTalk website and create an account.
2. Log in to your account to see the admin panel.
3. Click Embed.
4. Choose Embedded or Floating. This will determine how the chat will look on your website.
5. Get your pre-made code and paste it on your website page.

See the chat on your website immediately after saving. It’s easy and it can be embedded like this on almost any site. If you’re using a third-party platform, you can see the list here for the available chat plugins.

Interaction

Holding a presentation virtually is much more challenging than a face-to-face one. In virtual events, there are instances that the audience is too large for the speaker to accommodate. In turn, this leads to losing the audience’s attention.

However, speakers have found the solution for this. It’s either you let the attendees talk amongst themselves before, during, and after the event. Or, you can appoint moderators to help in addressing the attendees’ questions. Because of these strategies, there are more chances for the speaker to interact with the participants than in in-person events.

Advancement

After the boom of virtual events this past year, many companies and individuals are still experimenting with the ins and outs of virtual event and chat platforms. There’s still room to learn, especially if you include participants’ feedback.

Before going directly to large-scale events, it’s better to start with a small one to see how you will fare. Experiment on the strategies that you will use, live chat rooms and discussions, and what’s the best engagement medium that will make your participants stay.

Event trends: virtual or hybrid?

Which will you go for? Will you be following the event trends? It may be part of our lives now, but will virtual events be the future?

Since virtual events are now common, we can see them becoming common on the Internet. Especially when social media is the king, virtual events are much more accessible than in-person events.

Others believe that it will be a mix of virtual and in-person events. This is what we call “hybrid” events. Since humans crave face-to-face interaction, hybrid events may be the solution for this.

If you want to push the limits of your event, it’s better to go virtual. However, if you want physical interaction, which has been missed since the pandemic, it may be better to go virtual. Nevertheless, both solutions still need a communication tool when the scenario arises. Contact us if you want a demo and plan for your next event.