Organising an event takes a lot of time and effort, but sometimes all this hard work goes to waste because the organiser got a few vital elements wrong.

By failing to think creatively and put delegate experience at the heart of their event, they fail to inspire. Their attendees simply don’t engage.

Don’t let that happen to you. Make sure none of these 8 attendee turn-offs apply to your event.

1. Deliver content via monotone lectures

Yawn! Making delegates feel like they’re back in school, with an unenthusiastic teacher giving a dry, top-down lecture, is one sure-fire way to make them switch off.

To grab their attention, speakers need to tell stories, weaving education with theatre. Ask your speakers to use their real life experiences to bring topics to life and explore themes in a captivating way.

Related: 70 event ideas and formats to inspire your next event

2. Rely on PowerPoint

Poor PowerPoint gets a bit of a bashing. As a tool it certainly has it’s uses, however there is a tendency for presentations to become long and uninspiring when speakers rely on it. Slides are often stacked with text that’s too small to read, the graphics all look the same and by the time the Q&A comes round there’s not one arm in the air.

To avoid ‘death by PowerPoint,’ try an alternative presentation technique or tool. Here a few good ones:

Haiku Deck for iPad gives you built-in access to a wealth of free art. Simply type in a keyword and it will search millions of Creative Commons-licensed images allowing you to create beautiful, visually driven presentations.

Prezi brings your presentations to life with eye-catching custom animations. Select a template and populate it with text, graphics, and photos. Instead of flipping from one page to the next, PowerPoint-style, Prezi flies around, zooming in on different areas for viewing, with a smooth animated flow. The effect is impressively professional.

Projeqt lets users craft rich “projeqts,” by pulling content from a range of sources. Insert Flickr or Instagram photos, Tweets and Facebook posts, YouTube videos or an interactive map, alongside text, audio and media from your own computer. You can even pull in live social media feeds to really give your presentation a pulse.

Related: How to up your presentation skills

3. Don’t ask questions

If you want to engage your audience it’s important to initiate a conversation. Ask them for their point of view via interactive polls and surveys. This can be done in-session with technology such as sli.do or Crystal Interactive.

With these tools you can also invite your delegates to submit questions for speakers. Because they are able to do this via their own smartphone or device, without the need to stand up and speak into a daunting microphone, you will often enjoy higher levels of engagement.

Related: Engage conference attendees with sli.do

4. Don’t make use of social media

Social media is a direct line to your delegates. If you don’t make full use of it, you’re really missing a trick. Set up and publicise a hashtag for your event and pull all the audience-generated content onto a Tweet wall.

Be sure to display the hashtag on screen at the start of each presentation and let your attendees know you won’t consider it rude if they take photos or post during the session. You can also use Twitter to take questions for speakers in real-time.

Related: Top 5 audience engagement tools

5. Have patchy or expensive Wi-Fi

If you want people to be socially active, you must ensure they can get online. This is especially important if you have attendees coming from overseas – they are highly unlikely to want to pay astronomical roaming rates simply to upload a photo from a session, so you will be missing out.

These days, delegates really don’t expect to pay for Wi-Fi access, so make sure your venue includes it as part of the package.

Related: 8 questions you must ask an event venue before signing

6. Don’t facilitate networking

As well as engaging with the content, any event worth its salt also gets attendees engaging with each other. Networking can hugely enrich the event experience so go further than simply organising name badges and coffee breaks.

Consider an activity to break down barriers, and get people talking, such as interactive sushi making for lunch or have people working in groups during workshops.

Related: The expert guide to better networking at events

7. Don’t do anything differently

For each event you organise you should aim for an element of ‘wow factor,’ even more so if it’s a reoccurring event – it’s vital to keep things fresh otherwise delegates switch off.

This could be as simple as using a different venue, having a theme or playing with session formats. However, if you can invest in new technology, innovations in catering or décor or other novelties, you will be sure to grab people’s attention and spark conversation.

Related: 30 Experts predict the event trends that will shape 2015

8. Don’t seek feedback

If your delegates come away from your event dissatisfied, they either won’t return or will become negative and disengaged participants. You can prevent this by carrying out a post-event survey to seek their feedback (Eventbrite is integrated with several popular survey tools to make this super simple).

Ask them what elements of the event they found most engaging, as well as what turned them off, and you will be able to fine-tune the content for next time.

Related: How to send a post-event survey

Conclusion

Think differently to engage with your attendees. Make them part of the conversation and let their contributions help evolve the event.

There really is no excuse for a boring and uninspiring event – interaction, participation and creativity are key ways to give your event the get up and go it needs!

How do you ensure attendees engage at your events? We’d love to hear your top tips