Peter Lawless

Is an Excellent and Engaging MC Essential for your Event's Success?

You have an impressive line up of speakers, and you have managed to fill all the seats at your event, so how can you ensure that your event is an outstanding success?

As you begin to imagine how successful your event could be once you have clearly identified how you want your audience to feel, one of the things you will start to plan is the line-up of speakers.

Your theme should accurately address the needs and desires of your audience. This means that all of your speakers should emphasise and reiterate the same central theme which in effect is the backbone of your whole event.

You are probably all too aware that the entire event is not purely about content. This is because people base their feelings on what they can actually hear, see, feel, smell and taste. What this means is that the location, ambience, service, food and drink are also essential and that of course is why you are a successful event organiser.

It takes a lot for an event organiser to move away from an excellent MC, since they like to work with people they know and those that they feel will suit the audience in the room. In many cases the MC they know may not be available or may not suit a different audience, so it is important to look for qualities in the person you choose that you can feel extremely comfortable and confident with.

So sooner or later once you have the logistics underway and you do turn to content, here are some tips that you may wish to look at that could just help your events be even better;

• First and foremost your audience must feel delighted that they attended and that the whole event was worthwhile and excellent value in terms of time and money spent.
• Knowing exactly who should attend and what they will get out of the event is one of the most important steps in planning and marketing your event, since getting the right messages to the right audience in the right way is a simple rule for success that many people seem to forget.
• All events should inspire the attendees and have them talking about it afterwards and energised. This means that they feel they can now really achieve the goals they felt were important when they signed up to attend.
• Feedback is the fuel for your next event's success. Glowing testimonials as well as suggestions for improvement are a vital part of the event quality control process.
• The audience should always be entertained and motivated throughout the event. Sometimes a poor speaker can seriously damage your event. To mitigate against this, an engaging MC, can recover the situation by redelivering the salient points in a way to completely suit the audience's mood and desires.
• The MC should be an excellent listener, with specific and relevant experience in the topics addressed in order to effectively summarise each speaker. This ensures a continuity and flow is maintained by adding a clear interpretation as part of the linking process.
• Sometimes it can be quite apparent that the audience is starting to mentally wander, paying scant attention to the content of your conference. A good MC will instantly pick up on this and bring your event back on track.
• An MC, who can ask intelligent, relevant and thought proving questions is a huge advantage, since questions and answer sessions enable participants to feel that they are involved in the event. The MC will also have the acuity to use this session to clarify relevant speaker points that he may have detected the audience had missed.
• Most speakers focus on their pitch and indeed they will all have different styles, thus it is essential to have an MC who is completely empathetic with the audience to ensure a smooth communication flow is maintained.
• In today's busy world many event organisers in a competitive environment are seeking the golden bullet that will ensure their event is well attended and received. Very often the quality of the MC can make or break an event's success.
• All events and conferences have gaps and unexpected things that just happen and to ensure that your audience enjoy a fluid experience, it makes sense to have an MC who as Kipling says; “can fill the unforgiving minute with 60 seconds worth of distance run”.
• The MC should be so much more than just a host, they should grab attention before and between your presentations so your audiences listen, retaining the key messages and information. They shouldn't just introduce speakers; they should add real impact, influencing the mood of your audience with playful interaction to optimise the environment.
• Some MCs just turn up on the day and expect everything to be OK! Could you imagine how powerful an impact the MC you hire could have, if they thoroughly researched your event and organisation as well as asked to see all of the pitches from the other speakers?

The bottom line is that your events need to be memorable, whether they are being run for a single company or as part of a larger organisation like a professional body or charity.

While content is king, how you package that content is imperative. You probably wouldn't buy someone a valuable cake and wrap it in a plastic bag. So maybe you might ensure that you wrap your content into a rich flowing, though provoking experience where the icing on the cake is a fluent, articulate and highly presentable Master of Ceremonies.

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