Whether you’re an educator, entertainer, coach, or consultant using Symposium, conducting Q&As for your audience is something you should be doing regularly. You might be thinking, “I answer people’s questions every day through my content.” Despite the title of Q&A translating to “questions and answers,” hosting Q&As goes beyond just addressing people’s questions. It’s an opportunity to spark new ideas, nurture audience relationships, and assess how effective and engaging your current output is.
We elaborate on these three foundational reasons for why you should be conducting Q&As regularly and provide two ways you’ll be able to leverage the Q&A format on the Symposium platform.
- Nurture Audience Relationships
Hosting a Q&A one of the best ways to increase your audience engagement. Your side hustle efforts should be focused on making the most of your virtual calls to ensure you’re giving your clients the best educational or entertaining experience. Q&As allow you to take this a step further. It allows your followers and fans to widen the scope of what kinds of questions they can ask you, beyond the typical topics you cover in your SymTalks. This can allow you to share more personal details of your career journey and/or address their specific context directly. Second, if you conduct a SymCast, you can gather your audience together to create a sense of community among your follower base.
- Spark New Ideas
Q&As are not just for your audience to get answers, it’s for YOU to find answers you might not have known you were looking for. It gives you the opportunity to address things you might not have thought to address on your own, which can potentially give you ideas for future content. If you’re getting a lot of similar questions, you can reassess new ways to go about your teaching methods to fill in the common gaps you’re seeing. Additionally, it allows you to clarify points you might’ve glossed over previously and elaborate in greater detail.
- Assess Your Output
Are your efforts making an impact? Do your clients have a clearer understanding of your field? Is your passion for the topic inspiring others to become more curious and interested? Q&As allow you to assess these questions to see if you are spreading effective and engaging messages in your virtual calls and livestreams. There’s a balance to seek here: the questions you get should reflect curiosity instead of confusion. If you’re getting the sense that people are truly understanding the content you go over in your virtual lessons, then that gives you the feedback you need to restructure your approach. This is totally okay, it’s better to know sooner than later.
There are many other benefits to hosting Q&As that you will find out on your own once you get the ball rolling. Before we leave you hanging, here are the two best ways to conduct Q&As on Symposium:
- SymCast: Hosting your Q&A as a livestream has the benefits of gathering your entire audience. Each follower can see your answers to everyone’s questions, therefore everyone can benefit from the questions others ask. You can have your followers drop questions in the SymCast chat (make sure to enable this feature when creating your SymCast listing) or leverage social media to solicit questions.
- SymGram: Listing a SymGram allows you to give direct answers for fans and followers. The main benefit of this method is that you’re creating a special piece of content just for the follower who requests it. The answer can be personalized, specific, and can be addressed to this individual’s specific needs, whereas SymCast answers tend to be for the broader audience.
Remember, the virtual model will continue to thrive beyond the pandemic, so utilize it to your full advantage. If you haven’t hosted your first Q&A yet, we highly suggest giving it a shot! For more inspiration, you can see how our top earning SymPros have utilized this approach before.
If you’ve successfully conducted a Q&A on Symposium, we’d love to hear from you! Share your thoughts with us on Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook.
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