To truly deeply connect with your audience, start your workshop with a story that shows them who you are as a person. It doesn’t have to be your big “Hero’s journey” – even a small anecdote can be powerful. For example, you could share a moment of realization you had while journaling or a story about a trip that impacted you deeply.

An example of a story that I share is that we traveled all over the place when I was a young girl. I grew up on a U.S. Military Base in Yokohama, Japan. My father, who’s Japanese, and my mother, who was American, decided to take us three kids to the United States on an Amtrak train journey, so we could travel from city to city, and enjoy the scenery along the way. I was seven years old, and honestly, I didn’t care about the scenery; I only cared about making friends. And on this trip, I met a handful of girls my age that became my friends. We became penpals (like writing actual snail mail letters that we’d send internationally), and we wrote to each other when we parted ways from that trip. One of them became a penpal for about seven years until we lost touch. But then, when Facebook made its debut, we reconnected and started to chat again.

This story relates to one of the first ways that my craving for a deeper connection shows through. It’s something that has always been very important to me. And it’s a way for me to increase audience engagement by giving an example of how that core value has always shown through for me.

The first thing that you would want to talk about is something that connects with your audience. An example you could use is that you are on the same journey and share some details about that journey. Where you started, how long it took you to get where you are, and why you decided to do what you’re doing.

Then, outline your core elements and how they can help your audience. For instance, my core elements are creating deep connections, and my expertise is in messaging, and then I share why those are relevant to what I’m teaching in the workshop.

Decide what journey you want to take your audience on. This is where you think outside of the box. What has made the biggest difference for you? What could you guide them through? Consider what would be most helpful to your audience and what you wish you had access to when you were in their position.

Think about what will really help them and then follow through with that. It doesn’t have to be clever and unique. Provide them with something so good, they can’t ignore it!

Don’t get caught up in creating a complicated call-to-action (CTA). Keep it simple and straightforward. If you’re offering high-ticket services, invite your audience to book a call with you about personalized help. A simple question like “Who here would like some personalized help with this?” followed by a link in the chat can be effective.

If you want to take things to the next level, use the latest tech to improve your CTA during live events and workshops. With AI-powered tools, like Affectiva, you can monitor your audience’s engagement level in real-time by analyzing their facial expressions, body language, and tone of voice. By doing this, AI can help you understand which parts of your presentation are resonating with your audience and which aren’t. Once you have this information, AI can suggest changes to your CTA to make it more effective. For example, if your audience seems to be most interested in a certain topic, AI may recommend that you include a CTA that relates directly to that topic.

FInally, Using ChatGPT to write post-workshop sequence can be a great way to follow up with workshop attendees and keep them engaged. With its natural language processing capabilities, ChatGPT can create personalized messages that resonate with the audience and encourage them to take action. The post-workshop sequence can include a call-to-action (CTA) to prompt attendees to sign up for the next workshop, share their feedback, or subscribe to a newsletter.

End your workshop with an open Q&A to answer any remaining questions your audience may have. This is also a great opportunity to transition to your CTA again and invite your audience to work with you further.

Once you have all five of those steps down, you’ll be able to create those same deep connections with your audience so that you can continue to master delivering workshops that create real value for your audience.