How to host a successful virtual event is a question that goes far beyond a live Instagram or Facebook, although this has been the virtual event format of choice in 2021. Currently and due to the pandemic situation of Covid19, large events worldwide are being organized online. An event, even if it is developed through cyberspace, involves complex work and its development must be well defined. In today’s post, we give you 10 keys to make your virtual events a success.
1. Define Goals And Objectives
The first step of any virtual (and face-to-face) meeting is to define what you want to achieve with your event: attract new customers? build customer loyalty? inform? educate? Defining the objectives will give you the guidelines to know what to do throughout the organization of the whole event. In addition, it will also help you define what variables to measure once the event has been held.
If the planning of an event without pandemics is complex, when it comes to making it online, this process is a little more complicated because for this event to be successful it is very important that it is different, original, and as innovative as possible. This means the methodology and planning of the digital event must be carried out in very detail and with the proper distribution of each of the functions that each person on the team will perform.
All team members will be informed of the theme of the event, the objectives, and what we must do to achieve the goals we have set.
2. Announce Your Event
It will be useless to organize the best virtual event of the year if you do not disseminate the information in a suitable way. The most appropriate channels to disseminate them will be, obviously, digital channels. If you have a good database, email marketing campaigns will have a high impact.
Of course, social networks will also give you the boost you need. Do a study on the hours with the greatest impact for your campaigns and success is guaranteed. If you want to have a greater reach, you can also make advertising campaigns on social networks, Google, or digital press.
3. Capture Your Leads
The best thing about creating virtual events is capturing new leads. Continuing with the example of Instagram Live, they are a great tool for dissemination but, as they are open, you will not be able to work with your audience on future occasions. Therefore, use registration forms to keep track of the volume of attendees to your event and be able to manage the property.
4. Take Care Of Your Image
The image of an event goes from the most obvious (the poster) to the smallest detail, such as the background you have behind you at the event. Let’s go deeper into this point by breaking it down into different aspects of the event’s image:
Post: The image that advertises your event must be, first of all, very visual, as it will be what captures the attention of your customers in the first place. Use striking images or bright colors, but always with a harmonious result. Sometimes, less is more. Also try to have the key information of your event reflected in your post: date, time, and title.
Scenography: The fact that the event is virtual does not mean that we do not have to take care of the image of what we show. If you can, use corporate elements in the background. Avoid at all costs showing clutter or elements that may distract the attention of your attendees. Some platforms allow you to blur the background of the room or create custom backgrounds. If you opt for the latter option, try not to choose an eccentric background, remember: the attention must be focused on you.
Etiquette: Just as there is the etiquette for face-to-face events, there is also etiquette for virtual events. Depending on the circumstances, you can look more formal or informal, but our motto is: dress the same way you would if it were a face-to-face event.
5. Know Your Target Audience
Knowing the target audience that we want to participate in the event is essential to know how to publicize our event. This aspect refers to the message we are going to launch, the format, the type of platforms, the media to be used (videos, audios, images…).
There are two types of target audiences: internal and external. If our event is for an internal audience, the message can be communicated using the company’s own digital platforms (organization emails, internal platforms such as slack, among other collaborative platforms).
If our audience is external we can focus more on platforms such as Whatsapp, Facebook, Youtube, Instagram, and even, and taking into account the budget, we can create our own App to publicize and carry out the event. You need to know how to host a virtual event or it can become a failure.
6. Test Everything
- 3, 2, 1… testing, yesssssssssssssss, yesssssssssss. No, we haven’t gone crazy. Test everything you can and more: the platform through which you will hold the event and also test with all the participants who will be active and audible. Test the sound, the camera, the documents you want to present… everything. And do it several times, but especially about 15 minutes before the event. The connection is variable throughout the day and week, and what worked well yesterday may work poorly today.
Tell the participants of your event the steps to follow, and plan a script to follow so that everyone knows when to intervene. If in spite of everything, at the moment of truth the connection with a speaker does not work well, it is advisable to sacrifice the image (turn off the camera) to at least ensure that the bandwidth is focused on the audio.
7. Limit The Length Of Your Event
Keeping the attention of the audience during a virtual event is much more difficult than in face-to-face events, so you should try to make it as dynamic as possible. In order to achieve this, it is advisable that the virtual event does not exceed two hours and that, in the development of the same, you won’t be talking about the same topic for more than 20 or 30 minutes or people will get bored quickly.
8. Interact With The Attendees
Find a way to interact, through questions, quizzes, contests… this way, you will keep your audience glued to the screen.
It is advisable to have a list of the different activities to be carried out, what the rules will be, rules of the game to carry out a good execution of the digital event. For example, in the case of a speaker/s, it is important to highlight what the audience should do if they have questions, the language to be used, what the order of questions is, and how the questions will be made visible to the audience.
9. Create Bonds
Once the event is over, strengthen the bonds with your attendees through email. Send a newsletter with a summary of the event, send an opinion survey, or offer to answer questions. Anything that will keep you in touch with them will help you in the long run and make it easier to also profit financially from your audience.
10. Measure The Impact Of Your Event
Create a report on the results of your event. Know the percentage of registered attendees who attended the event, or know how many of them have been interested in products or services you offer, what has been the impact on social networks, what hashtags worked… etc… There are countless variables that you can measure and that will help you to profile and improve your future events.
To liven up your virtual event, also consider the following tips:
- Webinars can be pre-recorded or live. Sessions can be replayed using expertshare’s platform, allowing greater flexibility for attendees.
- Panels of speakers with live chat features. Expertshare’s live chat functionality creates a sense of community amongst attendees.
- Gamification and social learning features are added to enhance e-learning experiences. Use expertshare’s poll function to get live votes from your attendees.
- Exhibitor booths and virtual trade shows are available. With expertshare, you are able to create exhibits and immerse your attendees in a completely virtual experience.
Session resources, such as transcripts and educational content, should be available for download.
Expertshare.live makes resources and downloads easily available to participants.
These include;
- Full-day networking chats and forums, as well as small group breakout sessions
- Virtual member-to-member meetings.
In summary, online conferences are a multi-faceted approach to conferencing. They require exceptional content and a powerful virtual-events platform. Excellent community-building features should be available to keep attendees engaged. You can combine these features with an in-person event. Now really is the best time to host a virtual event.
If you like the organization and planning of events both online and offline, and you want to face the pandemic by going virtual, contact us and get the professional help that you are looking for. For more information on how to host a successful virtual event and for our contact details please visit our hybrid events platform.
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