Considering hosting or attending your own virtual event? Here are seven virtual events best practices you should consider before hosting or attending your own virtual event to make sure you have the best possible experience. If you follow these tips, your virtual event should run smoothly, and you can focus on having fun while networking with other professionals in your industry or topic area.
16 Virtual Event Planning Tips:
Start Early
You may think you’ll have plenty of time to plan your virtual event, but remember that not only are you planning logistics, but also content. Start early to make sure you can figure out where people are coming from, how they will access your site, and what they’ll be able to do when they get there. You want your virtual event to be a success, after all!
Plan Quality Content
The foundation of a successful virtual event is quality content. It doesn’t matter how many people you have in attendance, if what they are hearing isn’t high-quality or highly relevant, they won’t find it worth their time. This applies to both speakers and sessions. When you are developing your agenda, focus on delivering premium content that your attendees will walk away with new insights or skills that can be used in their business immediately. Not only will their experience be more valuable because of good content, but they’ll also feel like it was worthwhile attending (even if there were some technical glitches during the live stream).
Hire a Professional Moderator
The job of a moderator is to lead an audience through an event. However, if your audience members are scattered all over the world, how can you be sure that your moderator will understand your target audience? The best way to ensure that someone truly understands who they’re speaking to is by hiring a professional. A professional moderator will have experience doing virtual events and is likely going to know quite a bit about you and your company before attending one of your events. While there may be a small upfront cost for a professional moderator, it’s worth every penny because virtual events with inexperienced moderators simply don’t do well.
Hire a great speaker
Though it seems like a good idea to get a rock star to speak at your virtual event, make sure you hire someone who is great on stage but also has experience doing live webinars and virtual events. It’s easy to get distracted if there are any issues with technology and you don’t want your event falling apart because of some technical issue that could have been avoided by hiring someone who has experience presenting in front of a live audience. Also, think about what your event is trying to achieve—hire someone whose strengths align with that mission. For example, if your goal is for attendees to feel more connected, consider an emcee who excels at getting people engaged and talking with each other.
Decide on Virtual Event Platform
If you are deciding between virtual event platforms, you should take into account what your goals are and who your audience is. Some of these solutions are free, but some have costs associated with them. Another thing to consider is if you need special software to use their platform or if there is a platform available for use on mobile devices or computers.
You might want to reach more people by using an online video platform that allows you to share live videos of your events on social media sites like Facebook Live or YouTube Live. Keep in mind that you can easily embed live video players into web pages with code provided by some of these solutions that allow anyone visiting your site to watch live events as they happen at any time of day from any location in the world with an internet connection.
Virtual Event Marketing
Marketing is key to your virtual event success. You can have a great event, but if no one shows up or if people do not interact with each other, you will not get results.
Here are 3 tips to help make sure your virtual events are a big success. Check off each of these event marketing tips before you launch your next virtual event:
1. Keep Virtual Event Marketing Simple – Start by deciding how often and when you want to hold your virtual events. Are they once per month? Are they a regular part of a larger conference? Make a calendar and stick to it!
2. Reach Out Beforehand – Connect with participants via email and social media well in advance of each virtual event to engage them in conversation that builds anticipation for what’s ahead at your live event.
3. Do email marketing to attract a large audience to drive registration on your event website.
Select a date and time
If you’re hosting a virtual event, be sure to select a date and time that will accommodate your audience. If you don’t pick a good time, not many people will come. This is particularly true if you’re organizing an online conference. So make sure you pick a time when most of your audience can participate.
Invite Influencers
When building an event, it’s important to ensure you have influencers at your virtual event. Influencers help expand your reach to people outside of your industry—people who may be interested in what you have to say, but who aren’t already following you on social media or taking any action based on your content. This is vital to growing your business; find influencers within your industry and invite them to take part in virtual events. Let them know why they should attend.
Plan Interactions and engagements
What’s a virtual event without interactions and engagements? Nothing, that’s what. Plan your interactions and engagements carefully to keep everyone happy and motivated. Provide participants with opportunities to ask questions or give feedback so they feel heard, don’t leave out individuals who might benefit from connecting with one another, and plan opportunities for informal interactions such as coffee breaks to foster connections. Additionally, be prepared to extend your schedule by an hour if necessary; you never know how much time you might need during a virtual event! The more well-rounded your virtual event is, the better it will go—and your attendees will thank you for it later. #Success!
Do something special for female participants
With females comprising 54% of visitors online, it should come as no surprise that female-friendly events tend to see more participants than others.
Do a test run with keynote speakers
A virtual event is only as good as its keynote speakers, so it’s important to do a test run with them before you actually host your event. This will allow you to work out any kinks in your format and flow of questions, while giving speakers an opportunity to rehearse their presentations. You can also use a dry run to ask speakers if they’d be interested in doing a live demonstration of a product or service during their presentation. If they are open to it, let them know that there will be an extra stipend involved and that you’ll need it from them before or at least shortly after they sign on.
Define Event Goals
The first step to planning a successful virtual event is to define your goals. Are you looking to raise awareness? Engage prospects? Educate audiences about your industry or brand? If you don’t know what you want your event attendees to do after they log off, you won’t have any way of measuring how effective it was. It’s important that you take time at the beginning of an event to communicate these goals clearly so all parties are on board with what you are trying to accomplish. Depending on your goals, virtual events can be used in many different ways; keep reading to find out more!
Send event email invitations
If you’re sending out an email invitation, make sure to include all of your contact information—including email address, website, phone number, and address. You’ll also want to remind invitees that they can share the event with others on social media by including a Twitter hashtag in your invitation message.
Don’t forget to state that presenters are welcome to record their presentations, too! That will encourage people who are interested in recording it to tweet using the same hashtag so attendees know what recordings are available.
Be sure to have someone on hand at least 30 minutes prior to start time just for last-minute registrations or hiccups.
This ensures no one is left waiting around at your virtual event.
Include Networking features
Knowing how to network is one of your best weapons when it comes to securing career opportunities. Whether it’s in person or virtually, networking allows you to get to know other professionals, make contacts and expand your professional circle. When hosting a virtual event, be sure that you include networking features so that participants can connect with others in their field. Remember, virtual events don’t have to be boring—your participants will thank you if they have new connections to follow up with after. Keep these tips in mind as you create your next virtual event:
Of course, there are many more effective ways to engage your audience during an online meeting than just asking questions at specific times during the presentation.
Send Incentives
Beyond webinars, you can also use virtual events to connect with customers. To show customers you value their attendance and participation, incentivize them with relevant prizes or gifts that match your business goals. A great example of a successful virtual event is Zappos’ annual CTO Summit: in addition to free and discounted products and services, Zappos rewards participants with sweepstakes tickets for $10,000 in prizes every time they attend a conference session. By rewarding people who invest time in attending sessions and interacting on social media platforms, Zappos is able to expand its brand awareness while encouraging participants to provide valuable feedback that they can use to improve their products and services.
Send Post-Event Survey
When a virtual event is over, it’s good to ask participants what they think about your event. This will help you tweak your future events and let you know what is working and what isn’t. If you have a follow-up activity planned, make sure to let participants know about it in advance so they can prepare. Also, make sure that those who don’t complete follow-up activities or surveys are able to do so at a later date with as little hassle as possible. Remember: Your participants are people first—no matter how virtual your event was! Be mindful of their needs.
Analyze Post-Event Data
It’s important to understand how your virtual event went and what went well and what didn’t. Was it worth all of your time and effort? What did you learn? How can you improve next time? Most importantly, do you plan on holding another virtual event in the future? You should always start by reviewing post-event data. Post-event data collection tools like SurveyMonkey make it easy to gather feedback about an event from multiple sources (you, attendees, sponsors). Look at what worked and what didn’t—and try to figure out ways that you can improve both in upcoming events.
Use these tips to host your next virtual event!
Hosting a successful virtual event requires careful planning and consideration of all of your audience’s needs. Plan ahead, make sure you have everything set up beforehand, follow these 16 tips above, and you’ll be able to host an effective virtual event.