In the past few months, our lives have undergone tremendous change. As challenging as this shift has been, we have all adapted to it.
Since we are all practicing social distancing, in-person events across the world have been cancelled, many businesses and companies have adopted “work from home” for their employees. Consequently, they have turned to virtual events to spread information to their customers.
Running a virtual event is a great way to reach a large audience. To help you plan and ensure that your virtual events run smoothly, we’ve put together a list of the virtual event ideas and their best practices.
Create a plan
Step #1 in hosting a virtual event is deciding what kind of event you want to host and what you wish to accomplish through this event. Some examples of virtual events include –
- Online conference
- Webinar
- Online workshops
- Live stream
- Online training
Live webinars are proving to be incredibly effective in recent times. Webinars have wide reach and can be watched by people from all over the world. They are also cost effective, making them a great choice for big and small organizations alike.
Next, it is important to determine how people will register and whether the event will be ticketed or not. If yes, what will the cost be, what is the topic of your webinar and who is going to be speaking? Make sure you research the topic so that is relevant to the audience. Remember to choose a speaker who is well versed in the topic. A good speaker will naturally keep the audience engaged
Once you know what type of event you’re holding, it becomes easier for you and your team to organize and configure the finer details of the event.
Choose a platform
Choosing the right virtual event platform is incredibly important as it makes your job as an organizer easy. Given the rise in demand for virtual event platforms, the market is flooded with numerous options to choose from.
Nunify is a next-generation online virtual events platform that provides an end-to-end virtual experience. Nunify is not an alternative to physical events. Instead we are integrating physical events to host hybrid events. With the help of multi-source inputs you can broadcast your event to a large remote audience while integrating smaller in-person stages.
You can host webinars, live conferences, product launches, virtual meetings & online training. Engagement and analytical tools are plenty to allow a rich digital experience. An easy to use turn-key DIY platform that can meet all needs and address all issues that organizers face – nunify lets you host, broadcast, network and engage.
Gather sponsors
Having sponsors is a great way to generate some capital for your event. Reach out to sponsors who you think might be interested and see if they’re willing to partner with you. Putting together an event pitch deck is a great way to let your potential sponsors know about your event, how many attendees are expected, who the speakers are, what platform you will be using and so on.
Just like a physical event, you can also give your sponsors a dedicated area to showcase themselves. Nunify has exclusive virtual booths for sponsors to exhibit their videos, images and brochures. A chat booth is open 24×7 which allows attendees to chat online during office hours or even later, outside of office hours. In addition to this organizers can monitor and track attendee-exhibitor interaction like views, visits, leads and so on.
Promote your event
Creating a marketing plan is very important. Find the right channels to promote your event. Social media are an ideal platform for marketing your event. Since it is a platform that is used by many, the right kind of social media marketing will boost attendance. Make use of Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, Youtube and any other platforms you think will be beneficial.
You can also make use of social media during your event to share tidbits of information or even screenshots or quotes from the speakers. You can also create a hashtag for your event and encourage attendees to use the hashtags on their social media channels.
Live Tweet Your Event
If your event is held on a larger scale with maybe multi-day online conferences, make sure that you live-tweet important and impactful quotes from the speakers.
If you want to be prepared in advance, a good way to do that is to have the speaker’s script accessible to you beforehand so you can create relevant graphics accordingly. Then during the event, you can post the tweets after the quotes are spoken.
Engagement tools are your best friend
Engagement is the key to a successful online event. At Nunify, we believe that engaging with the audience is incredibly important. So we have a range of engagement tools like interactive rooms which are dedicated areas for session handouts, chat, questions and so on.
Attendees can also react with emojis during a webinar. Hosts can control which attendee comes live during a broadcast using the raise hand option and hosts can also create polls that pop during or before/after the event.
Include a powerpoint presentation that is filled with both worded and visual content. This can work for almost any type of event you plan to create. Having an informative presentation can help you convey easily to the attendees.
Provide access to past events
If you plan on hosting virtual events annually, make sure you offer access to past year events so that your potential attendees can get an idea of what to expect from upcoming events.
This, in fact, is also a great promotional tactic as you can let people get glimpses of some of your best content and events and get them excited about what your next event has to offer.
However, make sure that this access is free of cost, as there are lower chances of people watching them otherwise.
Provide different levels of access
Create different levels of access for your audience by offering some portions of the event for free and charging for other exclusive parts.
For example, some introductory parts of your event can be live-streamed for free while other sessions with the more prominent speakers can include charges.
Make sure people know about the advantages of opting for the premium access by properly marketing the exciting points about those sessions and the people involved in them.
Test your tech in advance
A major technical malfunction in the middle of a large-scale event is probably every business’ nightmare. The best way to avoid this is to be completely prepared beforehand for any potential technical error.
Ensure you have a technically adept person handy for all kinds of troubleshooting throughout the event. Your tech team needs to run plenty of tests on all the equipment before the big day.
Also, it’s always better to use software that you have prior knowledge about. You don’t need any last-minute confusions or errors.
Gamify your event
Gamification of your event is a fun way to keep your audience engaged. Gamification works on the principle of rewards and the desire to win. Specify the rules and regulations otherwise there will be chaos.
Scavenger hunts and leader-boards increase the time your audience spends at. In addition to this it also leaves a lasting impression of your organization in the audience’s mind. This will improve your quality of leads which can eventually convert to potential customers.
Make quality content accessible
The virtual events you conduct are gold mines of content. Any type of content is useful whether it is the presentation deck used, a blog, the videos shown during the event or even a recording of the event itself. Make all this accessible to your target audience.
The idea of hosting a virtual event can seem overwhelming to businesses. However, a majority of organizers get a hang of hosting such events after the first time. With a clear plan in mind, and the right virtual events platform, you can easily hold a successful event.Are you ready to start putting together a virtual event? Register with Nunify to receive the best digital experience.
