From the pandemic’s start, attending classes, work, and events virtually have become the new norm. While this was initially due to safety reasons, virtual events have significantly evolved and have proven to be even better than in-person events in many ways.
You can host a successful virtual event and allow the audience to engage from various cities all over the world. They can save time and money and learn valuable lessons, with the added advantage of attending from the comfort of their home.
To host such an event, you need to strategize to make it successful. From a team of experts to having post-event follow-ups, these ten tips can help you host a great event.
1. Put Together a Team of Experts
Before you host any virtual event, whatever the topic may be, you must put together a team of experts. They should take care of planning, production, relevant topics of discussion, event marketing, etc. The producers for your event should bring your vision to life, ensuring your speakers look and sound good, attendees can interact, sponsors receive their necessary visibility, and everything looks good and runs on time.
You can consult and hire an expert virtual event production agency if you don’t have people with these skills on your team. With your expectations and target audience on the table, they can create and manage a flawless virtual event.
A virtual event production team can also work with the event’s aesthetics while taking care of pre-event communications with attendees, speakers, and sponsors, as well as capturing data in live and post-show surveys.
As you can see, while a may virtual event sound simple, it actually requires a very complicated list of tasks, some easy and some very technical. I’d say, “don’t try this at home”, but everyone will be at home for a virtual event so “don’t try this on your own”.
2. Define the Goals for the Event
You must be aligned with the ultimate goal when creating a virtual event. Define the vision you want to achieve through this event from your and your audience’s perspectives. Follow the SMART goals model to set specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and time-based goals.
Defining your goals with the SMART model will help you plan the event effectively. Ensure you don’t set unrealistic expectations and keep opportunities to measure the algorithm. Your event should also be relevant to your audience base and current events.
3. Attract Your Target Audience
The goals you set will also determine who your target audience will be. Specify your target group to explore various disciplines and topics to talk about. It will also allow for spontaneous discussion in the event.
For example, you’re hosting an event on how upcoming graduates should prepare themselves for the job market. This event will focus on various disciplines in job sectors, such as marketing, human resources, finances, banking, etc.
4. Create Timelines and Agenda
Now that you have selected your topic, identified your target audience, and defined your goal, you should create an agenda for your event. Outline the importance of the topic you’re holding this event on so that people can understand the benefits of attending it.
You must also create a timetable for your virtual event and stay true to it. If there are various fields in the topic, you can make it a week-long virtual event. Putting time stamps on each part will let your audience know when they can expect their preferred positions in the discussion, allowing them the flexibility to attend it at their convenience.
5. Choose the Right Platform
The right platform to host your virtual event will give you the engagement that you’re expecting. This is only possible after determining your target audience segment. But how?
Check which social media platforms or websites your target segment is primarily active on. Hosting virtual events in the form of live shows on those platforms can help get you your desired engagement.
Or, you can host the event on a live-streaming platform, allowing attendees to communicate via messages. This will involve more discussion, creating a lively and fruitful session.
6. Promote Your Virtual Event
To allow people to participate in your virtual event, you must inform them about it by promoting it on platforms where your target audience is mainly involved. Also, having a badge for your event will personalize it more, thus attracting more people.
Look at various social media statistics. The algorithm in these platforms will give you a rough idea about your target audience, show you how often they’re active here, and when you’ll be able to engage them in your content or live events.
When promoting your virtual event, explain what people can expect from attending it and how the event will benefit them. Besides, you must publish a list of guest speakers and their designations to let people know who they’ll learn from.
7. Invite Experts to the Event
If you want your audience to pay their full attention, the best strategy is to invite industry experts as guest speakers. Experts will be able to discuss the pros and cons in specific fields of work and advise the attendees on various topics, thus adding value to your virtual event.
As a part of the event, you can allow participants to contact the experts later for further career advice and mentoring opportunities.
Returning to the example of discussion for fresh graduates, invite experts related to the segments you have in your program. For example, there’s a segment for discussion on human resources jobs. An expert in HR will advise the youngsters on how to prepare themselves for it, what challenges they may face, and what’s the future of this field of work.
8. Engage Your Attendees
Participant engagement has always been a considerable part of every show we have ever watched, as that’s what kept them interested. It’s no different in virtual platforms as well.
While including such a segment is vital for participation, having an engaging host is equally crucial to make the event more fun and interactive. Someone active, spontaneous, and who alleviates boredom through humour can be the perfect host.
Open options for attendees to post their comments, concerns, and queries. Announcing a question-and-answer session as the last segment in the program will help engage the participants and make a lively event.
9. Host Post Event Follow-Ups
Post-event follow-ups include asking about the experience of participants regarding the virtual show. It’ll help them understand that their participation and experience with the show matter, and they will look forward to more shows from you.
Send them survey forms asking them about their experiences and suggestions. You may also include a suggestion section on topics for future events, where participants can mention what they’d like to hear about next.
10. Test All the Tech
Nothing’s more embarrassing than failed technicalities. That’s why, if you want your virtual event to carry on successfully, you must test all the technical aspects of the show.
Check the bandwidth of your connection and the technical aspects of the platforms you’ll be using. Ensure that the platform can take enough load, and you can allow your speakers to present various visuals when explaining something. Ensure that the ship doesn’t sink!
Final Thoughts
While hosting live events on stage is challenging, virtual events aren’t short of challenges. You must create many strategies to engage your audience, ensure the connection doesn’t fail and create opportunities for your audience to benefit.
Host a successful virtual event with these ten tips. You’ll gain a new experience every time you do so, achieve a loyal audience base and network with many affluent people.
