We’ve all learned a few things in the last 12 months. Like much of the workforce, you probably shifted quickly to remote work in early 2020. Using your everyday video meeting software, your team adapted. When it comes to online events that aren’t “meetings,” however, you may have hit a wall. An HBR article entitled, “What’s Your Organization’s Long-Term Remote Strategy?”, reports that “leaders planning for a post-pandemic future have an opportunity to take a more intentional, strategic approach to remote work.” In addition, the authors said: “virtually all projections anticipate the post-pandemic workforce will be relatively more remote—that is, nearly all firms will experience an increase in remote work relative to their pre-pandemic baseline levels.” One important aspect of that remote work is larger events, from town halls to award ceremonies to industry conferences.
When we think about how to leverage remote work experiences to plan ahead for a remote and hybrid workforce, the good news is: There is much to leverage. When it comes to larger virtual events, leaders were surprised to learn they offer new ways to engage with audiences across the board—employees, teams, clients, consumers, and more.
The Pros of Virtual Events
Increased Reach. Virtual helps you reach and engage with a more geographically dispersed audience, and allows more flexibility in your run-of-show.
Decreased Cost. With some still reticent to travel, the virtual format may help you land that big-name presenter. Dynamic presenters who are able to connect with the viewers increase engagement for sure. You may also consider a surprise appearance from a celebrity or notable guest. For events with a longer guest list that your organization traditionally hosted in person, now is a good time to revisit best practices. Fortunately, 2020 also saw an increase in both the number and quality of online event platforms designed specifically for large, important events. These SaaS tools have helped organizations across industries get their message across more effectively than with an “everyday meeting tool.” How? One word: engagement.
How to Increase Engagement at Your Next Online Event
Decide on Your Delivery. In the world of virtual events, you have the opportunity to diversify the way you deliver your message. All options offer engagement. What’s important to remember is that engagement doesn’t necessarily mean live audience interaction.
Your event may be fully live, live with some prerecorded videos or fully prerecorded like an ‘as-live’ TV show. What you choose depends on the way your audience wants to engage with you.
Live. If audience participation is a high priority, then having live elements is a great idea.
Live with prerecorded elements. To add polish to your storytelling, include prerecorded elements, and keep the rest of your event live.
Don’t force yourself to be live. If specific stories and high production quality are your main priorities, and you don’t need live audience interaction, then fully prerecord your event. Your audience may appreciate watching your content on-demand, a trend seen across industries.
Be Thoughtful About Engagement. Once you have a vision for how you’ll deliver your message, purposefully build engagement into run-of-show. Ask yourself and your team: Are we offering our event guests opportunities to engage with presenters, each other, event content, and our brand?
To successfully execute your engagement strategy, choose an event platform that has specific engagement features you need. (Those features are presented in detail below.) Ask vendors: “What features does your platform offer that are proven to promote audience engagement? Can you show me use cases?”
These “engagement features” ideally appear on the same “event page,” so that guests do not, for example, navigate away from the video event to chat with each other. They offer your guests additional opportunities to learn, interact, and be heard. And if you’re interested in capturing data on how your guests interact with these features, be sure to ask if the event platform captures that data and can easily integrate it into your CRM.
Choose Your Engagement Features. Depending on the features your event platform offers, there’s room to be creative here and surprise your guests with the various ways they can connect with each other, your presenters, your event page content, and your brand.
Encourage audience participation early and often. “Audience participation” may look different than you think when you consider new features on the most innovative event platforms. Some top engagement features to consider are:
- Branding. An event page that fully incorporates your visual branding lets your guest know they’re in the right place. Are you able to customize your chosen events platform to your unique brand vibe? Does the overall visual design of the event page reflect you as its host?
- Chat. Having a chat feature right on the event page offers a chance for guests to connect with each other and the presenters, ask and upvote questions, and more, all without navigating elsewhere.
- Social integration. Choose an event platform that incorporates all relevant social channel posts directly on the event page. After a guest registers, let them know the event-specific hashtags and, if applicable, GIFs and memes.
- Product links. If your event is associated with a particular product, ask about ecommerce capabilities within the event page build.
- Highlight partners and sponsors. Include information about partners and sponsors on your event page. To keep guests at your event (rather than clicking on external links to partners), consider building partner/sponsor event pages, each with their own event video stream, unique from (or the same as) your main event page.
- Downloads. What sorts of information might your guests want to download? Consider slides, white papers, the event agenda, and other media of interest to your guests.
- Polls and surveys. Surveys keep guests engaged and give you valuable data. Raffles and quizzes may engage their competitive spirit.
- Presenter bios. Give your guests all the info they’re looking for about the stars of the show. Include photos and biographies of your top presenters.
The HBR research above emphasized the importance of conscious engagement, saying, “research indicates that even small amounts of high-quality social interactions, such as those demonstrating compassion or concern, can lower stress and improve well-being.” So, no matter how you build engagement in your virtual event, it’s a way for your virtual event guests to feel more a part of the whole event experience.
