The Essential Guide To Virtual Events
Planning and executing a virtual event is very similar to running one in person. There are some important decisions you need to make during the planning stages to ensure your virtual event will go off without a hitch.
Solidify Your Strategy
You will want to make a clear outline of your target audience and who you want to attend your virtual conference. Doing this will help shape the kind of content you decide to include and how you will market your conference later. You want to be clear on what you are trying to achieve with this event and what the most effective way will be to achieve those goals. Laying out the panels, networking sessions, and full participation meetings will need to be done along with your outline so that you can decide on your guests and speakers.
Prepare Your Content
In addition to speakers and presentations, with virtual events it is a good idea to have some pre-recorded content to offer to your attendees to help keep them engaged during brief downtime or if there is a technical glitch that needs to be resolved. After the conference, you can offer these as a takeaway gift so that your attendees have the information to reference back to later.
Choose Your Platform
There are several platforms available that will host virtual events and they come with different options and levels of usability. Some platforms are very basic while others can include full packages, so you will want to consider what kind of space you will need for presenters to promote their products and how interactive overall the conference will be. Don’t be afraid to demo several options to find the right platform that meets all your needs.
Promote It!
Just like an in-person event, the ultimate success will rely on the strength of your marketing campaign. You need to decide on how big attendance-wise you want your event to be and if it will be a public invitation or more of a private affair with a dedicated list of attendees. Once you’ve settled on your prospective guest list, let that influence where and how to market the event to them to attract the people you want.
Networking for Attendees
One missing component for virtual events is the face-to-face connections attendees typically experience. Events and conferences are usually great opportunities to share contact information to set plans for potential deals and partnerships. However, there are platforms that will help networking within your virtual event be easier, including having links for each attendee to their career profiles for easier relationship building.
Choose a Reliable Audio Visual Team
Once you’ve outlined your event, decided on your content, chosen your platforms, and have started promoting it, you will want to consult with an experienced and professional audio-visual team to help ensure the behind-the-scenes technology that virtual events rely on goes off without a hitch.
Click here for a list of audio-visual equipment you will want to have for your virtual event.
