The Power of Good Virtual Events
- By Declan McManus
- Aug 23, 2020
As we have all adapted our workflows and practices to meet the current moment, virtual capabilities and remotely empowered teams have transitioned from nice-to-haves to absolute musts. With many large companies announcing that they will allow their employees to remain remote into the summer of 2021, sophisticated virtual events and remote connectivity have become indispensable.
In a LinkedIn post by LinkedIn Editor-in-Chief Daniel Roth, he posed the burning question: “Has anyone pulled off or heard about a successful virtual offsite? I’d love to get my global team together to talk about plans and to bond. There has to be a better answer than just more video calls, right? What’s an adequate-to-good pandemic-era team-gathering solution that you’ve heard about?”
As organizations across industries must replace their in-person conferences and workshops with virtual equivalents, we must ask the question: how can we create an equally enriching experience for participants as they sit at their computers at home?
From Zoom to Google Meets to Teams-– advanced connectivity tools have revolutionized how people communicate remotely. However, while these teams have enabled workplaces to overcome many of the challenges imposed by COVID-19, successful virtual events must go beyond the scope of video conferencing.
Below are some key ways to make your virtual events successful & memorable:
Bring in a diverse, highly curated set of participants.
Even if you’re not looking to book a keynote speaker for your virtual event, always make sure to bring in event participants that are diverse, fresh, and even unpredictable. Bring in your company’s marketing exec to your finance conference and invite a person from HR to your virtual workshop. By inviting people that are new and unfamiliar, your event will be more memorable and interesting and will provide participants with a new perspective.
Create opportunities for connection.
If you don’t give participants the chance to connect with others, how can you make sure that your audience is engaged? To ward off “Zoom zombies” and keep your audience on its toes, set up spontaneous and authentic opportunities for conversation and connection. This can easily be done through tools such as Zoom simply by placing participants in random breakout rooms.
By providing participants with targeted talking points and letting them converse in separate breakout sessions, your audience will be more engaged and will be able to actively respond to the subject matter.
Provide opportunities for creativity
From virtual escape rooms to Zoom happy hours to creative ice-breakers, there are many ways to get creative juices flowing in a virtual setting. Companies have integrated activities such as speed networking, virtual escape rooms, and even team video gaming to make participants feel more creative and relaxed. As months of remote work can feel like a repetitive drone of Zoom calls and email chains, events need to feel and look significantly different. With all of the digital tools available, always try to incorporate some element of creativity into your virtual events.
Go past Zoom: more ways to share content
You wouldn’t want your in-person conference to feel like another boring work day, so why should your virtual event? With a plethora of platforms to choose from, your next event shouldn’t have to be another boring, one-sided webinar.
Why should all virtual events be exclusive to a certain group of participants? Nowadays, just about every social media platform has a live video feature. Livestreams are known for driving engagement. According to Facebook, live video averages six times more engagement than regular video. From Instagram to Twitter to Facebook, different platforms all offer great opportunities to expand your audience while hosting a virtual event.
Livestreams give content a sense of urgency and interactivity, allowing your audience to reply to your content in real-time. As social media is an inherently modern and engagement-driven platform, hosting a virtual livestream allows you to shed the stuffy, rigid feeling that can be associated with typical web conferencing.
As Engage continues to expand its digital offerings and capabilities to meet the current challenges, we are committed to providing our talent and audiences with unique and successful virtual events.
For more information and to browse our talent and virtual pop-ups, visit the Engage website at http://www.letsengage.com/.
