Tips and Tricks for Hosting a Successful Online Event

As we all know, we are digital in a digital age and almost everything is going digital. Virtual events nowadays are becoming the new norm. Day by day, virtual events or online events are grabbing the market and this is good for us. There are multiple reasons for why online events are becoming popular; they save money, you can organize them across the world. More people can join as compared to local events, they increase the audience engagement and you can establish your client base worldwide.

What is precisely an online live event?

An Online event can be of any kind. It could be online classes, webinars, discussion panels, interviews, presentations, etc. Online events are lovely as they often give live listening or streaming experience to the viewers.

It builds a belief between the organizer and the attendees and boots the business and industry. Online events help in planning, hosting, marketing and relationship building.

Strategy for Virtual Events

If you are planning to host an online event, you know how important it is for you to make it successful. Technology today is playing an essential role in making things easier for us. Technology today is making us access almost everything sitting at home. There are a few steps on how to use the technique of online events in an effective way.  These are very crucial steps to be followed to arrange a successful online event.

1. Understand The Audience

Your audience or your attendees are the central pillars of the online event. Understanding your audience means understanding their needs and understanding their queries well. So, you must know as to what type of people will be joining the event, for example, if you are going to organize the event on “SEO techniques,” your attendees will be those from internet marketing background or SEO background. So, you need to prepare the content and presentation of your event based on their goals, priorities, needs and based on what they aspire to learn in the future. The more you concentrate on the benefits of your attendees, the more successful your online event will be.

2. Advertising The event

Like any other event or meeting, an online event also needs to be promoted and advertised.  It will help if you put in all your efforts to reach as many people.  You can market your event by creating a beautiful landing page and writing a fascinating blog post. A landing page should be user friendly as it will be used for registering the attendees, and many of the attendees might be first-time users.

Write a blog post to promote and market your event. You can write on what inspired you to create your event. Also you can write about how the audience is going to be benefitted from that event. You should be able to explain that this online event is something they will learn so much from. Share your blog on different social media platforms and boost the post.

3. Choose the Right Platform

While finalizing the right Platform to reach the audience, there are a few points that should be considered.

• Is it in my budget? 
• Will they be able to join without any technical difficulty?
• It has the features I need or not?
• How many peoples can join? 
• Will they be able to interact with me during the event?
• How will the video quality be?
• Will they be able to put forward their queries?

Online Platform for live Streaming:

• GoTo
• Webex
• Adobe Connect
• Google Hangouts
• ON24
• Zoom   and more...

4. Choose a Unique Topic

The topic of your online event is what is going to attract the audience. That is why it is imperative to decide the problem and make your attendees feel interested and excited about it. While deciding upon the topic of the online event, please keep in mind that the content is very vital and it plays an important role.

The attendees are joining to learn something new, so prepare according to what you believe they will be attracted to. Not all the attendees are going to like the content of the presentation, but that does not mean you should leave any stone unturned.

Please be very careful not to use long sentences, not to go too broad and also not to use repeated sentences. This keeps your audience connected. You can use Google Templates, PowerPoint slides and Excel to create the content and to give presentations. This will add to the professionalism you want to maintain during the event.

5. Distribute Responsibilities

You must be working with a team of people. So, it is of utmost importance to divide tasks to avoid chaos. For example, someone is taking care of the technical stuff, someone taking care of the presentation, someone else for speaker and someone for equipment. It is essential to have a team meeting before the event starts and it is necessary to work in the coordination.

6. Use Email Blast to Promote Your Event

Use the email data to promote the event to your attendees and subscribers.

There are readymade email blast campaigns available, which can be used for sending bulk emails to the audience. You can send welcome emails, registration confirmation emails, and reminder emails. You can also send promotional emails whenever you have a new product launched.  

7. Go Mobile

Please make sure you create a mobile-friendly event as many of the users will be logging in from the mobile.

Summary

Online Streaming or virtual events are a fun and effective way to reach people all over the world. Creating an online event takes strategic thinking, proper planning, and marketing methods, but with these tips, you’ll be well on your way to success and popularity.