The Dos and Don’ts for Hosting Successful Virtual Events

With the impact of COVID-19 restrictions have been imposed on travelling and mass gatherings. A sudden surge in demand for virtual hybrid events has been witnessed recently. Organisations around the world are working on their financial plans to incorporate virtual hybrid events on their agenda. Today, virtual has become the new normal to keep the business going even in the time of the global pandemic. It has prevented many businesses from dipping down during uncertain times like today. Organising day to day recurring meetings and conferences has become an integral part of organisations today. Apart from it, hiring and onboarding processes around the globe are taking place virtually.

A sudden spike in the percentage of virtual events has resulted in an increase in the demand for virtual event platforms. Today, the internet is piled up with numerous virtual events platforms that offer the best-in-class engaging and interactive features. A virtual event platform enables you to host any physical event like a meeting, conference, trade show in a virtual space. 

Event planners, organisers, and marketers are figuring out the ways to deliver a successful event with seamless event experiences. While organising virtual events for businesses, you need to keep an eye on the minute details and essential elements. The slightest mistake on your part results in the pitfall of the event without giving any chance to rectify it. With adequate planning, strategy, and seamless execution, you must avoid doing certain things to ensure a successful virtual event. In this article, we have shared the virtual event do’s and don’ts to deliver an outstanding event and achieve the set goals.

Here is a quick synopsis of Do’s and Don’ts of planning virtual events, let’s get started!

Do’s of Organising and Delivering Successful Virtual Events

We have listed a few things you need to keep in mind while planning a virtual event to ensure success. To adhere the virtual attendees with seamless experiences you need to do certain things while planning your future virtual events.

#1. Boost Interactions: One of the most important Do’s of virtual events

Enabling participants and moderators to connect and network in real-time is quite significant. Try to amplify interactions between the attendees and the brand by leveraging live chat functionality offered by the platform. Gone are those days when people do not get involved with the brand. Today, audiences love to have one-on-one conversations with brands or associations. Allow your virtual attendees to have one-on-one interactions with speakers, hosts, booth representatives, and other attendees via live chat functionality. Organise Q&A sessions, live polls, surveys, etc amid long sessions to gain the attendees’ insight and keep them engaged. 

#2. Reduce the complexity for participants – A must Do for a seamless experience

Reducing the complexity of your virtual event is a must to deliver a smooth and seamless virtual experience to attendees. There are chances that every attendee is not tech-savvy. Not every attendee is well versed with technology resulting in a reduction in attendee attendance and engagement if the process is complex. Remove the unnecessary steps involved in accessing a virtual event for smooth and hassle-free delivery. Moreover, you can even opt to share a guide about how to access a virtual event with them over email.

#3. Keep the content engaging – Undoubtedly, a must-do for a successful event

Engaging, innovative, meaningful, and informative content is the key. To drive a successful virtual event your content must be engaging and hold value to attendees. You can opt to introduce live surveys and polls in amid sessions to gain audience insight and mold the content accordingly. An experienced and knowledgeable speaker can do so. You can even opt to organise breakout sessions, keynote speaker sessions, chat rooms, and so on for attendees.

#4. Follow up and take feedbacks – Add it to the to-do list of virtual events

Acquiring feedback from the event attendees helps in measuring the effectiveness and the success of the event. Exert extra focus into the same. It helps in determining which part of the event attendees enjoyed the most and which needs improvement. It helps you understand what problems are faced by attendees during the event, thus enabling you to improve the performance next time.

Don’ts of Hosting a Successful Virtual Event

We have enumerated some Don’ts of virtual events for your business to achieve the desired set goals. 

#1. Don’t let your virtual event just be a one-time event

Make the most out of your virtual event and benefit from the same. Do not just make your virtual event a one-time show for attendees. Repackage your virtual content that could be utilised in various channels. Regenerate your session content, recreate or recap blog posts, find out article topics from key areas of the event, and so on. The content generated from event takeaways can be utilised in marketing strategies. The content remains evergreen with virtual occasions thus enabling you to distribute it on your online channels. It helps in making the event memorable.

#2. Don’t pick the wrong virtual event platform service provider

Selecting the right virtual event technology is a must for seamless execution and a successful virtual event. Partnering with the wrong virtual event service provider is the worst you can do resulting in making your event fall in a nutshell. A variety of virtual event platforms are available today that offer engaging virtual event services. In short, selecting the right platform entirely depends upon your business needs.

#3. Don’t neglect your exhibitors & sponsors

Do not neglect your sponsors and exhibitors as they are even your audience. Involve your sponsors and exhibitors with marketing and sponsorship activities. It helps the brand to build a relationship with them and attract more sponsors and exhibitors. Offer them with all the required information in your proposals. Apart from it, offer them enticing deals that offer value to them.

#4. Don’t forget to leverage social media channels

Today, social media plays a great role in the digital era. A majority of the population is available on social channels like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. It helps in creating a buzz for your upcoming virtual event, thus reaching a diverse set of audiences. The posts shared on social channels helps in boosting brand awareness and dragging a maximum number of attendees to access the event. It even helps in making your event stay in the mind of the attendees once it gets over by sharing the key highlights of the events.

#5. Don’t forget to curate compelling stories

Curate compelling stories for event marketing. It is counted as one of the effective event marketing tools as humans recall the stories in the long run. Creating blogs, videos, case studies, etc, and sharing them online on social channels is an effective way of marketing your event.

#6. Don’t avoid a test run

Do not forget to test-run an event before the actual date of a virtual event. It helps in figuring out any technical issues or hiccups and come up with an alternative solution beforehand. It helps you to track any technological or functional issues beforehand and figure out the solution. However, enabling you to run a smooth virtual event without any hassle.

Final Word

Whether you have started hosting virtual events due to unforeseen circumstances or organising it for a long, keeping a few things in mind is a must to ensure a successful virtual event. We hope the above-mentioned Do’s & Don’ts of Virtual Event helps you deliver a seamless event and improve your virtual event planning and strategy.