The future of offline events is still very questionable, so no one knows what to expect tomorrow, in a month or even a year. But one thing is clear - in a dynamic reality, the demand for digital and hybrid events will be growing.
This increasing demand for digital events has greatly increased the amount of content. Unfortunately, its quality is not always worth viewer's attention. We believe in online events–since March we have held more than 10 digital events, from niche meetings to large-scale forums for thousands of users, Now we are ready to help the industry to make a big step forward.
We would like to tell you about how to ensure that your online event won’t disappoint your customers' expectations and will help to increase interest and trust in online events in general.
- Don't have false expectations.
Online events are often more difficult than offline ones: despite the fact that you have to build a customer journey map, you also have to harmoniously build the broadcast. Analyze which elements of the program and platform functionality will be most interesting for target audience.
- Do not host a digital event with a small team
Digital events have many subunits of responsibility, so the team for an online event is no less than a team for an offline one.
- Fall in love with the documentation
To host a successful digital event, get ready to prepare a whole mountain of documents including:
-Technical requirements for platform development
-Event program, broadcast schedule
-Technical script
-Editing plan
-Contact list
-Script for a prompter
-Broadcast brief for platform moderators
-Brief for speakers
-Brief for an online platform
-Brief and scenario for moderators (including emergency situations)
-Technical connection diagrams
-Team interaction & communication structure.
- Go deep in studying principles of building the broadcast
It is much more difficult to keep the viewers’ attention on the computer screen than in the real life. You should work on the stream diversity properly, and also provide the platform with interaction techniques, so that the viewer will not be distracted by other tabs in his web browser.
- Add some offline
Make everyone feel involved in the event. This can be some branded merchandise or food & beverages delivery, for example.
- Think about networking
Real life communication is the part of offline that everyone misses the most. However, there are good alternatives to it: segmented chats, interactive techniques, gamification, online bars and more.
- Be open
Your support service has to be efficient. Try to decrease the number of extra questions with a detailed tutorial on the site. Don’t forget to include the guidelines!
Of course, this is far from everything. The world of online events is very dynamic: six months ago there was not much of what we have now, but you can definitely start with our advice.
