Are you hosting a series of virtual events for your business, whether it’s for marketing or engaging with your communities? If you are looking for a better way to manage your online virtual events and achieve more engaging event experience, this article will be a great start!
We will be sharing the simple 15 tips (check-list) that we find it super useful for ourselves to run a virtual event like a PRO.
- Pre-Registration
- Share the video conference link with a Reminder Email
- Send Reminder Email — min. 2 times
- Virtual Background
- Dress up nicely
- Presentation Kit
- A Trial Run
- Starts at least 15 mins before the event
- Background Music for early birds — Spotify
- Having a host (if you can)
- Heads-up and Agenda
- Request audience to switch on Camera for more interactive
- Poll
- Consolidate Q&A
- Thank you email
1. Pre-Registration
Not every virtual event will need a registration if it’s a casual event with friends and families. However, if you would like to engage with your audience effectively till the event day, registration is a must. With having a pre-registration, you will benefit the following:
- You have contacts for communication and business metrics
- You know how many are interested in attending based on the RSVP list. Even though the virtual events may not have a big hassle with audience size, knowing the signup rate will help you many ways to gauge the interest and prepare for the event day accordingly.
- Know your audience — You can ask some questions in the form such as their job title, company, etc. so that the presenter knows the audience to prepare for effective presentation.
- In the virtual business events, the turn-out rate sometimes can below if you don’t send out the reminder email 1 hour before the event time since they don’t need to dedicate their time to make an effort to travel to a venue like going to a physical event. The people can overlook their calendars when they have a distraction from other Ops activities.
- You got contacts to send out your presentation slides after the event and post-event follow-up activities.
The next question is, how do I create a pre-registration process?
Here at EventNook, we are enablers for our business professionals and marketers with event technologies. While EventNook caters to the comprehensive registration solutions for conferences and the MICE industry, we recently launched a new product — UserRoll ( https://www.userroll.com) to enable the small regular series of online virtual events, webinars, courses, etc. from our business communities.
UserRoll makes your event registration hassle-free and rolls smoothly! It allows the event organizers to launch an event registration site in minutes. With UserRoll, you can create an engaging event site and automate your event registration process seamlessly and efficiently.
2. Share the video conference link in Reminder Email
Most people have trouble finding video conference details to join when they are about to join a Most people have trouble finding video conference details to join when they are about to enter a webinar. By communicating the necessary video conference details such as link, passcode, conference dial number, etc. in the reminder email will help to avoid any last-minute hiccup from the audience, and that will increase the turn-out rate.
3. Send Reminder Email (at least 2 times)
As mentioned above, the reminder email will be handy to send out event details. Our recommendation is to send out reminder emails at least two times. The first reminder email should go out a day before the event day, and the second reminder email should go out an hour before the event time.
The first reminder email is to give the audience heads-up about the event coming tomorrow so they can make an effort to bookmark the schedule properly if they are keen to attend.
The second reminder email is to give the audience immediate attention that the event is starting soon and be ready!
If you are using our UserRoll platform, you can do it in a few clicks and find out more here.
If you are using our UserRoll platform, you can do it in a few clicks and find out more here.
4. Virtual Background
If you are doing a small virtual event and a bit more casual, so we don’t need to present it from a beautiful venue or office, yet you may want to make it look professional and pleasant experience.
To make our presentation have positive energy over a video conference, the background of the host, or presenter matters. And also, the audience will be people you don’t know, and they could be your potential customers. We don’t want to show our bedroom while we are presenting to invite undesirable negative experiences.
Some presenters also use a poster image of the webinar or a brand background that represent their service or product.
While there are many websites where you can find a proper image, we strongly recommend the following two sites.
- Unsplash — Free copy-right yet quality images https://unsplash.com
- Canva — To create a custom background or poster https://canva.com.
We have also written about an article on creative images resource — here.
5. Dress Up Nicely
It might not sound like a big deal to dress up since it’s a virtual event. However, for a business event, it’s always good to maintain a professional image like going to physical business events. It creates a great vibe of business energies from a presenter to the audience.
6. Presentation Kit
CrCreate a shared folder (presentation kit) to place all the presentation slides, documents, virtual background images, etc. that are necessary for the event team. So your team can just go to one single shared folder to easily access all the up to date documents during the event.
7. A Trial Run
Test, Test, Test!
If you are not familiar with a video conference tool that you are using, it’s best to have a rehearsal session to test out the flow and get yourself and the presenter to get familiar with the buttons and menu of the tool.
- Agenda ready
- Know how to share the screen or slide
- Test audio quality (microphone)
8. Start min. 15 mins before the event time
As an event host, start early to be in the video conference (Zoom or whatever tools you use) — at least 15 minutes before the event time not to end up with “Can you hear me?” technical hiccups when the audience comes. Be yourself ready with AV (audio/video), beautiful virtual background, and pleasant background music that are working together smoothly.
9. Background Music for Early Birds
The background music always creates a great mood and experience while the attendees who come early are waiting for the event to start. And if you are also having more than one session and need to give a 10 mins break-time, the background music can be run as well to keep the audience engaged. If you are using Zoom, there is an option to share the sound from the presenter device — [ How to turn on background music in Zoom — Article].
We use Spotify, and it can quickly provide you a playlist that suits, whether it’s a background piano music or energizing pop music!
10. Having a host (if you can)
Having a warm welcoming host always provides a presenter ease and running event more Having a warm, welcoming host always provides presenter ease and running events more smoothly. Having a friendly host makes presenter ease and running events more smoothly. A presenter can focus on his presentation while a host can facilitate more interactive with sharing what’s coming next, managing the audience such as mute the voice, curating questions from the audience, etc.
11. Heads-up and Agenda
Before we straight away jump into the presentation, it’s always good to spend a minute to give the audience heads-up and share how we are going to run this session. For example, we can briefly mention the following
- A warm welcome and a quick introduction to ourselves and about the speaker for a nice gesture to start.
- Some housekeeping rule — Such as — to mute the voice of attendees, request to a turn-on video camera for a photo shooting
- The flow of the event (Agenda, How long it will take, etc.)
- Q&A session
12. Request For Camera On
Nothing is worse than talking to a black wall. Speakers and presenters need energy and simulation by interacting with the audience, even a facial expression. As a human, we must feel that the audience is following.
I attended a webinar, and the presenter was like reading a script, and no one from the audience didn’t switch on the Camera. It was a dull and sleepy session. After a while, I started browsing other websites and didn’t hear the presenter anymore, even though I was still in the webinar.
13. Poll
Quick polling in an online event is not essential, but it’s an excellent way to make the session more interactive, and it also brings back the sleepy audience into attention. You can quickly ask the audience with a quick poll on checking their opinions.
A platform like Zoom webinar offers a polling feature [Read more about Zoom Polling]
14. Q&A
Dedicate a Q&A session at the end of the event. In a virtual event, people prefer to send a Dedicate a Q&A session at the end of the event. In an online virtual event, people prefer to send a Q&A via chatbox. It’s much better to consolidate all those questions typed in the chat by a host or moderator before the Q&A starts and share them in a well-organized bullet point for the presenter to answer.
15. Thank you email
After all, it’s always a good practice to follow-up with the audience after the event. A Thank-you email is a great way to say Thank you for their time and send things such as presentation slides.
If you are using the pre-registration system like UserRoll in place, that’s very easy. You can send it to all attendees with a few clicks.
Hope you find it useful. If you have any feedback with the article, please feel free to drop us hello@eventnook.com and we would love to hear your thoughts!
If you are keen to know more about EventNook services for your upcoming events, we will be glad to assist. Please drop us an email – hello@eventnook.com.
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