Virtual events are all the rage at the moment. From stress busters to pilates classes, the online space is more preferred now owing to the current global situation.
Contrary to popular belief, virtual event organization can be tricky. It isn’t just bringing together a few speakers and putting up a show last minute. Virtual event planning requires more intensive preparation and a well-thought-out process than physical events.
Using Speaker Engage, you can plan and organize your virtual event to be better. Speaker Engage can also be your event planner with in-built functionalities to ensure smooth communication between your speakers and sponsors.
Coming back to virtual events, multiple things can go wrong and reflect sourly upon the organizers. It is better to identify them and take necessary measures to avoid them since precaution is better than cure.
Low Turnout
A low turnout is frowned upon regardless of whether the event is hosted online or offline. It would mean that the audience that did turn up would question the authenticity and quality of the event and could even ask for a refund (worst case scenario). It usually happens when an event is hurriedly organized with little or no planning at all. In this case, your speakers or presenters are let down as well, as they may not partner with you for future events.
How to Fix it?
Plan. Chalk out a well-detailed promotional strategy while hosting online virtual events to increase the audience’s urge to take action and be involved. Prepare a marketing list, send out emails, create promotional videos and content, and share them on social media. Leverage your industry contacts and promote within niche circles.
Have a well-thought-out budget for your paid promotions, and always follow up. Send notifications and reminders to those who showed interest in your posts as well as to those who signed up. Keep them informed and engaged, and ensure a good audience at your event.
Tech Crunch
Be it buffering or a lag in communication, any connectivity issues are among the worst situations for a virtual event organizer. You promise your audience a real-time event that would in no way deter the experience of an actual live event. Once the event starts running like a pause-play marathon, your audience will no longer be interested.
How to Fix it?
Choose your virtual event hosting platform wisely because it plays a crucial role in online event engagement. It mustn’t be too heavy for your audience to run on their home systems.
Have a tech team available to take up any connectivity issues the audience faces and be equipped to walk the audience by fixing any problems.
Distorted Voice and Visual
It is not pleasant when a speaker or an organizer cannot communicate well to their audience, especially during a virtual event, where the voice must travel through the internet. Your voice may be distorted, causing a massive inconvenience to the audience. Same with visuals.
How to fix it?
Invest in good-quality mics. Communicate to your speakers that you would want them to be using mics of certain benchmark qualities because it will enhance the quality of the video and play a crucial role in virtual event production plans. An excellent microphone to invest in is the Sennheiser e845 mic. This model is well suitable for presentations and conferences.
Invest in good cameras for speakers as well. In the era of online interactive experiences, proper recording equipment is an indispensable tool for presenters. We suggest the Canon XF200/XF205. This model is an advanced HD video camera that professional broadcast corporations use. This means any footage filming on this unit is good enough for TV.
Poor Presentations
The two sides of a virtual event are sounds and visuals. We’ve already covered the importance of a good mic and camera, but what about the other visuals, the presentations?
Flashy colors and text-heavy presentations are an eyesore. A speaker’s presentations speak a lot about their expertise as well as your quality as an event organizer. Not just that, long drawn-out presentations bore the audience. If they wanted to go through PPTs, they would have chosen to go to SlideShare.
How to Fix it?
Get a graphic designer to design the presentations for your speakers, or use Beautiful.AI to build your professional content. Keep it classy with minimal text, a maximum of 4 lines per page. Pictorial representation of your data/content is what your presentation should have instead of text alone.
Stick to color schemes and follow it in the presentations being prepared for all your speakers. In short, create a template that will keep the audience from second-guessing their participation in the event.
An Engagement Stopper
One of the highlights of a live event will always be the audience lingering around the venue, chatting, catching up, sharing contacts and ideas, and setting meeting appointments. A mistake you must never do as an event organizer is to stop engaging with your audience as soon as the event is over. This doesn’t sit well with your audience, who are actually accustomed to the after-event rituals of a live event. You must not deny them that experience.
How to Fix it?
Just as you have prepared a strategy for the event, prepare another for after-event engagements. Provide space for your audience to interact with each other and hold discussions if they wish to.
Even though virtual events are a class apart from physical events, you must always be aware of the experience you are handing out to your audience as an event organizer. There must be a stage in your virtual event planning phases where you must consider all that could go wrong and prepare for contingencies.
An actual event organizer is prepared to face the glitches in real-time than denying the chance of anything wrong happening. While chalking out Plan A to Plan Z, always ensure that the virtual event management plans are smooth and user-friendly for the audience and speakers.
