Online events have risen in demand and popularity over the past few months. With the majority of events taking place virtually, companies and event planners seek to find ways to enhance their event engagement and attendance.
Read on to find out the best tools you can consider to enhance your event and make your online event engaging for your event guests.
Table of Contents:
- What are Online Events?
- What are Some Tools that can be Added to Online Events?
- Steps to Successfully Introduce these Tools to Your Events
- Engage a Professional to Enhance Your Online Event Experience
What are Online Events?
Online events, also known as virtual events are events that take place online on a specific date, time and agenda. Online events are usually organised by companies, organisations or for private functions, and can host small, medium and large groups of event guests, depending on the agenda of the online event.
Online events can be hosted for different purposes. Webinars and live streams are the two most popular types of online events for companies and organisations to host. Other types of online events include online training & workshops, virtual conferences, online music concerts, virtual trade shows, online Q&A sessions, podcasts and many more.
Many businesses and companies have converted their physical events to online and virtual ones in response to the COVID-19 outbreak. However, gaining raw impressions and online attendance can be a whole different story. Event planners and companies are scrambling to find new ideas to engage their audience and enhance their online event experience to bring up the numbers.
What are Some Tools that can be Added to Online Events?
Here are some of the tools for online events that we have gathered to share with you!
- Hiring a Professional Livestream Service Provider: Producing your livestream or online event with a professional service provider is the most obvious way for you to enhance your online event experience for your guests. High quality audio and video ensures that the viewers understand the professionalism of your company or organisation and will keep them engaged throughout. Hiring a professional livestream service provider also ensures that the online event is planned and coordinated well, with no possibility of technical difficulties occurring.
- Virtual Photo Booths: Virtual photo booths are the new “in-thing” for many online events. Virtual photo booths can be introduced from a software or even as Instagram story filters! These virtual photo booths are the perfect marketing tool for your online events, with photos being easily shared on to social media by your event guests. Creating a hashtag for your event could also be a good way for you to track the posts about your event that are uploaded to social media. Virtual photo booths are a great tool for online publicity and marketing for your event.
- Giveaway Contests: Giveaway contests are one of the most effective ways of gaining higher audience engagement and event awareness. Giveaways entice people to join your online events and the attention received by the giveaway could be used to market the event. Having requirements such as sharing a post or tagging their friends in the comments section could be ways for event planners and companies to gain more online traction and awareness for their online events.
- Influencers / Special Guests Appearances: Inviting influencers and special guests to host or take part in your online events could garner a significant amount of online attendees and viewers. Online supporters and fans of the public figure are more likely to join the event in order to interact with their idols. Influencers and public figures can also help to spread more awareness of your brand or business and the agenda of the online event as well.
- Create an event app gamification: Creating event app gamification can help to create a more interactive and engaging experience for your online event guests. Gamification apps go hand-in-hand with giveaways as these apps are usually incentive based and involve loyalty programs. Creating such apps and activities can help maintain a loyal group of supporters and will increase the awareness of each online event constantly as well.
- Interactive Q&A livestream: Hosting Q&A livestreams have been rising in popularity among influencers and brands lately. It could even be considered as an essential for online events to have. Q&A sessions can help to answer commonly asked questions by your event guests and put a face to your organisation’s name. Connecting with your audience on a more personal level is highly recommended as it humanises your brand and event, and makes it more engaging for the audience.
Steps to Successfully Introduce these Tools to Your Events
- Find out your audience needs and wants: It is always appropriate to get feedback from your event guests and to find out what they really want to see and do during your online event. Getting suggestions from your consumers themselves could be a good way for you to stack ideas up.
- Market your ideas using social media: Marketing through social media is one of, if not the most important step to having a successful online event. In order for event guests to attend your event, they need to find out more about it first. Creating posters or infographics about your event can help to spread awareness and gain media attention building up to the event date.
- Get a professional service provider to execute your idea: Planning and executing your event with a professional live stream service provider can ensure a seamless online event experience for your guests. Getting professional equipment also means high quality audio and visuals that will suit any online event type.
- Create content which is interactive and engaging: Creating content which engages your audience is crucial to online events. Event planners should come up with ideas and activities which allow the audience to interact during the event beyond just watching their devices. This ensures that the event guests are engaged and feel like they’re part of the event.
- Look further than your event agenda: Consumers may join your event for the main agenda, however some event guests who join might not relate to the purpose. Thus, coming up with different activities and ideas beyond the event agenda can attract more viewers to stay and participate in the event.
Engage a Professional to Enhance Your Online Event Experience
Here at Vivid Snaps, we ensure the event experience for our clients in both physical and online events. With a team of professional videographers and project coordinators, we ensure that our clients’ success is our top priority.
Get in touch with our project coordinators to find out more about online events and we will be more than happy to see how we can help.
