Tips to Create & Run Virtual Events

All truly great content comes from that spark of genius within us all (and these days, the added benefit of good data about our audience to help ignite that spark!).  When it comes to creating a memorable experience, it’s important your teams embrace brainstorming methodologies that foster creativity and ideas of any type.  It’s a new world with virtual events, nearly anything goes. Here are some things we have learned:

• Start with a goal in mind. All activities should reinforce your goal. For example, if your goal is to create a digital event that will showcase a new product to the press, perhaps you might send them the product ahead of time and plan a fun, interactive activity during the virtual event using the product. 
• Take into account the assets you have (people, available locations, budget). Get creative with whatever is available to you. If you’re operating with a small budget, consider surveying an audience and sharing the results with everyone during the presentation? How about using voting or polling tools to get or share instant feedback? You don’t need to spend a lot of money to create an engaging event.
• Make sure the content presents compelling information or solves a problem. To truly make an impact, you need to give people a reason to not only watch a video presentation but actively participate in a live virtual event.  Peruse the news and social media to see what topics are timely and relevant to your business. Make sure you provide some type of takeaway for your audience too, whether through actionable tips and lessons at the end of the presentation or event, or through a follow-up email with relevant research, blogs, or other resources.
• Don’t be afraid to take a look at your immediate traffic trends, as well as last month’s analytics for topic ideas. You can connect with your audience by bridging the leap from what was on their minds a month ago to what we’re currently trying to tackle today with a simple analysis of Google or social media analytics. What blogs or pages garnered the most interest? What terms are people searching to find your site? What Instagram post saw the most engagement? These insights can tell you a lot about what your audience is interested in, as well as how to engage them.

When it comes to attracting quality speakers, select speakers that will strengthen a mutually beneficial relationship. Here are some tips for selecting a great set of speakers:

• Nail your pitch: How can associating with your brand help your prospective speaker? What can they expect? Make sure you work out as many details as possible before reaching out.
• Identify if your prospect has the right following, not only in volume but in quality. Influence is important, but credibility and expertise matter more when it comes to virtual programming.
• Is the speaker willing to cross-promote your events? Ideally, your guest will be an active partner and will share the event with their network to increase the reach of your event.
• Find a sample video of prior speaking engagement(s) to see how engaging they look and sound. If you can’t, don’t be afraid to fire up your own conference call system and simply have a chat with them to see how your guest might come across in that medium.

The goal of these effort for many is lead generation and brand awareness. Do you know the price you are willing to pay for an email address you can nurture into a lead? Are you looking to expand the reach of your event beyond existing followers? If so, pay to promote your event. Here is a quick checklist for promoting your event series: 

• Collect emails with a registration process. (For best results, keep the fields to fill out to an absolute minimum.)
• Make sure you email subscribers a calendar invite to have their personal systems remind them to attend.
• The day before your digital event, make sure to remind folks via email that the event is coming up (and put a teaser in there so they are reminded of why they signed up.)
• Promote on social media. Not only should you draft posts promoting the event, but update your bio and social media banners to promote the virtual experience. Remind users at every touchpoint of when and why they should attend.
• Don’t be afraid to put a little spend behind the promotion of the digital event (especially if you have a target email collection rate.)
• Provide content to your partners and guest speakers so it is easy for them to help you promote. Package website, email, and social media copy, graphics, and any other assets they may need together. “Spell it out” for them.
• Nurture guests post-event. Make sure you put everyone into an automated email “nurture flow” after the event series is done to maintain their interest and engagement when the event ends. Share a replay of the event, relevant resources, and invite them to future events to keep the lead warm.

Lights, Camera, Action!  As you prepare for your virtual event or experience, there are three key items to check before firing up your camera. 

You may not consider your home office or living room a production set, but when you are creating content at home, it is. These three areas need a review to make all your videos successful.

SOUND: 

Most people’s gut reaction is to think first about how they look on camera. However, the single most distracting problem in any video stream is low-quality sound. The inability to clearly hear what is being said will cause people to leave a video much faster than any other technical issue. Small rooms make for great sound stages. They keep echo to a minimum and make it easier for your laptop sound software to know which sounds are voices vs other noise. If you have a mic (or headset) specifically designed to record audio, test it ahead of time, record yourself, and compare it to your laptop microphone. It is NOT always better to use a headset – all software has its fallible moments. There is just no substitute for taking the time to make a quick recording of yourself speaking in different rooms and listen for the best results in each room you might use.

LIGHTING & CAMERA POSITION: 

Set up your laptop or webcam as close to eye level as possible (standing or sitting). Be sure to position the little window that shows whoever you are talking to as close to your camera lens eye-line as possible (usually located at the top center of your laptop). Next, pull your desk away from the wall so you can place a household lamp slightly to the left or right of the front of your face (behind your laptop). Leave the shade on (if a neutral color). If you (or your teenagers) happen to have a “selfie light”  or a ring light for phones, that will be a great tool to use as well. Stand or sit comfortably close to the camera so that your head and shoulders fill most of the center of the screen. The idea is to help the automatic software your camera uses to focus clearly on your face to reduce all other visual distractions behind you. Pull the shades closed on any windows, as light color changes quickly and laptop cameras often struggle to keep lighting consistent as the sun moves.

BACKGROUND: 

Some video conference services have the ability to generate a good background image. However, if you have curly hair, or perhaps older camera software, it might not be able to consistently draw a clean line around you against your virtual background. The constant “shimmering” effect around your hair, moving hands, or uneven background lighting is often visually distracting. If you have curly hair, it’s probably going to be cleanest not to try to use a virtual background, but if you choose one that is close in color to your hair color (and the wall behind you is close in color as well) you might have good luck. To use a virtual background, for those of you with straight or short hair, make sure your background is evenly lit across your entire background, clearly separating you from that background. Again, the idea is to make sure the software constantly re-drawing a border around you is easily able to distinguish between you and whatever is behind you keeping distraction to a minimum.