#VirtualEvent success lies in the intersection of a number of factors: engaged attendees, a great digital experience, insightful content, and smooth delivery.
Hiring an experienced virtual #eventplanner can be key to ensuring successful delivery.
Here is what they should be able to offer:
1. Choosing the right Virtual Event Platform: the impartial experts.
Most event management platforms and a variety of different event tech have now enhanced their products to offer the virtual events platform feature. The options are now numerous, and let’s face it, the perfect one-size-fits-all platform doesn’t exist. The best fit depends on what you want to achieve with your event and what the top event priorities are; These should be around design, functionality, branded app, live streams, networking, revenue opportunities, affordability.
A seasoned event manager has the technical background and the professional experience to help you sort through all the options and select the right platform for your event. An event professional has tested and used many of them, understands the potential of all features and functions, and most importantly, they can impartially suggest the best for your event.
2. Design your virtual event format
Planners understand your goals, your constraints, your strengths, and can help you design an event that maximises engagement. Event planners know what works and what doesn’t in virtual events because this is their bread and butter on a daily basis for a variety of different event formats. A savvy event manager can guide on optimal networking formats and sizes, session durations, fun activities, interstitial programming, the right format that favours sponsors retrieving leads.
The devil is in the details, especially on the online medium, where your attendees can be quickly distracted by a new email coming in, a calendar reminder, a pop-up window, or a social media notification.
3. Ensuring a smooth delivery
You will need someone you trust who can manage the live delivery on the day. Someone who will keep a cool head when a technical issue arises, who will help you stick to time, troubleshoot in the background, keep tabs on all different moving components of the event, chase speakers are online in time and so on.
An experienced event manager will be quick to adjust, agile and flexible in finding solutions that work for your event, able to make changes on the fly, especially when things don’t go as planned. Most importantly, you need to be supported by a professional who knows what the right preparation and rehearsal steps are to prevent such challenges.
Event planners are best prepared to plan your event and execute it smoothly.
4. Managing the technical side
The technical side of virtual events is not just finding the right platform. There are more components, like video production, online AV, marketing tools, registration process and links, website, and so on. All these elements need to work well together, orchestrated by a well-prepared process. An event manager’s integral role is to coordinate seamlessly the different suppliers involved, ‘speak their language’ and ensure they are all working towards one and the same goal. This will guarantee the budget, the deadlines, and the deliverables of the event will not be jeopardised.
Hiring an event planner to run your virtual event will also ensure that you can focus on content, participating in the event, and forgetting about the operational or technical side of it.
5. Walking along with you from concept to delivery
An event planner will coordinate and manage the whole process leading up to the event. Their expertise is to create the workflows and allocate the roles and responsibilities so the event is a success from concept to delivery while making sure that success can be measured and assessed so it can be repeated.
More than anything, an event planner will give you the peace of mind you need when organising a Virtual Event. Let us become your partner for your next Virtual Event.
We are helping clients transform their events by guiding them to take the right steps in launching their Virtual and Hybrid events. Check out what we can do to make your event a success.
If you are interested in learning more about Virtual and Hybrid Events drop us a line and let’s have a virtual coffee.