Boost Your B2B Virtual Event Engagement
Estimated Read Time: 5 minutes
Intended Audience: Microsoft Partners, SaaS Owners, B2B Marketers
Virtual Events have been evergrowing since work from home (WFH) became a reality for the majority of working adults since the outbreak of COVID-19. Trying to stay connected and informed has now been transformed to screens, rather than days long conferences and all-day in-person meetings.
Given this facilitating virtual events is a skill set most organizations had to add to their toolkit to keep the doors open and the lights on. Thanks to the rapid evolvement of technologies, such as Microsoft Teams and dedicated webinar platforms (e.g. GoToWebinar, Zoom Webinar, Microsoft Teams LIVE Events), one can easily host and attend virtual conferences and seminars, globally, with just a click of a button, from the comfort and safety of their home.
To successfully organize a virtual event and make it an experience to remember for all the participants, it’s necessary to curate visually appealing and informative content to grab attendees’ attention and hold on to it for the duration of the event. Create an engaging environment that encourages people to utilize all their senses to help combat participation fatigue. When such elements are planned well, virtual events can be extremely cost-efficient, easier to manage than live sessions, and help you generate leads and drive results.
Let’s look at what you can do at different stages of a virtual event to offer your audience an enriching experience.
Tips to Drive That Virtual Event Engagement
Pre-Session Activities
- Finding the right platform to host your event. How do you know if the platform you selected is right for your business? It all boils down to your target audience. Consider the comfort level of your audience with the platform you select: how many people can you accommodate in your virtual event, and/or if the platform offers interactive features or analytics to track the success of your event.
- Once you have selected the right platform, you must set a theme or objective for the event around which you can plan your content. If you plan to have multiple speakers, make sure to provide them plenty of time so that they can curate their content and practice to captivate the target audience virtually.
- Building your social media strategy is equally important as organizing or planning the nitty-gritty of the virtual conference. With the right social media strategy, you can boost the presence of your virtual event or conference on various platforms and share valuable information (e.g. speaker line-up, contest alerts, and registration/ticketing info). To create hype and reach the right audience, you need to strategically plan your posts, use relevant hashtags, geo-target the posts, and optimize the content. Most importantly, make sure to find the right balance to build that rapport with your audience to form genuine connection and engagement.
In-Session Engagement Ideas
Staring at a screen continuously for an hour or more can be draining. Here is how you can make the experience worth their while:
- Add interactive elements like ice breaker sessions, in-session polls, quizzes, live Q&A sessions, and more. This will encourage people to interact with the speakers and fellow audience members during the virtual conference/event. It will also provide an opportunity for people to share their experiences and learn from each other, which will help build a strong mental association with your business’s product and services.
- Help the moderator and speakers interact with your audience during the conference by sharing or posting sneak peeks and by live-tweeting. In addition to that always be prepared to tackle any technical glitches that may arise and do not forget to plan for backups.
If you feel that your audience is split between two or more social media platforms, you could also choose to stream the conference on those platforms.
Post-Session Follow-Ups
After an event, it’s also important to gauge its success. Here are some ways you can keep their interest alive:
- Depending upon the nature of the event and its exclusivity, timely archive or share the recording of your event. If you were hosting an exclusive event and felt that you got a positive response, you could also choose to hold one-on-one sessions or create a series of such events to dive deep into all the important topics that resonate with your audience.
- Gaining valuable feedback from the audience is an effective way to get a pulse of the situation. This feedback will not just help you improve the quality of your future sessions but also enlighten you about potential opportunities that you can explore to expand your business.
- You should review the analytics information generated through your posts and content to measure performance and identify the type of content that’s appreciated by your audience.
- Creating a blog or downloadable resource post the virtual event is an effective way to recap all that was covered. It’s a powerful tool to attrat the attendees and even new prospective audiences to your website for more details.
Need Help Driving Virtual Event Engagement?
If you are planning to host your first virtual conference or looking for ways to improve and grow your virtual event’s reach, Maven Collective Marketing has the expertise to run value-driven events for your organization. Right from planning to execution, Maven Collective Marketing has got you covered. Our experts will walk you through all the performance metrics and help generate exciting ideas to set up your B2B virtual event or conference and drive engagement.
To learn more about how the Mavens can help you with your B2B virtual event, simply reach out to us today!
