Top 5 Things To Avoid When Planning/Hosting A Virtual Event In 2020

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In recent months there has been a rise in online events. Planning a virtual event, meeting, seminar, or conference requires a meticulous approach and detailed planning. From ensuring an engaging experience for your online attendees to proper engagement for your sponsors, there is a lot to organize and work on. It can become overwhelming for a planner, especially if your a solo planner and not apart of a larger team.

Virtual events are similar in many ways to live events but they do also carry some significant differences. This article is by no means a comprehensive list of things to avoid, this list is our top picks of common "pitfalls" we thing you should avoid when planning your next virtual event.

1.) Long Session Times And Unfocused Content

We wanted to start off this list with what we consider to be the "Godzilla" of things to avoid during your webinar or virtual event. That is having too long of a meeting or sessions. The thing about everyone being at home is they can walk away from the session whenever they want. Keeping everyone engaged during a live in-person conference or event is easy; your attendees are engaged with all their senses.  Engaging an online audience is a bit difficult but not impossible. Keep your sessions short and interesting about 20-30 minutes long with a Q&A session at the end is a good rule of thumb.

Does in-person content work for a virtual event or webinar? The short answer is no. In most cases, guest speakers tend to put tons of information in their PowerPoint to cover usually broad topic problems. However, since peoples attention spans are shorter you have to focus your content down to what solves peoples problems. Ask yourself who your audience is, what type of problems they are having, and how can you teach them to overcome their problem or sell your services or product that will fix their problem. Putting together quality presentation and making sure it translates to the "small screen" is a super important part of video production for your virtual or hybrid event.

2.) Not giving your attendees an active role. 

One of the most challenging features of any event production, be it in-person or virtual, is to turn a passive audience into an active one. For an in-person event, you can use different products like a catch box throwable microphone can get your audience engaged but at home, you don't have that. To make the meeting more engaging for your participants you can try:

• A virtual polling app like VEVOX. You can get feedback, take opinion polls, and much more.
• Chat Rooms: Use chat rooms to open up lines of engagement not only between attendee and presenter but between attendees. It is a great way for people to naturally bring up questions that the rest of the group might have in their head.

3.) NOT PLANNING REHEARSAL TIME

This might look like it is not necessary to do but even during live in-person event rehearsals are important to make sure timing, show-flow, energy, and topics are well planned. Having a full-dress rehearsal allows you to make necessary adjustments and make the online event look effortless. The one thing to consider about this is that it will add some expenditure to your virtual event production but it will be well worth it. Having a full dress rehearsal will make sure everyone knows exactly what is going to happen and that all of your content has been properly flushed out and is "show ready". in fact the NFL for the 2020 draft did a full "virtual" dress rehearsal with all 58 of the top draft picks.

4.) NOT CHOOSING THE RIGHT PLATFORM

To host your virtual event, can be overwhelming and confusing with so many choices to choose from. A great place to start is to write down what you are trying to accomplish with your event. This is the same with a live in-person event as well as an online event so, you are not overwhelmed. MAC Production Group approaches each event with, "What are you trying to accomplish with your event."

KISS- keep it stupid simple. There are so many features available in the market that people can end up wasting money on features they do not need. To avoid this, you need to make a checklist of things that you need to successfully host your event before you start looking out for platforms.

Once you have the checklist, compare, and choose. Keep in mind that the cheapest is not always the best. Thorough research is required to get the innovative tools for the best and most tailored experience for your attendees.

5.) PICKING THE WRONG SPONSORS

The size of an event determines the type and number of sponsors. Getting sponsors for your online event is not the task here but getting the right one is essential.
You need to be stringent and tactical while picking your sponsors. Make sure that you have a few sponsors on board that are from the same industry, this will ensure that your attendees remain focused on the essence of your event even during sponsored bits. E.g., home improvement company ads will look abrupt during a medical event.