The Ultimate Guide to Virtual Events 2021

Virtual Events

Virtual Events are the amalgamation of the better of two worlds, the physical as well as the digital events. As the words suggest, ‘Virtual’ means on the web & ‘Events’ are the gatherings of people held with a certain objective. Hence, Virtual Events simply mean Events that are held on the web. ‘Virtual Events’ have risen to an unimaginable height especially in the past few months, making it possible for the Brands to shift their physical events to the Virtual World and connect with their audience all-round the global with just a simple click.

Why Are Virtual Events All We Can Talk About?

The world came to a stop and was affected by a global pandemic, this resulted in the events industry alongside all business to suffer huge losses. Virtual Events enables you to connect as well as engage with your audience by just a simple click in the comfort of their homes. Virtual Events were a blessing in disguise: Travel, Booking Hotels, Logistics, Operations, Decor, Venue, and many other exorbitant costs got eliminated and boiled down to a Virtual Event Platform that would enable you to host your Virtual Event. All in all, one can save money and yet host a virtual event that can be talked about for a lifetime.

Planning a Successful Virtual Event

It’s obvious that if you want to host a virtual event for the first time, you might get overwhelmed with the noise and various options available to you. Do not worry, we are here to help you.

1. Find the Right Virtual Event Platform: First and foremost, being a host of a Virtual Event, you need to make sure that your attendees get the best & seamless experience via the best Virtual Event Platform and your Objective of hosting the event is met seamlessly. Hence, choosing the right Virtual Event Platform is extremely crucial and is the key because a great platform can make or break your event.
2. Define the Clear Objective of your Event: Knowing the What, Why, How, When, Where, What Time etc. is very important in order to lay the foundation of your Virtual Event. Just like the planning of any physical event, this too is a very important step for a Virtual Event as well.
3. Knowing Your Audience: From knowing exactly why you are hosting your event you need to also know which is your right audience along with the audience volume you are expecting at the event. This will enable to you to decide the structure of your Virtual Event Platform (Number of Auditoriums, Number of Breakout area along with Key Functionalities required for your Virtual Event). In case of large Audience Volume, having a feature of ‘No Attendee Limitations’, sets the sky as the limit for the success of the Virtual Event, till the time the attendees are relevant to the event.
4. Engage Your Audience: Just like any physical event, back to back sessions, workshops, seminars etc. in a Virtual Event, can get very monotonous & tiring throughout the day resulting in your audience dropping with the minute. Make sure your Virtual Event Platform offers exciting & engaging features that keep your audience hooked and looking forward to what’s happening next.
5. Plan your Sponsorship: Having sponsorship is always a good idea. Do not think that you cannot invite sponsorship to Virtual Events. The Virtual Event Platform can be designed in a format in order to have multiple branding options that showcases a lot of value for the sponsors along with individual exhibition stalls for each sponsor, with multiple features for each sponsor to represent themselves in any format they like & engage with the audience. Your virtual event platform should be 100% flexible such that it can be customized based on your & your sponsors requirements.

There will be many virtual event platforms you might come across but it’s very important to look our for the following specifications when making a choice:

1. Seamless Navigation: The virtual event platform should have easy and clean design along with seamless navigate for the users to move around the entire venue of the Virtual Event.
2. Personalization & Customisation: The Platform should be able to be customized basis the events requirements. Extensive sponsor branding, Custom URL, colors and theme based on your event brand for ecstatic branding. Just like one would do with an event venue, you should have an option to 100% customise your Event. One such popular platform is ‘Dreamcast Virtual Event Platform’. They are extremely popular in the Virtual Event Space for their 100% Seamless Customized Virtual Event Platform.
3. Attendee Footprinting: A robust Virtual event platform like Dreamcast also offers LIVE Attendee Footprinting, wherein you can track and always have a real-time could of the attendees at the event and where exactly they are present in the Venue. Along with detailed reporting at the end of the Event, to measure the holistic success of the Event.
4. Immersive: Attendee can experience a walk through the lobby, visit different halls, and attend multiple live sessions just like one would at a physical event, only easier and time-saving. It is to ensure the user has the same experience as they used to at the physical events.
5. Interactive Elements: Induced with chatbots, live polls, gaming etc., offering rich interactive tools to ensure that the attendees experience a 2-way engaged event and should not feel restricted to participate at the Virtual Event.
6. Networking: Hosts, Exhibitors, Speakers, Panelists & the attendees must be able to network with each other on a one on one format and exchange personal or professional details.
7. Turn-Key Solution: Designed, supplied, built, or installed fully complete and ready to operate, for customers, as Virtual Events can be easily integrated and implemented into a current business process and be customised to your personal requirements. As even the term implies that the end-user just has to turn a key and start using the product or service which is the most convenient way for any user.
8. Quick Turn-Around Time: Unlimited hosts & parallel sessions with unlimited attendees. You must ensure that is the platform also easing your involvement in the event, such as offer a customisable Single URL for your entire event — registrations, sessions, virtual booths, everything. So that it is easy for you to monitor your event, right from the start.
9. Flexible & Modular: The requirement of one event can be very different from another & hence the feature required for one event can be very different from the other. The Virtual event platform must be very flexible in order to adapt & implement various features basis the event requirement.
10. Technology Consultation: The platform must offer a feature to provide Real Time Event Tech support. This is just for a support/back-up that must be there, in order to run the event smoothly.

Lastly any great Virtual Event Platform should also offer exiting as well as multiple Engagement Features that can help in increasing the audience engagement as well as enhance the reach of your event.

Engagement Features for a Virtual Event

● Live Audio & Video Chats

Having a 2 way communication is important at the Virtual Event, allowing the attendees to be equally engaged at the events as the Speakers or the Sponsors.

Well, as much as we know the worth of face to face interactions & how they can never be replicated. However by incorporating live audio, video, and text chats, one can achieve similar experience with virtual events. It allows & enables attendees to interact with organizers, exhibitors, tech support, and other attendees in real-time irrespective of their geographical locations thus giving the same feel of on-ground events, just now accessible at a click.

● Spin the wheels

Make your event fun and this is perfect to add some fun between long monotonous sessions to keep the audience engaged. Introduce your virtual audience to spin the wheels amid sessions or at the end of the event. Offer giveaways if the wheel stops on it, a perfect way to boost attendee’s morale and make them feel a part of your brand family.

● Live Polls

This is highly recommended and would like to encourage you to surely go with this one and make it a part of your virtual event engagement. Introduce Live Polls to create engagements during sessions. It helps in gaining valuable insights into the audience’s perspective during the session thus keeping them hooked throughout. This also makes the audience know that their opinion is valued and appreciated.

● Social Wall

A trend to hop onto most definitely. Make your audience instantly engaged at the virtual event with Social Wall. It captures the essence of any virtual events across all social channels. Integrate the feeds from popular platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc. One of the innovative measures to engage the audience with virtual or hybrid events &Dreamcast as a platform does this as well. This also helps in a way to show how far spread and influential your event was.

● Photo Booth

A must for engagement & enthusiasm. Lately, images are the only way to capture a moment. Organizing a virtual photo booth at an online event is one of the most innovative and entertaining ways to engage audiences at virtual or hybrid events. Allow your attendees to get clicked with event branded photo frames that help in evoking some fun, engaging audiences & works well for branding purposes as well.

● Organize a Quiz

Well, organizing a quiz is rather easy and is another smart move to keep the audience involved throughout the event. Offering giveaways to the first 5 winners who answered correctly not only keeps them engaged but makes them feel appreciated too. This also pulls the interest of the older audience participating who just have to click and move to the next question.

● Q & A sessions

Organizing Q&A sessions is an old but effective way to boost engagements at virtual events. Incorporating question and answer sessions amid long sessions or organizing it after a conference or event allows users to ask questions directly to the speaker thus gaining answers for their queries in real-time. We attended an event at which Dreamcast has recently incorporated a multiple-choice Q&A format in one of our virtual events to create engagements. Trust us, the results were phenomenal. It is one of the brilliant ideas, you can try your hands on for your next virtual or hybrid event.

● Twitter Wall

On the verge of trying some innovative measures to create engagements, we saw the Twitter Wall for several virtual events that target a niche audience segment. It works the same way as the social wall but the only difference is, twitter wall collates only the integrated twitter feeds with event hashtags at one spot that allows attendees to witness the huge impact of the event.

Apart from it, the world cloud, mosaic walls, AR games etc. are some other options that can be strategically incorporated in your next virtual or hybrid event to create engagement.

Advantages of a Virtual Event

- Amplify Higher Audience Attendance: As there are no geographical restraints, not having to book dates of your attendees, no logistic investment etc. It is now possible to bring together your global audience on just one platform with no restrictions on the number of attendees attending your Virtual Event.

- Extremely Cost Effective: As mentioned earlier, no one needs to travel for the event, not book any venue, hotel for the speakers, the operational cost of the event drastically goes down, making Virtual Events extremely cost effective. All one needs is an exceptional Virtual Event Platform and you’re good to go!

- Fast Tracking& Value Driven: A Virtual Event Platform enables the host & the attendees to exchange data on a real time format during the event. Such as the attendees can see the details of all other attendees & choose whom to exchange their Business Card with, they can choose the exhibition to go to and either have a real-time chat or schedule a call with the brand representative with the click of a button, thus fast tracking their process to connect, interact & engage faster.

- Increased ROI: As mentioned earlier, with Virtual Events being extremely cost effective, the host have an Increased ROI, as the response and the output of a Virtual Event is as good as that of a physical event, and now they are able to achieve the same result in a way reduced cost, thus enhancing the ROI of the Event.

- A Customised Real Life Like Experience: All that an individual takes away from any event is the experience hence as its virtual now, as a host you have more chances to impress the crowd and host a phenomenal virtual event with a great platform.

A Type of Virtual Events Catching Up: Hybrid Events

Not only is the world returning to what we now call a new normal, but with small public gatherings being allowed a new type of event is gaining popularity. It’s called a Hybrid Event. As the name suggests, it’s part on-ground & part virtual which could be in a 2D or a 3D setup.

Conclusion

As we move ahead with time virtual and hybrid events have become an integral part of every industry today. Whether it’s a recurring virtual meeting, expo, fair, a virtual event or conference, create an event engagement strategy by keeping your goals & potential target audience in mind. Find a great Virtual Event Platform and you are ready to host a Virtual Event of the century!