How to Plan a Successful Virtual Conference

Online conferences have become very popular in recent times. These conferences happen online in an interactive and visually appealing environment. They enable organizations to speak to a global audience, cut down the cost of organizing the event, and increase the ROI. While the trend of organizing virtual conferences is picking up pace, it is essential to note that they are not a fad. According to MarTech, by 2021, video content will account for 80% of global traffic. In addition to this, virtual conferences can help businesses save up to 75% of annual costs. On top of that, they are environment-friendly and hassle-free to organize. Planning a virtual conference is easy. Here is how you can organize a successful online conference.

Define Target Audience

The first item in planning your conference is choosing the target audience. If you understand who will listen to you, you can work out the structure of the conference. You need to determine what your audience is most interested in and what solution they want to find through your virtual conference.

Find Speakers

If you do not plan to be a speaker and want to attract third-party experts, then you need to start the search immediately after the target audience has been determined. The speaker should focus on finding a solution to the problem of the audience. Find speakers who closely match the needs of your target audience. Get them on board by highlighting the benefits of a virtual conference. Explain how many participants are expected and how this can positively affect the speaker’s success. If the conference format allows, you can permit speakers to sell or advertise their products as well through the conference platform.

Create the Structure

Just like a physical conference, a virtual conference requires a clearly defined structure. A conference needs to have an agenda that not only defines the structure but also helps in attracting more attendees. A basic structure includes an opening speech, presentations, keynote speeches, webinars, and time duration of all the activities.

Set up a Landing Page

A landing page for the event will come in handy for getting more attendees by providing them the agenda and information about the speakers. This can help in getting more people to sign up for the event. The landing page can also provide information about the event sponsors. Creating a signup page for the event on the website can confuse the attendees and divert their attention to other sections of the website, resulting in a lower signup rate for the event. Thus, a stand-alone landing page for the event must be set up.

Promote Your Event

After setting up a landing page, it’s time to start promoting the event. Some ways to effectively advertise your event include the following.

• Leverage social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter 
• Send mass emails using your mailing list
• Work on a press release to reach the masses
• Add a banner, pop-up, or a snack bar to your website that talks about the event
• Ask the speakers and partners of the event to spread the word in their network

Prepare Your Employees

Not everyone can navigate through a virtual event without assistance or attend an event without having a question about it. To help make the event a hassle-free and informative affair for the attendees, you need to prepare your staff for answering queries during the event.  Virtual events come with a chat option (audio/video/text) that allows the attendees to interact with the event organizers however they like and resolve their concerns. Choosing people from your team and training them to effectively use the online platform to answer queries will help in enhancing the experience of people and enable you to conduct a successful virtual conference. 

Analyze the Conference

As mentioned earlier, most likely you will want to use this method again. But for this, you need to analyze how your conference went to improve the upcoming one. Save your stream and watch it several times. Determine what needs to be fixed, and how you can attract even more participants.

Conclusion

Virtual conference not only provides a chance to make the project/company popular but also paves the way to a real financial advantage in terms of cost-saving. Hence, by now, you would have understood why your project or business needs a virtual conference. Embark on your first virtual conference today and see for yourself the advantages for your business. Read more about how virtual conferences work for you. 

About the Author Gregory is passionate about researching new technologies. He works with a writing service review website called Online Writers Rating. Gregory loves stories and facts and tries to stay updated on both fronts.