Hybrid events have become immensely popular ever since the COVID-19 pandemic, the shift of trends towards the virtual event platform industry to hybrid events which is looking to be the future of the event industry. Thus, if you are an event planner or organiser you need to understand the concept of hybrid events and incorporate creative ideas and proper planning to host a successful hybrid event. A hybrid event is essentially a mixture of a virtual component and an in-person component, both sets of audience will be attending your event. As the organiser you must be able to communicate with both sets of audience and help they interact with each other as well. Hence, today we will be going through 7 tips and practices to help you host a successful hybrid event.
Tips and Practices
Though every event is unique in its own way there are certain areas and basic principles which you can follow to ensure a seamless experience for your audiences and a hassle-free event for your own sake. Incorporate these tips and practices when you are planning your next event to make it more effective and efficient at the same time. Without any further ado let’s get right into it:
1. Plan And Strategies
Any event needs proper planning, you need to understand the concept of your event and make sure that you and your team is on the same page. Get deep insights for your event planning and think of possible hurdles that you may encounter, be it technical or some opinion dispute. Plan ahead and keep the solutions ready for almost every aspect of the event to ensure that you will have a quick recovery. Planning includes keeping the content ready, making the speakers aware of their respective deadlines, networking testing, virtual platform, and venue analysis.
2. Practice!
What makes any activity perfect? Practice! Once your layout is set and your event is ready to be broadcasted around the globe, make sure you try it out first and ensure that every function, feature, and the tool is working as it should. Turn on your broadcast for a practice run and experience your event as an attendee and try to point out any major flaw or bugs, this will help you understand the functionality of your event better while simultaneously providing you with a thorough analysis of your event.
3. Equal Representation For Your Audience
In a hybrid event, you will be entertaining 2 sets of the audience, both with different approaches towards the event, one in-person while the other virtual. Thus, it is significant for the event planner/organiser to provide their attendees with equal representation. A fairly common mistake that organisers make hosting hybrid events is emphasising more on the physical audience, it is quite natural to do so because they are present at the physical venue alongside you. However, your virtual audience is not to be discarded, they play as important a role as your in-person audience. Interact with your audience and make sure their voice is heard, if possible, show graphs and statistics of your attendee pool to make your attendees realise the strength of the event and its respective composition.
4. Give a thought from the online perspective
While your in-person attendees enjoy having real-time communication with other attendees at the venue, the same cannot be said for the virtual audience. Truth be told, it is quite challenging to engage your online participants. So, when your on-site participants are interacting with each other, exploring the other aspects of your event, or leveraging the fun activities offered by the event. As an event planner, you need to make sure that your virtual attendees get similar privileges. Incorporate live polls, Q&A sessions, a contest, or any other exciting content for your virtual prospects. In short, when transitioning from sessions, never leave your participants unattended.
5. Social Media!
Almost the entirety of your audiences, in-person and virtual, will be on some sort of social media. You may leverage this presence by promoting and advertising your event on the same. Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest are some of the most popular social media platforms that you may take advantage of right now. You may also interact with your attendees through the same, thus attaining feedback and opinions.
6. Punctuality
Attendees who registered will expect the event to take place on time with little to no delay. It is quite natural to expect punctuality, especially for your virtual audience as they will be sharing in front of their screen with no content to witness, which must never happen! Make sure that your event is running smoothly and prepare for the next session to start well beforehand.
7. Make Your Event Accessible
It is quite common for events to have absent attendees, irrespective of the reason as an event planner you need to think about them as well. Even your potential attendees must feel included in the event, though you can do nothing about inviting them over, because of their personal reasons, you can definitely do something for them to witness the content you wanted to showcase. Record your event and live streams and make it available for the potential audience. These recordings can also be used to recheck or revisit a particular segment of the event for your other attendees or even yourself!
Over to you
The event industry is gradually switching the event trends towards hybrid as they perfectly blend both key ingredients of virtual and in-person attendees. Hybrid events are here for good and are immersively shaping the future of the event world. One of the greatest benefits of hosting a hybrid event is that it can equally create a room for engagement and enable attendees to network amidst larger audiences in the lieu of covid-19 pandemic.
Therefore, it is of utmost importance for marketers and organisers to understand the credentials of hybrid events and take necessary steps while planning their next hybrid events. You may find more tips and practices in the market today, the above top 7 tips and practices are our best bet which you must consider while planning your event in a hybrid environment. By implementing these tips, you may unlock endless opportunities and make your event more engaging, and interactive while also promoting an excellent and seamless functioning of the event lifetime.
Happy Hosting!
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