How to Hold a Virtual/Hybrid Conference in the COVID Era

What is a Virtual Conference?

With the ever-present threat of lockdowns and travel restrictions, many businesses are choosing virtual and hybrid conferencing technology to bring people together through online options. Modern technology evolved significantly over the last few years, and it can now deliver an immersive and highly engaging experience for participants. When people can’t get together in person, a properly run virtual conference or meeting provides the opportunity to make connections, share knowledge, and network effectively.

Advantages of a Virtual or Hybrid Conference

The biggest advantage that a virtual and hybrid conference has over a traditional seminar, convention, or meeting is that attendees can participate from anywhere in the world. This eliminates the financial burden of travel and accommodation, reduces time spent away from desks, and minimizes disruption to the family life of each participant.

Your business benefits by not having to pay for a venue, and you can pass these savings on to your customers by reducing registration fees. Both sides win because the low cost of attending a virtual conference means more participants are likely to attend.

Live broadcasting to a large audience encourages engagement, gives you greater brand reach, and provides an opportunity to collect data through live polling and Q&A sessions. This is an excellent way to strategize marketing and promote future virtual events. Chat messaging can be used by attendees to ask clarifying questions and make comments on the information being proposed. It gives attendees the opportunity to review the day and share their opinions, which helps them feel fully involved in the conference. Attendees of online events are more invested in presentations when they actively participate.

Online conferences are easy to record. You can use this recorded content in webinars, or as marketing for future events. It also allows attendees to access the conference at any time to refresh their memories of the content, which strengthens their connection with your business. Advertisers and sponsors also gain from this, since their logos and links remain online for longer, providing a higher return on their initial investment.

How to Prepare for a Virtual and Hybrid Conference

When deciding on a topic for a virtual event, keep it as specific as possible. Having a single focus drives the direction of the conference. Since attendees are seated at a screen for long periods of time you need strong and relevant content to hold their attention. Keep in mind that your business has a goal for this conference, but participants have their own objectives for attending, so stay focused on the topic and viewers will stay in their seats.

Choosing your speaker lineup is one of the most important aspects of a successful event. Having a panel of three or four industry experts is better than having one host for the whole conference. Using a variety of presenters attracts registrations from different types of people. Attendees like the idea of hearing from experts with a wide range of experience and perspectives.

Technology is at the heart of any virtual conference. Build a solid foundation for your conferences by having good technology behind you. You will require hardware and software that can handle registrations, engagement, surveys, and an effective video platform. RaffertyWeiss Media makes it easy for your business to host advanced virtual conferences through comprehensive kits that cover all your needs. Virtual events are cheaper to run than physical seminars, yet they deliver a much higher return on your investment, so you can easily afford to hire a professional organization to host your conference through a reliable online platform.

Our Virtual Command Center offers live troubleshooting and you’ll have an experienced team on hand to make sure your virtual event runs seamlessly. Remote personnel handle the coordination of presenters, do the switching from live broadcasts to pre-recorded content, and manage social media feeds.

Final Tip:

As soon as your attendees have registered for your online event, send an agenda and the bios of presenters so they can prioritize topics and make time for their favorite speakers. When setting your agenda, start with the most important information you want to share, and finish on a high with a presentation from the most anticipated speaker.

Conclusion

In 2020 the world changed over the course of a few months, and businesses had to adapt fast. COVID-19 changed the style and structure of the way businesses handled conferences and a lot of other things. Virtual conferences are here to stay. It’s nice to imagine that you can easily transfer the workings of a physical conference into the setting of the virtual world, but that’s not the case. To produce a successful conference, you need to shift your perspective and look at the logistics of an event in new and inventive ways. This doesn’t have to be a difficult prospect, especially if you have a passionate and professional organization working in tandem with you to pull it all together.

Hosting virtual events is still daunting for many people, but at RaffertyWeiss Media we adapted and grew our resources faster than anyone else, which put us in the best position to help you meet the challenges of the virtual world. Virtual conferences can boost your business in ways that ordinary, physical events can’t manage. Speak to us soon about how your business, nonprofit organization, or educational institution can benefit by running a virtual conference.