3 Tips For Making Your Next Event A Virtual Event
Tip 1: Record all your workshop sessions as a standard practice
This provides a number of benefits.
If you’re offering multiple education tracks with different classes or workshops being held concurrently, recording each session gives your attendees the opportunity to benefit from all the workshops.
You could offer a premium ticket up front that provides physical access to your event, as well as access to the full library of recorded sessions after they've been uploaded.
You could also offer an “virtual only” ticket for people who cannot attend in person to have access to the full library of recorded sessions after they've been uploaded.
You also have the option of charging an a la carte fee for access to individual video workshops.
Incorporating video into your event just opens up a number of additional revenue streams.
This is how you can increase your revenue per attendee, as well as make more sales to people who could not attend your event in person.
Your video library from your event will allow you to make sales around the world.
Video Helps Ensure The Show Goes On
Additionally, incorporating video from the outset enables you to proceed as planned by pivoting from a physical event to a virtual event, if necessary.
As long as your presenter is able to present, with video, you can deliver that presentation to the world.
Tip 2: Record some things in advance
You can record some of your workshops, sessions, interviews, etc in advance and then publish them as Premieres on YouTube or Facebook.
That will allow you to get all the real-time engagement that live videos offer while enjoying the convenience of pre-recorded content. You can interact with your viewers as they’re viewing your content “live.”
It’s pre-recorded, but they’re seeing it “live” at the date and time that you schedule it to be published.
You can promote your release date and time just like you would a truly live event so that you can build an audience to engage with as your video premieres live to them.
And, if you want, you can make your video available only during the live broadcast so people have to tune in at the appointed time or they miss out.
Pre-recorded content is also a way for you to have concurrent sessions during your virtual event, the same way you would during a physical event. You could have two different learning tracks, for example, that are each presented concurrently during the same eight hours.
Pre-recorded content can go a long way towards helping you deliver a lot of information while keeping the trains running on schedule.
Tip 3: Don’t wait until you need video support to have your first conversation with a video person
Learn your options and establish some points of contact in advance.
How much will this cost?
How much time will it take?
What additional requirements will video impose on your event (lighting, audio, physical space for equipment, etc)?
What platform are you going to use to host and sell your video content?
These are just a handful of questions.
There are many more questions that you’ll need to learn the answers to well in advance of your event so you can incorporate video into your planning process from the beginning to make your life easier.
Summary
Making video a part of how you do things, going forward, will make your life easier.
Video should at least be a part of the preliminary discussions surrounding any events you’re planning, regardless of whether or not you ultimately choose to incorporate video into a particular event.
In many instances, you may find it’s more cost-effective to do video than it is to not because it can help you avoid cancelling events and because of the additional revenue opportunities.
Video allows you to add additional revenue streams to your event that can significantly exceed the cost of the video services.
In other words, you could be losing money—and potentially a lot of money—by not incorporating video into your events.
