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virtual events

Why Event Attendee Surveys Are Vital to Your Success (And What To Ask)

Your conference attendees shouldn’t feel helpless when they seek assistance or raise concerns. This may sound extreme, but it is an all-too-common experience for many conference-goers—and something I recently faced at a hybrid industry event.

Like 32 million other Americans, I have food allergies. I can usually find some safe food at events (especially large, multi-day conferences). But I always pack snacks just in case. On day one of a recent event, however, I couldn’t find any food labels or clearly allergy-friendly options, and I was unsuccessful in finding someone who could help me identify my options. Good thing I brought snacks! Day two, same problem, and I noticed numerous other attendees complaining amongst themselves. By day three, we knew we were on our own, our snack piles were dwindling, and many of us started venting our hanger-fueled frustration on social media.  

This example is just one of the many ways that a disappointing conference experience can spiral if event planners are unaware of their attendees’ needs. But there is an easy way that the event organizers could have anticipated or corrected this issue—attendee surveys! 
Although many event challenges can be unpredictable, any attendee issues can be addressed if you effectively survey them and create healthy feedback loops to correct issues in real time. Here’s how.

Why Virtual Event Attendee Surveys Are Vital To Your Success

Building a successful online event requires you to have an unwavering focus on your attendees—what they want to learn, who they want to hear from, and how they want to engage in the event experience.

As an event planner, your budget and timing will drive many decisions. It’s understandable that you cannot factor in every possible event hiccup during your planning. However, pre-event attendee surveys can help you cover your bases and address areas you may have previously overlooked (like dietary needs or accessibility considerations). 

Once your event starts, your team will be busy and urgent needs will arise—and you don’t want your team’s time to be taken entirely by attendees who are seeking help. Field surveys during your event through your event app or in the virtual event platform interface to quickly identify immediate areas of concern and fix them before they spread. You should assign two or three team members during the event whose sole responsibility is to address concerns raised in the surveys.
Post-conference surveys are the most common—and they are critical for improving your next event strategy—but the damage is already done to attendees who felt you inadequately addressed their needs during the event. Yes, you need to use post-event surveys to improve your next event. But fielding surveys before and during your event is most helpful for addressing your real-time attendee needs and keeping an urgent issue from becoming a crisis.

Sample Event Attendee Survey Questions To Help You Improve Their Experience

To help you get valuable attendee insights to strengthen your event experience, consider asking the below questions in your pre-, during, and post-event attendee surveys.

Pre-Event Attendee Survey Questions

Before the event, ask your registrants questions that will help you finalize your conference agenda and address your attendees’ needs. Automatically send a pre-event survey as soon as an attendee registers for your event, and remind your attendees to fill out the surveys through your ongoing email and social media communications. Pre-event survey questions can include:

  • What is your preferred session length at an event like ours?
  • Were you disappointed in a recent event experience? If so, what is the biggest challenge you faced that detracted from that event experience? 
  • Who would you want to hear from at the event (you can name specific people or tell us general titles or industries)?
  • What are your food or dietary restrictions? (include a fill-in field)
  • Do you have any food or dietary preferences?
  • What kind of networking events or activities do you prefer?
  • Is there anything we can do to make your time at the event remarkable?

During the Event Attendee Survey Questions

During the event, surveys give you real-time feedback on your sessions and the overall event experience. The key is to assign at least two event staff members to monitor these submissions and route concerns to the appropriate team members as soon as possible. Sample questions to ask attendees during a virtual or hybrid event include:

  • How would you rate the food and beverage options provided at the conference?
  • Are you comfortable with the temperature throughout the event space?
  • Have you faced any challenges in navigating the event experience?
  • What can we do to make your event experience even better?
  • How would you rate the quality of service provided by our event staff?

Post-Event Attendee Survey Questions

After the event, surveys are a vital way to understand if your event was successful—did your event meet its goals and fulfill your attendees’ hopes? If your event was unsuccessful, then you will have a harder time getting attendees at your future events. Consider asking these types of questions in your post-event attendee surveys:

  • On a scale of 1 to 10, how would you rate your overall conference experience?
  • What are the three things you think we did best during the event?
  • How could we have improved your experience?
  • Would you recommend our event to a colleague? Why or why not?
  • Would you be interested in attending a future event with us?

Designing an Attendee-Obsessed Experience

Virtual and hybrid events are far more common than before, and your prospective attendees deserve an intuitive and engaging experience.

Use event attendee surveys at each stage of your event to up-level your attendee needs and identify potential issues before they escalate and destroy your attendee experience. It is impossible to host a perfect conference, but attendee surveys empower you to be truly attendee focused.
Once you understand what your attendees need from your event experience, you’ll need a virtual or hybrid event platform that can enable the dynamic spaces that allow them to mix, mingle, and engage with the event experience. We’ve built Frameable to help people make real connections at your event through a beautiful and easy-to-navigate interface. Learn more about Frameable Events and get started with us today to host your next event.

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6 Tips To Achieve Optimal Virtual and Hybrid Event Success

Woman engaging online

Despite the resurgence of in-person events, savvy event planners know that virtual and hybrid experiences are here to stay. Now comes the tricky part: how can you best blend event offerings to provide the most value to your community? 

Mike Allton, head of strategic partnerships at Agorapulse and virtual event strategist, has hosted more than a dozen virtual summits and webinars and 100+ live-streamed video conversations. Mike joined me ane the #ContentChat community of marketers and content creators to share his best practices for designing engaging virtual and hybrid event experiences. 

Let’s break down his top takeaways to help you drive the most success with events this year. 

6 Tips For Virtual and Hybrid Event Success in 2022

Event planners who can craft truly audience-focused, problem-solving, and joy-inspiring events will receive the greatest reward from their activities. Virtual event attendee expectations are higher than ever, but these tips can help you create meaningful events regardless of the format: 

Be Realistic About Your Team Resources

Any virtual or hybrid event requires considerable effort. Mike says that while virtual events are often less logistically challenging and more affordable than in-person or hybrid events, there are still plenty of challenges associated with hosting them. Assess your resources including your team’s bandwidth to handle an in-person or hybrid event. If you are new to these experiences, we recommend starting small with a simple virtual event before tackling a multi-day hybrid event. 

Survey Your Event Communities

Before making any decisions about your upcoming events, speak with your event community. First, you need to deeply understand their current needs and goals for any event type. Then, ask these questions through surveys or in 1:1 conversations:

  • How comfortable are you with in-person events? 
  • What are the “must-have” elements for you to attend an in-person event?
  • What challenges are you facing in your job? 
  • How do you prefer to network and engage with other event attendees?

You can only build a compelling event agenda with presentations that will truly help your audience with these details in hand. 

Establish Clear Event Goals

Based on the feedback from your event communities, establish your event goals. Once you know your goals, Mike says you can more easily determine the ideal event format and what you’ll need from your virtual event software platform. 

Make Networking and Engagement Effortless

As many of us know from first-hand experience, most virtual events fall flat on networking and engagement. Too often, virtual event experiences are viewed as glorified webinars, which misses the bigger opportunity. As Mike says, “it’s the Magical Moments during networking that make the events stand out for attendees.” To reinforce this priority, schedule networking time in your event agenda. Additionally, create space for attendees to network, including open rooms with conversation prompts to spark dialogue. And don’t forget the potential power of social media to engage your event attendees.

Mike starts his events with 30 minutes of speed networking so attendees can connect 1:1 for five minutes each, meaning each attendee meets six new people first thing. This sort of built-in networking activity can be helpful to break the ice in a virtual setting, especially for your more introverted attendees who wouldn’t otherwise introduce themselves to others.

Offer Different Event Types To Accomplish Specific Needs

For most teams, the best event strategy in 2022 is to offer a mix of virtual, hybrid, and in-person events to appeal to unique community needs. For example, Mike is planning a series of major virtual summits, smaller virtual meetups and webinars, and a hybrid event (likely) in Paris this Fall. 

Repurpose Event Content to Drive Ongoing Traffic

Recorded event sessions provide a gold mine of content potential. Repurpose all your event content to offer new ways for your community to engage with the material, including blog posts, infographics, podcasts, social video clips, and templates. 

Evolve Your Virtual Event Strategy in 2022

Most people are not ready to give up on virtual events, which presents an incredible opportunity for brands to build on their event successes from recent months. Continue to survey your event community to understand their needs, and explore new event offerings to find ways to delight your community further.

If you’re looking to learn more about creating successful event experiences in 2022, read through the full #ContentChat recap here and learn more about how Frameable Events can bring your next virtual or hybrid event experience to life. 

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How To Effectively Use Pre-Recorded Video Content To Enhance a Virtual Event

Indian man participating in a virtual event from home

As event organizers plan their virtual and hybrid events, it’s common—and important—to ask which content should be pre-recorded, and what should be live-streamed.

From an event planning perspective, it’s essential to have a combination of pre-recorded and live-streamed content to have more control over creating an ideal attendee experience. The tricky part is understanding how to effectively blend these content types—especially when it comes to breakout sessions—without your virtual event feeling like a glorified webinar.  

Read on for an overview of the best ways to use pre-recorded content at a virtual event to help your team strike just the right balance between the live event you want and the consistently exceptional experience your attendees deserve. 

Advantages of Pre-Recorded and Live-Streamed Virtual Events Video Content 

Whenever possible, we recommend that you survey your anticipated event attendees to understand their feelings toward live-streamed or pre-recorded content and what type of sessions they prefer for each delivery. For example, a customer panel or general event session may be ideal as a pre-recorded session, but an executive AMA or a how-to educational class will benefit from real-time audience interaction.

Where Pre-Recorded Event Video Excels

As you assess how to balance your virtual event agenda, consider these primary advantages of pre-recorded content over live-streamed sessions:

  • Accessibility. Event teams can add captions to pre-recorded videos, and overlay visuals or text elements that enhance the content’s clarity.
  • Greater speaker diversity. Your event has the potential to attract more speakers if sessions are pre recorded, because it reduces the potential for scheduling or time zone conflicts. Similarly, the lack of a required travel budget opens up your speaker pool to include industry experts from the nonprofit, academic, and pre-funding startup realms.
  • Show flow control. It’s stressful to manage an entirely live event. What if a session runs late? Or a fire alarm goes off in the middle of your opening keynote? Not to mention finding a last-minute replacement for a mainstage speaker that cancels the day before your show. Pre-recorded content gives event planners total control over their event’s timing, ensuring a perfectly executed show flow. 
  • Higher production value. Pre-recorded sessions allow speakers to practice and record their sessions as many times as they need, which means that pre-recorded sessions are often higher quality than a livestreamed equivalent. Additionally, the show producers can review all recorded content and ensure there is a consistent production quality for each, which leads to a more cohesive event experience. Plus, technical issues such as presenters with slow internet connections can be avoided with pre-recorded event sessions. 

When It’s Best to Go Live

While there are many advantages of pre-recorded virtual event content and breakout sessions, you cannot deny these benefits of live-streamed sessions:

  • Innate excitement. There is a natural excitement that comes from a live-streamed session, both for the speaker and the audience. In some cases, speakers will prefer live sessions because of this excitement. 
  • Real-time engagement. Audience participation and engagement is an ongoing challenge for virtual event planners. Live-streamed sessions generally are more likely to garner attendee engagement, giving these session types a slight edge over pre-recorded sessions (but we’ll explain how to overcome this challenge next). 
  • Recording potential. Live-streamed sessions can be recorded, too, which can provide your attendees with lasting value from your event as they watch session replays. Just keep in mind that most live-streamed session recordings will need some degree of post production editing before being ready to share. 
  • Spontaneity. People miss the “in-the-now” feel of an in-person event, and live-streamed sessions have the best potential to capture this feeling given the live audience. Live speakers can reference other sessions from the day, comment on shared conference experiences, and adapt their presentation to add excitement, spontaneity, and an undeniable sense of authenticity they simply can’t do in advance of your event. 

How To Make The Most Of Pre-Recorded Virtual Event Sessions

Event planners can consciously craft experiences that turn pre-recorded conference content into exciting, real-time engagement opportunities. Here are just a few ways that you can drive the most value from your pre-recorded virtual event sessions:

Coordinate Virtual Event Watch Parties with Session Speakers 

Pre-recorded virtual event sessions are ideal for enabling your event speaker(s) to engage with their audience in real time through your virtual event platform. While a session plays, the speaker watches the session with the audience, and sends messages through the event platform to highlight key points, answer questions, and solidify the real-time event experience. 

Create Video Teasers For Social Media Promotion and Email Marketing

As your team receives videos from your session speakers, create clips and stills from these videos that you can use on social media and in your email marketing. Create sizzle reels that highlight your event speakers, and tag them on your event social media pages to connect attendees with the speakers. 

Edit Videos for Accessibility

Ideally, your team should receive pre-recorded virtual event videos from session presenters a few weeks to a month before the event (if not sooner). This way, your team can address the accessibility best practices we shared above, including adding captions to videos, addressing any issues with lighting or contrast, and more.  

Share Videos For Immediate On-Demand Replay

A major advantage of pre-recorded video content is that it can readily be available for on-demand replay. This gives your attendees full control over when they enjoy a session, especially if they had to miss it due to a work or family commitment. 

Choose A Virtual Event Tech Platform That Enhances The Attendee Experience

By strategically blending pre-recorded and live sessions at your virtual event, your team can more confidently control the event timing, meet the range of your attendee needs, and support a thriving event community.

After building your event agenda, your team can lock in a virtual event platform that will enable the dynamic session styles that your attendees deserve. Book a demo with Frameable Events today to learn about our superior presentation spaces and modern features that will ensure that every event session is incredible. 

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How To Engage Hybrid Event Attendees on Social Media

Business woman sharing her conference experience on social media through her phone

Congratulations! You’ve designed a compelling hybrid event schedule that thoroughly addresses the needs of both your in-person and remote attendees. All that’s left is to put on a spectacular event, right? Well, almost—but there’s still some pre-work to do!

As your team finalizes your hybrid event sessions and activities, it’s important to focus on a critical planning element that can easily make or break the attendee experience: social media.

From the moment you first announce your event on social media, your team needs to understand how to best use social media to drive event registrations and prime your attendees to gain the most value from social media throughout the virtual conference.  

Highlight Hybrid Event Attendance Benefits For In-Person and Virtual Attendees

Your team needs to explain how all your attendees—no matter how they choose to join—will access high-value sessions and engagement opportunities that make the most of each attendance option.

Tailor your conference website and all event promotional content to address the unique benefits of each attendance type, as well as how the two groups can connect throughout the conference. We recommend that you create a dedicated FAQ page on your event site that thoroughly addresses both types of attendance. 

At a high level, here are some of the benefits of attending a hybrid event in-person or virtually to highlight in your FAQs:

Hybrid Event Attendance TypeAttendee Experience Benefits
In-PersonIn-person conference experiences are beloved, and greatly missed, by many professionals. Emphasize the potential for human connection by joining in person, but also reinforce the CDC and local or state guidelines that will be enforced, plus any other ways your team will keep attendees safe.

Certain demos or activities are better coordinated with an in-person crowd, due to the energy level and ability for instant collaboration. Highlight these unique opportunities for attendees who join in person. This prevents virtual attendees from being disappointed or demanding a refund due to missing out on a specific in-person only activity.
VirtualFlexibility is a necessity for virtual attendees. Reinforce how your event is designed to fit within your attendees’ busy schedules, including details on whether sessions are recorded and later available for replay. 

A well-built virtual conference platform can greatly improve the virtual attendee experience. Spotlight the features of your event platform, including specific features that will help your remote attendees connect with the live experience. 

Make it easy to save your must-attend sessions to the virtual attendee’s calendar software of choice. It’s incredibly frustrating for virtual attendees who are excited for a session, and arrive with a question at the ready, only to see a notice that the session was held two hours ago thanks to the agenda only reflecting the live event’s timezone.

How To Promote Your Hybrid Event on Social Media

Social media channels are an invaluable avenue to market and promote your event with ideal attendees, especially given the potential reach of most social media channels. You don’t want to limit yourself to your existing mailing list and blog readers to promote your event when people can join from anywhere in the world with an internet connection. 

Share a steady stream of event promotion content to build excitement for the experience and drive registrations up until the day of your event. By engaging with your prospective attendees on social media, you’re also establishing those channels as a place for attendees to go during your conference to connect and engage with your team and fellow attendees (we’ll discuss that more in a bit).

Here are five ways to drive hybrid event registration through social media:

  • Tag confirmed speakers and spotlight their sessions. Announce sessions on social media by tagging the speaker and previewing their session. Include a video or image of the speaker to help “stop the scroll” on social media.
  • Create speaker, exhibitor, and sponsor social media kits. Share a social media promotion kit with all event speakers, exhibitors, and sponsors. Include event images and draft social media messages for Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn (at a minimum) so your partners can easily promote your event on their social channels. Consider including a unique registration discount code tied to each speaker, wherein they receive some benefit for getting people to register with their code.
  • Provide regular updates about your event’s COVID-19 safety preparedness. Although many people are comfortable attending an in-person conference, your team needs to address potential safety concerns early and often to reassure attendees who may be hesitant about joining an in-person experience. The goal is to provide transparent updates about your onsite plans to show your prospective attendees that you’re doing everything possible to protect their health.
  • Use an event hashtag. Create a custom hashtag to accompany your event. Ideally, this hashtag can be used throughout the year to reinforce a sense of community outside the conference. Research your preferred hashtag across channels to ensure it is not already commonly used for a different purpose. 
  • Share visuals and video sizzle reels. Visual content is more likely to be seen by your community on social media. Invest in custom event images and video sizzle reels that highlight what attendees can expect, both for the in-person and virtual experience. 

6 Ways To Use Social Media to Drive Engagement During A Hybrid Event

Your most engaged attendees will likely use social media to ask questions, share their learnings from the conference, and attempt to network with other attendees during your event. It’s important to prepare your team to effectively find and engage with this content in real time.

After you address these foundational ways to highlight your hybrid event engagement opportunities, follow these best practices to spark conversations and build excitement on social media during your hybrid event.

Create Event Attendee Social Media Groups

In addition to your registration website, your attendees need a central place to go to access all the relevant details about your virtual event and connect with other attendees. We recommend you create a private social media group to grow into an event community. Encourage attendees to join this group when they first purchase their tickets, and regularly promote this group during the event. Assign a staff person to monitor the community throughout the event. 

Enlist Social Media Moderators

Depending on the size of your event and the number of priority social media channels for your community, your team needs at least two team members solely focused on addressing attendee needs on social media. These moderators will engage with attendee content, including amplifying their takeaways, answering questions, and suggesting other sessions they should attend based on what they’ve enjoyed so far. They can also help create excitement by giving away prizes or other resources of value to attendees that are active on social media. Don’t forget to also have the moderators check in with the social media group to share photos and videos and post conversation-starters.

Build a Social Wall

A social wall is a live display of social media posts about your conference, typically centered around the event hashtag or geolocation tags. Your team should include a social wall in your in-person experience and on your hybrid event platform to provide in-person attendees encouragement to join the virtual conversation and help remote attendees feel part of the greater conference experience. You can check out these 10 social media wall tool options for your event. 

Share Polls, Quizzes, and Contests 

Encourage engagement and help attendees get to know each other by sharing polls and quizzes related to your conference. These can include fun facts about conference speakers or preview elements of upcoming networking opportunities. Consider having different types of activities—and prize drawings for completing them—for each social media channel. 

Host a Virtual Scavenger Hunt

Create a scavenger hunt activity that both in-person and remote attendees can join. Encourage them to snap photos or take screenshots during the conference, and share those images on social media to check items off their list. Offer a prize or swag bag for anyone who completes the list.

Use Twitter Lists

Help attendees connect with speakers and other guests at your conference by creating a public Twitter list that attendees can opt into. During registration, ask if the attendee has a Twitter handle that you can include on the list. You’ll want to create an additional list with all of your conference speakers. 

Cohesive Hybrid Event Technology Enables An Engaging Event Experience

Your hybrid event attendees need ample ways to connect with each other throughout your event and across the virtual communication channels they prefer. There are several steps your team can take to facilitate this, including creating a dedicated conference hashtag and actively encouraging conversations about your event on social media. 

But even the best-intended efforts can fall flat if your event platform simply cannot provide the interactive attendee experience that your attendees deserve. With the right hybrid event platform, your team can create beautifully customized event branding that highlights your event hashtag and includes a social wall alongside sessions to encourage engagement. 

Find out why Frameable Events is your ideal hybrid event platform.

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8 Best Practices For a Hybrid Industry Conference and Trade Show

trade show floor

Planning a hybrid event can be challenging for many teams, especially when blending the in-person and remote attendee experiences. Do any of these common hybrid events planning questions sound familiar to you?

  • Should a hybrid event prioritize the in-person audience or remote attendees? 
  • How can attendees of either type network and engage with the other? 
  • Will my exhibitors find value in a hybrid event?

While there is no one-size-fits-all approach to hosting an incredible hybrid event, we believe the best way to create a cohesive and engaging experience is to prioritize the virtual experience and craft a complementary in-person event that blends seamlessly with the virtual event platform. 

We know this may be a counter-intuitive approach—”but the in-person experience should always come first!”—and it is a tall order to fill. But the brands that experiment with and perfect virtual and hybrid experiences will be best set for success in the future of events and community engagement.

To help you plan your next hybrid event, we’ve gathered these best practices to ensure you create an outstanding attendee experience, regardless of how they choose to join. 

8 Ways To Improve The Hybrid Event Attendee Experience

As more teams experiment with their hybrid event strategies, we can use their learnings to improve our approaches based on what worked well (or not so well). 

After researching recent virtual and hybrid events like Surf Expo, Essence Festival of Culture, CXEnergy 2021 Virtual Conference, and countless others, here are eight ways you can build a seamless event experience for all of your hybrid event attendees:

Broadcast all sessions via live stream with a unified commentary feed. 

All of your event sessions will likely involve a mix of in-person and remote-based attendees unless you host exclusive experiences only for your in-person attendees. To present a cohesive session experience, broadcast all sessions via live stream to virtual attendees, and project a commentary feed alongside your stage that includes thoughts from all attendees, regardless of location. 

If streaming all the conference content live is not feasible, consider pre-recording all breakout sessions, and having the speaker host a watch party on-site, followed by live-streamed Q&A sessions.

Stream your in-person attendees alongside sessions. 

It may sound strange at first, but we recommend live-streaming your in-person audience alongside your sessions. Why? Because the full scope of your event and its energy is difficult to absorb through a presenter-only one-way stream. 

You can accomplish this best practice with a digital or hybrid event platform that supports multiple simultaneous streams. If possible, consider streaming your remote attendees on a screen to your in-person audience, too, so everyone can realize just how many people are at your event. 

Don’t forget lunch. 

Provide a few lunch options for your in-person and remote attendees and partner with a nationwide delivery app partner to deliver meals to your virtual attendees’ homes. In addition, create spaces during the lunch break so in-person and remote attendees can easily chat and connect. 

Enlist moderators and help them coordinate.

Assign separate moderators to oversee your virtual and in-person attendees during sessions. Gather questions from both groups through your dedicated event messaging platform or audience polls, and then aggregate these questions into a shared document with all moderators. Ideally, you will have at least one moderator gathering questions for both groups each session and an additional moderator solely focused on reviewing/blending the two sets of questions and presenting them to the session host or participants. 

Encourage attendees to pre-submit questions. 

The goal for any event is to host crowd-pleasing sessions. As soon as your attendees hear about your event schedule, they should be excited about the discussion and will likely start to think about their own questions or goals for each session. So why should they have to wait to start engaging? Enable attendees to submit questions through your trade show app ahead of time. 

In addition to getting the buzz started about your event, this will help moderators set initial questions for sessions, can help refine conference presentations (if attendee questions are provided to the speaker ahead of time), and could provide ongoing content opportunities for your team. If a session has many unanswered questions, consider hosting a webinar or publishing an e-book or a series of blog posts to address your attendee needs.

Swag bags for everyone. 

Prepare swag bags for your in-person attendees to pick up at registration and mail similar bags to all virtual attendees. Remember that your attendees want useful items that help them day-to-day or provide instant relief at the event. Most trade show attendees have amassed a seemingly endless stock of low-quality pens, stress balls, and other items that quickly are thrown into a drawer once the event is over. Instead, give them something on-brand that they will actually use, like a USB drive, portable charger, or mints. 

Replicate your trade show floor online. 

Once you have all your other technology in place to enable attendee’s engagement, you can consider building a 3D rendering of your exhibition hall that allows virtual attendees to see displays and setups. You can also spotlight sponsored booths for your attendees to visit and interact with, and use a remote platform that helps attendees easily talk to and swap contact info with exhibitors. Some events have gamified this experience, offering prizes and giveaways to attendees who visit booths, or hosting a scavenger hunt to encourage more booth engagement. Consider adding an online-only exhibitor row to accommodate past exhibitors under travel restrictions and encourage in-person attendees to participate in the online experience.

Widen your exhibitor net but stay local. 

Almost all event exhibitors (96%) indicated that their marketing budgets are decreasing or staying the same in 2021, despite needing to support both in-person and digital versions of many events. Event planners can work around this by conducting a thorough exhibitor search within a drivable distance from their event venue. Although some legacy exhibitors may drop out due to the inability to travel, eager exhibitors in the local area can fill those slots. 

Select The Best Event Technology For an Exceptional Hybrid Event Experience

The above best practices are just a handful of current considerations for hosting a successful hybrid event. Remember to survey your community to understand what they hope to gain from a hybrid event experience and use those findings to build the optimal event for your unique audience. 

A common thread through all of these best practices is that your chosen hybrid event platform can easily make or break the attendee experience. You need a platform that can seamlessly connect your remote and in-person attendees to make them feel like the stars of the show. Learn how Frameable Events can make this your hybrid event reality. 

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Bridging the Experience Gap: How to Build Hybrid Events That Excite and Engage

Stage at a hybrid event

There is a significant difference between hosting or attending an in-person event versus its virtual equivalent. This came into sharp focus for event planners and marketers during the COVID-19 pandemic, as we had to very quickly adapt experiences to an online-only audience. While many of us are looking forward to the return to live events, our event attendees have made it clear that the way of the future is hybrid events. 

Bridging the gap between live and virtual attendee experience means building a hybrid experience that engages both audiences with equal access to opportunities for connection. In order to build these events, we must think differently about event planning from the ground up. 

It’s been said before and it bears repeating: a quality hybrid experience cannot simply be a live event with an online experience bolted on. To blend the two experiences meaningfully, you must plan each aspect of your event around both experiences, or build a quality online event and flow your live event around it. 

To understand how to create a high-quality hybrid event, we need to deeply explore the differences between live and online events and identify how hybrid event planning can create the perfect bridge to merge them. 

Online Versus In-Person Attention Spans

One big advantage of live events is they are mostly a captive, fully engaged audience. They are on-site, immersed in the physical conference space, surrounded by other attendees. They are buffered from whatever is waiting for them at home or the office. The flip side of this is that if an emergency arises that they must attend to in-person, they must leave the event, and risk not returning at all. 

Online attendees, however, are surrounded by the distractions of home or the office, and are more likely to have a split focus throughout the event. While this can be challenging, being a virtual attendee also means it is easier to dip in and out of the event as needed, in order to address external needs. 

Hybrid Events Can Give Attendees the Best of Both Worlds

When crafting a hybrid event, we want to build out an immersive experience for both types of attendees, while also making it easy to come and go as needed. We want attendees excited and focused on the event programming while making it seamless to step away and return as needed.

There are several ways to help keep your audiences drawn in. Effective use of social media to build an online community can help create ongoing engagement and prevent momentary distractions from turning into complete disengagement. Use of virtual lobbies and common spaces to keep your virtual audiences “on-site” between sessions and engaging with content and other attendees is also key. 

Virtual vs. Live Networking 

A major challenge for virtual events is creating easy and fun opportunities for networking. Live event attendees have the advantage of casual chance meetings in hallways while moving about the event space or during scheduled social hours and networking events. 

For virtual attendees, it is critical to choose an event technology platform that makes networking opportunities easy, and provides a way to integrate virtual and live networking. When surveyed, 39% of respondents who had attended a hybrid event expressed feeling left out. Bridging the networking gap is a critical way to overcome this challenge and keep your virtual attendees engaged and feeling connected. 

How to Craft a Hybrid Networking Experience

Employing several methods to improve networking opportunities will help your hybrid event shine. This is another instance where effective use of social media to build and maintain online communities can be helpful — this helps people connect before, during, and after your event. 

Both live and virtual attendees should have badges that provide quick, key details about themselves. Then build a bridge that links how virtual and live attendees can access information about each other. For example, all attendees should have an online profile that is completed ahead of the event. It should be easy for live attendees to point others to their profile (example: a QR code on their event badge that can be scanned with the event app), while virtual attendees’ avatars can contain similar key info and a prominent link to their profile. 

Creating and curating dedicated hybrid networking spaces is critical. As mentioned previously, live attendees have easy access to other attendees. For online attendees, create virtual lobbies and conversation spaces that create the same chance meetings. Set up tables and spaces that draw people into conversations using ice breaker questions, shared interests, or even casual games. By allowing virtual attendees to see who is in the room at large and seek out conversations, they will feel much more included and engaged with your event. 

Differences Between Live and Virtual Agenda Management

One of the biggest challenges of hosting any event is maintaining the agenda and helping people know where they should be, and when. For live events, there are many opportunities to get this right through the distribution of printed schedules, appropriate signage, and audio announcements that help attendees know where they need to be. 

For online participants, this can be a much poorer experience. Having to manually create events on your calendar risks getting key details and times wrong. Connecting to a session at the wrong time and receiving confusing messaging (for example, “this session has not yet started” when the session has ended) can be frustrating and disheartening. On the positive side, if virtual events have intuitive navigation, attendees can change locations with just a click — faster than live attendees could move to a new location.

One Digital Master Agenda to Rule Them All

One of the best ways to provide a stellar experience is to make it easy to create a custom digital agenda that seamlessly imports into the attendee’s calendar. If you are planning to use a custom app for your event, consider making an agenda builder with push notifications a built-in function. This can be helpful for all participants, especially at large events spread out over a large conference center. 

When an attendee is unable to make it a desired session, have the virtual replay, resources, and other key information easily accessible through the agenda when connecting to the online session space to make the experience better for everyone who needs to be in two places at once.

Virtual Audience Participation Largely a Live Event Afterthought

A huge factor in how integrated your virtual audience feels hinges on how you manage interactions between a speaker or panel, and the in-person versus virtual audiences. Handling this poorly can result in virtual attendees feeling hidden behind the screen and not a real part of the event. Frequently, speakers are unable to easily see and respond to incoming questions from online participants, which leads to a poor experience for everyone. 

For the best interactive experience for both live and virtual breakout session attendees, assign a moderator dedicated to monitoring and representing online comments and questions. Consider a setup where virtual attendees can ask their questions live using a video interface that allows the speaker (or even the live audience) to see them. Give dedicated time to both the in-person and virtual audiences for the Q&A. And don’t forget to provide opportunities for the two to engage with each other, as well as with the speaker or panel, throughout the session. 

The Trade Show Floor Is More Than Just a Collateral Library

Trade shows and conferences with a vendor showroom present a special challenge for hybrid events. This takes getting creative to offer a virtual experience that brings that same sense of fun and engagement that walking the floor brings.

When you are live at an event, you get the thrill of seeing the displays, meeting the people, and collecting fun swag as you walk the trade show floor. And of course, the showroom is a classic place for networking and chance meetings. 

Incorporate Your Event’s Networking Tools to Deliver an Interactive Virtual Trade Show Experience

Too often, virtual trade shows consist of a static menu of logos that lead to a document library, and possibly a calendar link to set up a 1:1 meeting. Replicating the live trade show experience virtually requires more than a simple vendor list and/or a static website interface. 

You need to get innovative to meet attendee and exhibitor trade show goals. Consider a 3D interactive model of the trade show floor. Imagine being able to hover over a virtual booth and getting a popup that shows company or product info, videos, and even a way to send messages or questions to the booth staff. Up the ante with the ability to see what attendees are currently visiting the same booth. Create exhibitor-hosted birds-of-a-feather networking table talks or group attendee virtual office hours to provide casual opportunities for networking and interaction. 

Start Building Better Hybrid Events

It takes creative energy and modern event management technology to build out exceptional hybrid events. It cannot be overstated that our approach to hybrid event planning means completely rethinking what it means to blend and bridge these two disparate experiences into one cohesive and engaging event. With the right planning, technology, and inclusive approach, your hybrid events will achieve further reach and superior engagement of your entire audience.

Are you ready to build innovative and exciting hybrid events? Check out Frameable Events.

Make every hybrid event a success

Book a demo
Categories
virtual events

Bridging the Experience Gap: How to Build Hybrid Events That Excite and Engage

Stage at a hybrid event

There is a significant difference between hosting or attending an in-person event versus its virtual equivalent. This came into sharp focus for event planners and marketers during the COVID-19 pandemic, as we had to very quickly adapt experiences to an online-only audience. While many of us are looking forward to the return to live events, our event attendees have made it clear that the way of the future is hybrid events. 

Bridging the gap between live and virtual attendee experience means building a hybrid experience that engages both audiences with equal access to opportunities for connection. In order to build these events, we must think differently about event planning from the ground up. 

It’s been said before and it bears repeating: a quality hybrid experience cannot simply be a live event with an online experience bolted on. To blend the two experiences meaningfully, you must plan each aspect of your event around both experiences, or build a quality online event and flow your live event around it. 

To understand how to create a high-quality hybrid event, we need to deeply explore the differences between live and online events and identify how hybrid event planning can create the perfect bridge to merge them. 

Online Versus In-Person Attention Spans

One big advantage of live events is they are mostly a captive, fully engaged audience. They are on-site, immersed in the physical conference space, surrounded by other attendees. They are buffered from whatever is waiting for them at home or the office. The flip side of this is that if an emergency arises that they must attend to in-person, they must leave the event, and risk not returning at all. 

Online attendees, however, are surrounded by the distractions of home or the office, and are more likely to have a split focus throughout the event. While this can be challenging, being a virtual attendee also means it is easier to dip in and out of the event as needed, in order to address external needs. 

Hybrid Events Can Give Attendees the Best of Both Worlds

When crafting a hybrid event, we want to build out an immersive experience for both types of attendees, while also making it easy to come and go as needed. We want attendees excited and focused on the event programming while making it seamless to step away and return as needed.

There are several ways to help keep your audiences drawn in. Effective use of social media to build an online community can help create ongoing engagement and prevent momentary distractions from turning into complete disengagement. Use of virtual lobbies and common spaces to keep your virtual audiences “on-site” between sessions and engaging with content and other attendees is also key. 

Virtual vs. Live Networking 

A major challenge for virtual events is creating easy and fun opportunities for networking. Live event attendees have the advantage of casual chance meetings in hallways while moving about the event space or during scheduled social hours and networking events. 

For virtual attendees, it is critical to choose an event technology platform that makes networking opportunities easy, and provides a way to integrate virtual and live networking. When surveyed, 39% of respondents who had attended a hybrid event expressed feeling left out. Bridging the networking gap is a critical way to overcome this challenge and keep your virtual attendees engaged and feeling connected. 

How to Craft a Hybrid Networking Experience

Employing several methods to improve networking opportunities will help your hybrid event shine. This is another instance where effective use of social media to build and maintain online communities can be helpful — this helps people connect before, during, and after your event. 

Both live and virtual attendees should have badges that provide quick, key details about themselves. Then build a bridge that links how virtual and live attendees can access information about each other. For example, all attendees should have an online profile that is completed ahead of the event. It should be easy for live attendees to point others to their profile (example: a QR code on their event badge that can be scanned with the event app), while virtual attendees’ avatars can contain similar key info and a prominent link to their profile. 

Creating and curating dedicated hybrid networking spaces is critical. As mentioned previously, live attendees have easy access to other attendees. For online attendees, create virtual lobbies and conversation spaces that create the same chance meetings. Set up tables and spaces that draw people into conversations using ice breaker questions, shared interests, or even casual games. By allowing virtual attendees to see who is in the room at large and seek out conversations, they will feel much more included and engaged with your event. 

Differences Between Live and Virtual Agenda Management

One of the biggest challenges of hosting any event is maintaining the agenda and helping people know where they should be, and when. For live events, there are many opportunities to get this right through the distribution of printed schedules, appropriate signage, and audio announcements that help attendees know where they need to be. 

For online participants, this can be a much poorer experience. Having to manually create events on your calendar risks getting key details and times wrong. Connecting to a session at the wrong time and receiving confusing messaging (for example, “this session has not yet started” when the session has ended) can be frustrating and disheartening. On the positive side, if virtual events have intuitive navigation, attendees can change locations with just a click — faster than live attendees could move to a new location.

One Digital Master Agenda to Rule Them All

One of the best ways to provide a stellar experience is to make it easy to create a custom digital agenda that seamlessly imports into the attendee’s calendar. If you are planning to use a custom app for your event, consider making an agenda builder with push notifications a built-in function. This can be helpful for all participants, especially at large events spread out over a large conference center. 

When an attendee is unable to make it a desired session, have the virtual replay, resources, and other key information easily accessible through the agenda when connecting to the online session space to make the experience better for everyone who needs to be in two places at once.

Virtual Audience Participation Largely a Live Event Afterthought

A huge factor in how integrated your virtual audience feels hinges on how you manage interactions between a speaker or panel, and the in-person versus virtual audiences. Handling this poorly can result in virtual attendees feeling hidden behind the screen and not a real part of the event. Frequently, speakers are unable to easily see and respond to incoming questions from online participants, which leads to a poor experience for everyone. 

For the best interactive experience for both live and virtual breakout session attendees, assign a moderator dedicated to monitoring and representing online comments and questions. Consider a setup where virtual attendees can ask their questions live using a video interface that allows the speaker (or even the live audience) to see them. Give dedicated time to both the in-person and virtual audiences for the Q&A. And don’t forget to provide opportunities for the two to engage with each other, as well as with the speaker or panel, throughout the session. 

The Trade Show Floor Is More Than Just a Collateral Library

Trade shows and conferences with a vendor showroom present a special challenge for hybrid events. This takes getting creative to offer a virtual experience that brings that same sense of fun and engagement that walking the floor brings.

When you are live at an event, you get the thrill of seeing the displays, meeting the people, and collecting fun swag as you walk the trade show floor. And of course, the showroom is a classic place for networking and chance meetings. 

Incorporate Your Event’s Networking Tools to Deliver an Interactive Virtual Trade Show Experience

Too often, virtual trade shows consist of a static menu of logos that lead to a document library, and possibly a calendar link to set up a 1:1 meeting. Replicating the live trade show experience virtually requires more than a simple vendor list and/or a static website interface. 

You need to get innovative to meet attendee and exhibitor trade show goals. Consider a 3D interactive model of the trade show floor. Imagine being able to hover over a virtual booth and getting a popup that shows company or product info, videos, and even a way to send messages or questions to the booth staff. Up the ante with the ability to see what attendees are currently visiting the same booth. Create exhibitor-hosted birds-of-a-feather networking table talks or group attendee virtual office hours to provide casual opportunities for networking and interaction. 

Start Building Better Hybrid Events

It takes creative energy and modern event management technology to build out exceptional hybrid events. It cannot be overstated that our approach to hybrid event planning means completely rethinking what it means to blend and bridge these two disparate experiences into one cohesive and engaging event. With the right planning, technology, and inclusive approach, your hybrid events will achieve further reach and superior engagement of your entire audience.

Are you ready to build innovative and exciting hybrid events? Check out Frameable Events.

Make every hybrid event a success

Book a demo
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