The pandemic forced brands, businesses, and individuals to make connections virtually that gave rise to virtual events leading to creating networks adopting the virtual way.
Just like everything has a purpose, virtual networking events are conducted by brands and individuals for different purposes. It can be for launching a new product, increasing sales, or just regular catchup with the agenda of turning acquaintances into friends.
Just like any other virtual event, a virtual networking event too is an important event and needs proper planning and execution.
Through the medium of this blog, we shall be telling you about the best tips to follow for hosting an engaging and successful virtual networking event.
Let’s get started!
Amazing Tips For Conducting A Successful Virtual Networking Event
● Introspect The Reason Behind Conducting The Event
Before conducting any event, your agenda should be totally clear. Take some time off and understand the reason behind conducting the event.
Just like mentioned at the beginning of the blog, you need to ask yourself if you are conducting the event for a casual chat, or for sales promotion or is it an intra-company networking event to introduce the new employees and break the ice?
Knowing the answer to this question is crucial to start the planning of the event.
● Monitor The Number Of Attendees
This is another important point to keep in mind. You need to pay heed to the number of people you are inviting to the event. If you invite too many people, then it would hamper the session since you wouldn’t be able to attend to all the attendees, and being a networking event, your main motto will be to connect. Similarly, if you invite fewer people to the event, then it would be challenging to break the ice and there will be no interaction.
The event industry experts suggest that inviting eight people to a virtual networking event is ideal and you shall be able to attend to all your attendees equally.
● Instill Excitement Using Social Wall
For a virtual networking event, you need to add an element that brings more excitement to your attendees and makes them engage in the event. In such situations, a social wall can prove to be a perfect communication tool for engaging your audience more.
You can request your attendees to tweet about your event and take a solo picture and post it using a witty caption on their social media accounts using a specific hashtag and you can display it further on a social wall during the event and thank your audience for their participation. They will feel delighted and engage with your event more.
● Be Careful About The Time Window
We cannot stress enough how important it is to mind the time window while conducting your virtual event. Your event must not last more than 60-90 minutes.
Even if your audience is much engaged in the event and loves your product, they would start getting bored if you exceed more than the mentioned time frame and you would not want to see them yawning in between. Would you?
Hence, keep this tip in mind and make sure that you plan the event keeping in mind not to exceed a stipulated time.
● Break The Ice With A Brief Introduction
All your attendees would be seeing new faces and shall not be comfortable interacting instantly. Once you are done greeting your audience, being the host, you should give a brief introduction to your attendees about one another.
To add more spark, you can ask the person a few questions about them like – their hobbies, how are they spending their time in the lockdown, or you can ask them to give a brief introduction of themselves too.
This will make your audience speak easily with each other since they might share similar interests and hobbies!
● Show Gratitude After The Event
When it comes to human behavior, people tend to analyze things or events often once the event is finished. To create a long-lasting impression on your audience, you can send a personalized gratitude email to them using their name and telling them that you are looking forward to hosting them soon in the next virtual event!
If your budget permits, you can send a Thank you box to your audience adding a note with a few goodies like personalized coffee mugs, and t-shirts, You can get a t-shirt design from Adobe, or a box of chocolates along with a bottle of wine. If you are a brand and have conducted the event for launching your product, you can send your new product along with a beautiful handmade card.
Summing It Up
Due to the current ongoing situation and the necessities associated with it like social distancing, virtual events are the only solution to safely connect with your audience.
Even though virtual networking events can get boring after a while, you still can engage the audience during the duration of the event. Just use the aforementioned practices and you will be able to conduct an amazing virtual networking event.
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