3 Questions to Ask Yourself When Hosting an Online Event

This blog post is by Tia Tyrell, copywriting and social media intern. Tia is a senior at the City College of New York, studying Advertising and Public Relations. She is a student athlete, writer-in-training, and she’s also interested in non-profits.

Since 2018, Media Volery has had interns join us for summer/fall/spring terms. Interns have the opportunity to collaborate with our senior staff, work on real projects for our clients, and try their hands at skills from copywriting and video editing to podcast production and social media content. We also encourage our interns to write about their experiences and share what they’ve learned along the way.  

I recently watched a talk hosted by Masters of Marketing which featured Media Volery president Zontee Hou as a guest speaker. In this discussion, Zontee explains how companies should launch exciting, virtual events.

As we know, there is a clear difference between online and physical events. There are key points to keep in mind when pivoting to an online space. You can’t post a flyer to your Instagram account or website and caption it, “Come to my event! It’ll be fun.” And if people do come to your event, how do you get them to stay and engage?

People have short attention spans. In the interview, Zontee said, “People don’t have the time or desire to stay around.” Imagine watching a YouTube video and after the first three minutes, you lose interest. Without second-guessing, you will exit the video and find something else to watch. A similar concept is applied to virtual events. If your audience is bored or they don’t see a reason for them to stay any longer, the leave button is just a click away.

Through watching the discussion, I realized Zontee’s tips not only apply for B2C and B2B. As a student, I think professors, club organizers, or in fact, anyone who wants to host a successful, engaging virtual event should know these three tips. I’m going to talk about where and how I’ve seen Zontee’s tips in different settings.

Ask yourself the following questions when you are thinking about hosting a virtual event.

How can I identify my audience’s needs?

At the beginning of the pandemic, the transition to online learning was difficult. In my program, everyone was confused and disconnected. A lot of the professors were unfamiliar with the platforms. They needed to figure out how to make virtual classes as interactive as in person. After a few months of adapting to this “new normal,” things have improved. Some professors became more flexible with their students. For example, they won’t stress about turning on cameras but urge students to use the chat or unmute to participate.

As Zontee mentioned in the video, one company hosts Zoom events (with over 500 people) frequently use polls to increase engagement. My professors use polls and breakout rooms to help students participate more. My favorite is when one of my professors tells us to use the hand clap emojis when welcoming a guest speaker on Zoom. In my opinion, when classes include those features (guest speakers, polls, conversations) it makes me look forward to going to class.

What can we do together?

Last summer, I attended a virtual student leadership retreat for my college. Since most students already felt disconnected because our sports were canceled and we couldn’t meet in person, it was important to have this retreat. The purpose was to bring club leaders and student-athlete captains together to remind them that although we are not in person, our roles as leaders are still relevant. I’ll be completely honest: I didn’t have high expectations.

I thought it would be boring. “It won’t be as fun as it would’ve been in person,” I thought to myself. Well, let’s just say, I was wrong. Each day had a few breakout rooms. There were sessions about personal branding, effective communication, bystander intervention, and many more.

There was a keynote speaker named Jeff Dess. He had a lot of energy at 10 in the morning, which is early for me.  I never witnessed such engagement on Zoom before. He asked questions frequently and the chat was flowing with comments and engagement. Imagine a celeb on Instagram live and fans are commenting, that’s what it looked like. He would say a quote and had us either unmute and repeat it or write it in the chat. He talked about the importance of adding value at work and how to stand out from others.

How can I create an engaging virtual event?

I am the vice president of a club at my college, the Student-Athlete Advisory Council. When there were in-person meetings, attendance was limited. Those who did attend often looked like they wanted to be somewhere else. I remember attending the meetings and thinking that they were not engaging. Therefore, pivoting online was not easy.

However, we did not let that discourage us from accomplishing our goal this school year. Prior to the current e-board, the club was a bit disorganized. One of our goals was to organize all the files, Powerpoints, and anything we worked on to create a smoother transition for the next board. Another goal was to make our events more interesting and engaging.

We reached out to team captains to help spread the word, used social media platforms, and did email blasts. We created ice breakers at the beginning of each meeting and have PowerPoints and Kahoot games.

Due to these proactive actions and changes, our last two events I would say were successful. We collaborated with another club and hosted an event. We had about 50 attendees which was a major improvement from previous meetings we had.  Recently, we had a general body meeting. Fewer people attended but it was still highly engaging. We did another ice breaker and went around the “room” and everyone participated. At the moment, we are planning a few events for the remainder of the semester. We hope to have people attend and have fun.

I learned no matter what event it is, in person or virtual, it needs to be engaging and have a purpose. Don’t let online platforms like Zoom, or Google Meet intimidate you. It can happen.

Have you been to any virtual events? If so, what’s one thing that made it memorable?