As many of us adapt to the new normal that has overtaken our lives in the past few months, there’s now no question that hybrid events are here to stay.
While transitioning to hybrid corporate events may seem like a foreign and intimidating process to your company, it doesn’t have to be. Your company may even find that hybrid events work better and offer more opportunities for engagement and interaction among employees and your C-suite.
Here at Best Venues New York, we’ve put together a list of the top 5 tips that we incorporate for our client’s hybrid corporate events.
Larger AV Budget
Hybrid events are a mix of live and virtual programming. They are also the future of events. While the live portion is not that much different than pre-Covid-19 events, the virtual side comes with its own unique challenges and opportunities.
For your corporate event to be a hybrid success, it is critical that your virtual event planner factors in a larger AV (Audio-Visual) budget.
Within this AV budget, your company will need to consider virtual event technology costs such as audio and video equipment as well as professionals who can operate the AV equipment during the event (Best Venues New York works with high-quality virtual audiovisual specialists). Audio and video are key for not only live events but making sure recordings of the events are easily understood and can be edited for social media posts.
Luckily, virtual event software and platforms such as Glisser and Hopin have made hosting and executing hybrid corporate events simple.
Shorter Segments To Keep Interest
When catering to an online audience with a shorter attention span (and most likely checking their phone at the same time...), it’s critical that virtual event planners take into consideration creating innovative and engaging programming to keep both the live and virtual audiences hooked.
While companies certainly have to reduce the time slots allowed to speakers and events, there has to be more of an emphasis on reference material such as images and videos during the presentations to help guide the virtual audience to learn, understand, and synthesize the material.
Shorter segments will also help keep the live audience engaged. In our opinion, shorter speaker slots at hybrid events have delivered higher quality content and presentations than previously.
Invest In Event Engagement Tools
While keeping a live audience entertained and engaged is no small task (We’ll come back to this topic), making sure your virtual audience feels as if they are a part of the action can make or break your hybrid corporate event.
That’s why investing part of the budget into event engagement tools such as Slido and PigeonHole Live is critical. The size of your budget depends on the reach of the hybrid event audience.
Social media plays a massive role in keeping virtual audiences engaged so having a dedicated social media manager during events is vital. Other tools such as live polling, audience response, and interactive presentations are becoming even more important.
For internal corporate events, virtual town halls and leadership meetings have actually increased employee engagement and are considered the new normal among our corporate clients.
Keep Live Event Crowd Entertained
With so much emphasis being placed on virtual audiences, maintaining high-quality programming for live audiences cannot be overlooked.
Whether it’s a corporate or conference, plan your programming with your audience in mind. Try to put yourself in the audience's shoes and think about what seems engaging or particularly interesting to them. If possible, create a survey in advance of people that have the profile makeup of your target audience and find out what they are interested in hearing about.
Next, remember that your live audience will help engage your virtual members so ask questions or get live audience participation (This is where you’ll have to rely on your AV specialists for supporting the virtual audience).
Finally, stick to images and videos to get across your point. Emphasise the important points of your presentation by making a separate slide and remember to have fun!
Get Company Wide Involvement
Hybrid corporate events can sometimes drag on and be dull. Make sure to work with your virtual event planner to ensure you’ll get company-wide involvement.
Be sure to make time for hybrid networking events. These are great opportunities for your corporate’s employees to come together and get to know each other on a professional as well as a personal level.
We’ve also found that virtual team-building events before or after hybrid events work well to get buy-in from the whole company (Best Venues New York is happy to customize packages anyway your corporate or conference would like!)
Ready to embrace the future of hybrid events? Best Venues New York has been a leader in the event planning industry for many years and is ready to plan your virtual event! Contact us today to get started.