Turning Virtual Events into Communities

As an event planner, you might often find it challenging to create and promote an online event. 

The transition to online events might have been easier when it comes to logistics. However, the real challenge lies in the level of commitment from the participants.  

When people travel to your venue, it becomes difficult for them to just walk away. They have to wait patiently for the event to end. But when it is an online event, the chances of them getting distracted is a click away. 

All of these can ruin your future sponsorship negotiations. 

Then, what is the solution? 

As an event planner, you need to keep an open mind and see how you can use these online events to your advantage to build a community. In fact, as a brand, you stand a better chance to preserve connections to provide a deeper and connected experience. 

You may ask what’s the need? 

Top 5 benefits of developing communities from virtual events 

• Virtual events offer greater flexibility

The most popular technology conferences are also the most exclusive and expensive. Having a virtual event creates the possibility to increase the reach without deviating much from the cost. Platforms like Event Anywhere can bring to you a platform where you can interact on a daily basis. 

• Virtual events help to attract a more diverse crowd 

As there are no geographical barriers, virtual events provide an opportunity to invite guests and speakers from across the globe. The best thing about an online events platform is that it enables you to host a wide range of topics and guests participating in it can attend it and share their thoughts. 

• Virtual events offer bigger opportunities 

People have a limited span when it comes to virtual events. Hence it is always wise to hold shorter events so that people have more options to attend events when they cannot make it on a particular date. 

The beauty of virtual events platforms like Event Anywhere is that it also provides the organizers with the flexibility to record the event so that in case somebody is not able to make it to the event, they can still watch the recording. This way they also get to consume the content and the content can also be repurposed if required. For example, the organizations can post the recording of the event on video platforms like YouTube or Vimeo and build a loyal community around it.  

• Virtual events empower communities 

As there are no physical constraints, participants can easily attend online events without spending money on travel and stays. The best part is even if the participants miss the live event they can still join the comments section and participate in it. 

For example, at Facebook, during their UnSummit conference, they created a virtual event to replace an in-person community gathering and used closed Instagram profiles and group photos to create that community kind of feeling. They also used cinematic and other interactive experiences to connect with people and help them break the barriers of virtual networking. 

• Virtual events enable you to reimagine our future thinking

One of the significant advantages of the virtual format is you also get to adapt to the participant’s point of view. This enables you to personalize your content as well as engage with others through real-time question and answer sessions and breakout sessions. 

A reliable virtual events platform helps to keep us connected in more ways than one. One of the recent examples where a virtual events platform was highlighted was broadcasting a graduation ceremony live on Facebook and Instagram. Agree that a virtual events platform cannot fully emulate the experience of walking across the stage during the ceremony but with these difficult times, it helps in bringing an experience as close to the live one as possible. 

Final thoughts 

Creating a virtual community through an online event does take a lot of time and considerable amount of effort. 

An online events platform definitely makes this journey a lot easier by not only supporting the live streaming but also through the activities conducted post the conference. This way it ensures that your platform will not only serve a one-time event, rather foster the feeling of community and a sense of belonging.