How to Build Community through Your Next Virtual Event

I’ve learned through supporting the strategic execution of several virtual events including the March on Washington Film Festival and Now + There’s Public Art Accelerator Forum that people are finding belonging through virtual opportunities that are accessible, personal, and allow for community building.

You’re likely reading this because you’ve decided that you’re up for the challenge of hosting an online event (or maybe a few) in the months ahead! Awesome!

The principles of engagement and user experience remain the same whether you are translating a previously-held in-person event into an online experience or building something new. Your objective is to provide unique value through the content you’re offering up. This value-add can be educational, informational, entertainment-focused, or experience-focused, for example.

Now, this is the FUN part. Where in the past organizations were limited by time, capacity and location, an online venture opens up a whole world of possibilities. When you’ve decided where your event falls in value, you can play around with the format, length, and overall event design.

I’ve created this 10-step virtual event checklist that can help guide you from event ideation to post-event debrief. Once you’ve read through, you can also check out this blog post I wrote earlier in the year with tips for general social media engagement and promotion pre-event.

STEP 1: CHOOSE THE VIRTUAL FORMAT THAT WORKS FOR YOUR AUDIENCE

Not active on Facebook? Maybe this isn’t the time to drive your audience to that platform. Post YouTube videos frequently? Check out the capabilities there first! Your audience will have familiarity with navigating your content within that space. You should aim to pick the format and virtual dashboard that will require the least troubleshooting, with the knowledge you can cross-post elsewhere after the event has been recorded and archived.

STEP 2: KEEP THE ESSENCE OF YOUR ORGANIZATION AT THE CORE

Virtual events offer the opportunity to remind your audience of your core values and of the ways you have been able to respond effectively to their needs in the midst of crisis.

These messaging points should be expressed orally, visually, and in written form as many times as needed to ensure there is clarity around how this event ties into the “big picture” vision for the organization. Your audience expects you to quell their uncertainty through reassurance and confirmation that the work you lead is evolving, despite the current challenges.

STEP 3: EXPLORE AVAILABLE VIRTUAL EVENT RESOURCES

Call a peer in the field or take a crash course in Zoom and live social media streaming platform capabilities and restrictions. You’ll want to be informed of the pitfalls and recommendations that others are willing to share publicly to ideally avoid any hiccups. For example, gaining licensing to any “waiting room” music is critical as virtual events uploaded to a copyright sensitive platform have had their audio stripped because they did not have usage rights.

STEP 4: IDENTIFY YOUR IDEAL VIRTUAL ATTENDEE EARLY

Getting to know your ideal event attendee will help you refine the abundance of ideas you came up with during the brainstorming phase. Putting yourself in the shoes of your attendee is critical to understanding what they’re looking for, and building your virtual event around those expectations. What would you love to see if you were them? What would catch you by surprise? What would bring you joy? What would leave you wanting more in the future?

STEP 5: RUN A VIRTUAL EVENT REHEARSAL TO WORK OUT THE KINKS

Creating a run-of-show in a Word Doc for the team to follow is wonderful, however, it’s advantageous to talk through exactly what’s going to happen in real-time at least one day before your online event. Assigning one or more people on your team to focus on the production aspects is important in helping things run smoothly behind the scenes, just like a stage or day-of venue manager would. If something in the run-of-show isn’t working, don’t be afraid to course-correct.

STEP 6: SEEK TO ELIMINATE BARRIERS TO PARTICIPATION

Remember, we don’t all experience the virtual world the same way. Hiring a virtual interpreter is standard for online discussions and captioning should be used for video assets that are pre-recorded and uploaded to stream live. Color-friendly imagery should be used throughout to accommodate color-blindness (this free online guide is an amazing resource for that) and imagery with text displayed in a Zoom video should be large enough for simple readability.

STEP 7: MAP OUT A GAME PLAN FOR ANY POTENTIAL CRISES

Just like you would for an in-person event, have sample scenarios built out and a tech-response team in place to troubleshoot connectivity or streaming issues. Beyond technology issues, plan for what should happen if someone violates the community agreement with a display of harassing language, trolling or spamming, so you can maintain a safe space. This could be a private or public warning, block, or removal from all event registration.

STEP 8: DOCUMENT, DOCUMENT, AND DOCUMENT SOME MORE

While the conversation and experience may focus on time-specific needs and messaging, there’s no reason why you cannot repurpose and reshape the content captured during the virtual event. Zoom and Facebook Live have recording features that should make capturing visuals relatively easy. Gather a transcription of comments, quotes, and audience chat questions to later address concepts that came up during the event. You could create a whole social media campaign with quotes and themes from your event, based on what your audience liked the most!

STEP 9: REMEMBER ZOOM AND FACEBOOK LIVE FATIGUE IS REAL

Your virtual event doesn’t need to be perfect or particularly well-attended to be considered successful. Many people are on virtual calls for work or other social events and yours may overlap and conflict when an existing commitment. And some people are just tired of staring at their screen, so may opt-out, even if they are interested in your offering. That’s OK! You can still grab them with the replay and through dissecting learnings and sharing what you documented post-event in the weeks and months ahead.

STEP 10: GATHER FEEDBACK ON HOW THINGS WENT

Even if you end up with a small number of responses, studies show that people do appreciate being asked their feedback. Keep questions short and focused on the user experience. You’ll want to know what went well, what was a challenge, and what could be improved by the time you ask your audience to attend another virtual event. Continue to refine your process and your audience will happily follow.

WordSpark Digital Consulting is a social impact consultancy based on the East Coast. Ready to learn more about how you can use effective strategy to deepen your connection with relevant audiences? Let’s connect.