When you decide to host a virtual event, you make a large investment in regards to both time and money. Which is why you deserve to get the most out of your resources.
Keep reading for more insight into how you can leverage your resources before and during a virtual event.
Expand Event Reach
Every event planner knows that the number of RSVPs you receive doesn’t actually reflect how many will show up the day of the event. One way to increase viewership is to make it as easy as possible for more people to watch your event.
Which is why with BlueJeans by Verizon, you can livestream to Facebook Live, YouTube Live and other streaming platforms simultaneously. Hosting livestreams on your most engaged social media platforms helps expand your reach during the event and gives you the opportunity to capture the attention of a larger audience when it is available to engage with your brand. Creating engaging social media content not only helps increase the ROI on your event, but it also helps improve your brand’s social media presence.
Leverage Event Content
“You put so much time and energy in the planning, and then it’s the day-of and you crush it with great conversation and dialogue engagement — you don’t want it to be ephemeral,” shared Zachary Bosin, vice president of product and growth marketing at BlueJeans by Verizon. He went on to explain that you don’t want that one experience to only be available to those who attended the live session.
Because virtual events can be recorded, you can generate snackable pieces of content and have them live in perpetuity, whether that be through creating social media content, an e-book or an email cadence that nurtures event leads. Other options for leveraging event content include embedding the livestream or prerecorded event on your website or sharing video content or key takeaways in blog posts.
Social media in particular has the potential to expand your reach post-event. With video-centric platforms such as TikTok and Instagram, you can pull video clips out of the event and share them with your audience and can use the content to attract new viewers and followers. Professional insights post-event can generate LinkedIn posts from your company page or can enhance a LinkedIn article on a topic relevant to the event. You can turn speaker quotes into graphics to share on Facebook and Twitter. The creative possibilities are endless and can help you continue to benefit from a virtual event even once it’s over.
“There’s so many different ways that you can repurpose that great content,” Bosin said. “And if you’ve done your job and you have the right content and the right speakers, that’s where the magic really happens.”
Nurture Leads Post-Event
Sharing content across multiple digital mediums is a great way to nurture leads post-event. “This allows you to be able to pluck a bunch of really valuable tips, tricks and insights from the virtual event that will fuel the content engine for the coming weeks and months,” Bosin noted.
He also recommended following up with the attendees and thanking them for their time to start the process of nurturing them and getting them into the pipeline programs you have operating. Again — you can use the content you generated in the event here. “Ensure that’s part of your closed-loop process, where you actually are able to take those nuggets and continue to leverage them until your next great virtual event,” Bosin said, “And then the cycle starts again.”
For example, you can follow up with an email post-event that thanks them for their attendance, shares a few key takeaways from the event and includes a link to the recording of the event so they can rewatch it or share it. You can then lead into the same CTA you introduced at the virtual event.
When you follow up in additional emails, being able to pull insightful event content can help you create new emails that provide value — which helps build your expertise and softens your ask.
A Lesson in Leveraging Virtual Event Resources
After COVID-19 restrictions prevented Virgin Hyperloop from holding an in-person event to showcase the first manned test of its hyperloop transportation system, Virgin Hyperloop had to pivot its approach. Its solution? To use BlueJeans Events to livestream the historic test. That way, the audience could safely watch the test at a COVID-19-safe drive-in theater presentation.
This digital approach allowed Virgin Hyperloop’s team members, investors and the media to view the first passenger test of the company’s hyperloop system safely. Investors, employees and their families could also join in on the fun by watching the event from home.
The video stream was shown at a much higher frame rate than can be achieved with screen-sharing options, which resulted in a superior picture quality. The real-time connections averaged approximately 325 connections and caught the attention of the media, which enhanced the ability to generate leads post-event.
With the BlueJeans Events’ video-upload feature, Virgin Hyperloop was able to expand its event reach and leverage the content it created in one fell swoop.
