Some attendees may not wish to travel to an event’s physical destination while others wouldn’t have it any other way. In 2022, your event needs to recognize and accommodate all the options! The virtual component offers the ability to host a much larger audience that is geographically dispersed. While the in-person component provides baked-in social connectivity and an ability to create a more encompassing sensory experience.
Your Hybrid Event Platform
Make sure to choose a hybrid event platform that can help manage both the virtual and in-person events and foster data collection. Almost all remote attendee actions can be captured for analysis. Many hybrid platforms give attendees the ability to build their own personalized agendas. You also want a platform that allows attendees to interact with speakers, exhibitors, and other attendees. Last but certainly not least, you want a platform with strong privacy and security compliances.
Promoting Your Event
Make it very clear that it will be a hybrid event in your event promotions and what the specific offerings will be for each attendee. Detailed schedules allow people to better plan what they’ll attend based on their own timing needs and other considerations. Make sure to seed out regular promotional content that caters to the different event aspects and the attendees that might be interested in each of them. Registration needs to be flexible as pandemic circumstances are still constantly changing depending on the region.
Promote your event on social media both before and during the event to help with networking and to build a community. Showing that there’s a lot of interest and remote attendance at your events can boost sponsorship revenue and encourage sponsors who may not have been able to have a booth at the live event. The virtual component of hybrid events allows for sponsorship pieces like on-screen banners, videos, acknowledgments, etc.
Production Value
In-person meetings and conferences will re-emerge on a larger scale eventually. That said, there will likely continue to be a hybrid approach to things to allow people to attend virtually. In the long term, hybrid will likely be the go-to event strategy as best practices and technology innovations continue to develop. As these events evolve and become more sophisticated, you will need a more studio-style look and feel to hit the production quality and engagement expectations of attendees.
Whether it’s making things look more like a televised production instead of the traditional live set and stage or other potential trends, things like venue design, video production, and sound quality are very important. Just because there are options available doesn’t mean you need to have them all going at the same time though. To keep things sleek and not too busy, you need a clean and straightforward interface so the different elements aren’t competing with each other — it’s about striking an optimal balance!
Hybrid formats may be more complex and require more planning but good preparation combined with an empathy-driven approach to the attendee experience are major keys to success! Contact Baldwin Audio/Visual Solutions today to learn more about our event solutions.