HOW TO ORGANIZE A HYBRID EVENT

22 02 2021

The popularity of hybrid events for trade shows, seminars, or conferences has been rising rapidly and is expected to grow even further. Event planners use this type to reach a bigger target audience through interactive live broadcasting. Hybrid events have the combined impact of virtual events and physical events and generate involvement from both digital and in-person participants.

Hybrid events successfully bring in more attendants, irrespective of physical, social, or geographical differences. For event planners, it is crucial to understand how to organize a hybrid event perfectly to generate more audience engagement.

According to a Bizzabo report, 71% of the event marketing professionals have clearly understood hybrid event basics. Yet, event planners have to keep in mind many important aspects to building a high-quality combined event. In this article, you would learn about the main components of a hybrid event and tips for proper organization.

Prepare Participants About What To Expect

It is essential to set the event agenda for the attendees first during the combined virtual and physical event. Providing vital information about the event to the audience is crucial for the event planners. They must teach the logging-in procedure to the virtual visitors first and inform the offline audience about the virtual guests.

Moreover, it is essential to clarify to the overall guests about all the promotional deals, delivery options, travel details, and other elements beforehand. According to an Event MB report, 41.1% of the event planners stated that they would attend a live event physically if it were taking place locally. Similarly, prior location and travel-related information would allow the guests to decide which comfortable attendance type is for them.

Focus On The Remote Participants

While organizing the hybrid event, event planners must focus on the virtual audience more than the face-to-face participants. Since the remote participants are not physically present, engaging with them would retain their attention. In one study, 39% of the virtual guests stated they lost interest in a hybrid event they attended because they felt excluded.

Thus, event planners should skip the in-person event elements like hand-up voting, sticky notes, whiteboards, and flip-charts. As the virtual attendees cannot participate in these, they would feel left out.

While organizing a hybrid event broadcast, add interactive elements virtually. These include digitized voting polls, task submissions, brainstorming, and Q/A sessions. All of these participation elements are easy to conduct both offline and online. First, ask for the answers of the virtual participants during a Q/A session and then interact with the live audience. Also, the virtual participants should hear both the speaker's and other participants' voices. Test the video and audio equipment beforehand and ensure they have a high-quality feed, image quality, and connection.

Host On-Site

Instead of separated spaces, event planners should bring the presenters on-site. Many hybrid events make the mistake of bringing in experts in a virtual panel format. This is not interesting to the viewers and feels more impersonal.

So, as an event planner, you should focus on bringing the panelists on-site. When they have gathered into one room altogether, that induces a feeling of excitement for both virtual and live audiences. The latter can interact with the panelists during the event, and the ones watching from home would find the event more lively.

Flexible Registrations

It is crucial to keep the registration process and attendance restrictions more open for hybrid events. A participant who says they cannot attend can change their mind later. Plus, the travel restrictions in a particular area can change later. In both cases, the individual may participate at a later time.

Thus, you must relax the attendance restrictions and allow attendees the chance to change their participation mode later as well. This flexibility regarding attendance would interest more consumers to check out your event.

Partnership With The On-Site Professionals

To organize a hybrid event that would perform successfully, you need to foster a good working relationship with the venue partners. The venue’s professionals would deal with the space arrangement decisions, room layout, and internet connection issues. Plus, working comfortably with the on-site A/V team is also essential to organize a successful event.

Small Groups

In a survey, 38% of the event organizers said it takes them more time to prepare a hybrid event than traditional events. However, when you designate different tasks into small groups and pairs, the preparation period would decrease.

Since the hybrid events require digital implementation, various digital tools would lessen the overuse of human resources.

Plus, the groups of participants can handle their tasks quickly as well. The paired participants can develop their ideas and share them on one platform using images, text format, and videos. Thus, everyone's thoughts get equal attention, which would aid the discussion.

Teamwork

As the organizer, it is your task to ensure that every participant knows about the event schedule well. If you are conducting an educational class as a hybrid event, share the lead responsibility with different coaches. This would help you handle a more significant audience more effectively online.

As per reports, 49% of the event organizers faced problems scheduling an event due to time zone variations of the participants. Here, sharing the team’s work would help you organize separate guides and assignments for each sectioned group. The second assigned facilitator can use digital tools to handle the participation during the Q/A sessions, answer their questions, and send discussion and assignment-related requests to the attendees.

In simple terms, many event planners use extra satellites for network coverage in hybrid events. As a facilitator, it is important to split the overall task equally between monitoring each satellite. After the day's activities are completed, you as a team can evaluate the overall performance.

Conclusion

As per global reports, the interest in hybrid events in event management is growing among enterprises and individual content creators. Thus, keep the points mentioned above in mind to develop a well-organized event. Indeed, gather information and get in touch with a reliable hybrid event organizer as soon as possible.






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