How To level Up Your Virtual Event

Three focuses of my blog are Financial Literacy/Money, Business/Entrepreneurship and Technology. In the post Covid-19 world, virtual events have taken on an increased significance. As such, you want to host the best events possible. The following contributed post is entitled, How To level Up Your Virtual Event.

* * *

Photo by Gabriel Benois on Unsplash

The events and tradeshow sector has taken a huge hit this year due to travel restrictions and policies around COVID-19. However, the industry is starting to find its footing again in the form of virtual events. 79% of event planners are now providing virtual events.

Rather than simply holding a glorified online PowerPoint presentation, you need to up your game and find ways to make your virtual events a must-attend event with our top tips.

Send out promotional items to key registrations

Who hasn’t been to an event and walked away with a bag full of pens, notebooks, USB keys, socks, and candy? It’s one of the perks. Well, just because the event is virtual doesn’t mean you have to dispense with the corporate swag altogether.

Identify key people that you want to sign up for the event. Once they do, send them out a package full of promotional items ahead of time. Or you can use it as an incentive for early registration. Think of items your audience will want and get in touch with water bottle companies and promotional item suppliers.

Use gamification to keep attendees interested

Stop attendees drifting in and out of the event by adding a layer of gamification to your virtual event. Attendees can build points for attending sessions or asking questions. These points can be converted to prizes or discounts with some of the companies running the show.

Up your keynote speaker game

A great keynote speaker is one of the key factors that draw people to sign up for events. As you’ll likely be saving the budget on venue rental and the cost of travel and accommodation for the speaker, you can funnel this budget into a fantastic keynote.

Facilitate 1:1 meetings

For sponsors and attendees, one of the main reasons to attend a trade show is to meet with potential sales prospects. Create a facility where people can book 1:1 short virtual sessions with each other.

Create different streams

At a standard trade show, people from various disciplines attend the sessions relevant to them. Resist the urge to have one track-linear timetable for your virtual event. CEO’s don’t want to sit through content aimed at finance managers and marketers don’t want to watch content for IT directors. It’s a sure way to lose attendees quickly.

Promote the different stress to the right people so that they can enjoy the entire event without waiting for their relevant sections.

Make breaks interesting

You don’t want to risk people drifting off during breaks and not returning to the event. Resist the urge to fill it full of boring promo and arrange something a bit different. It could be something like an interactive quiz (for prizes) or a live demonstration of cooking or even a comedian.

Provide high-quality content downloads

Once the event is over, keep a website live so that attendees can access videos of the sessions, marketing downloads, and get in contact with sponsors and corporate partners.

Virtualization Could Be What Rescues Your IT. Here’s Why

A key focus of my blog is Technology. A new advance that is on the horizon is “Virtualization”. If you own a business that involves Information Technology (IT), or are looking to get into an IT field, it would serve you well to familiarize yourself with Virtualization. The following contributed post is entitled, Virtualization Could Be What Rescues Your IT. Here’s Why.

* * *

Pixabay – CC0 License

“Going virtual” – everyone in business is talking about it. But what does it mean, exactly?

In the world of IT, going virtual doesn’t mean putting on a VR headset and looking for some Pokemon. It means creating computer systems that look self-contained but are actually stored on a massive server somewhere, alongside a load of others.

While it might sound a little strange, taking this approach offers many benefits. It’s why sites like umbrella-ms.com rave about it. Check them out below.

It’s Easier To Migrate To The Cloud

Migrating to the cloud is a challenge when you store all your data on discreet PCs and share it via a network. You have to manually upload information from each computer – something that can take many weeks.

When you go virtual, though, it is a different story. All your virtual computers are on the same server. All you need to do is transfer data wholesale to its new home in the cloud, and, once complete, you’re free to carry on as usual.

Migrating to a private cloud is even easier. Essentially, when you virtualize all the PCs in your office, you do the groundwork for this anyway. Making your system distributive is the next natural step.

It Makes Testing Much Easier

Creating virtual systems isolated from all the others in your network is easy. You can set up manual partitions that eliminate any cross-talk between machines, providing you with a natural testbed.

It is unlikely that you’ll want to use the same software in your company year after year. Eventually, the time will come to upgrade. If you’re going to test your new software on physical systems, you have to manually install it and check it against a range of parameters. It is a slow and clunky process.

Creating a virtual test machine and firing new updates at it, by contrast, helps to speed the process dramatically. Testing becomes much more manageable. And once you’re finished, you can roll out settings across the rest of your accounts with confidence.

It Enhanced Disaster Recovery

IT disasters are, unfortunately, part and parcel of modern business. Companies regularly face network shutdowns owing to the complexity of software, hardware, and user requirements.

Recovering from a disaster when you have physical servers is a massive challenge. You have to manually recalibrate all your servers individually, assessing each for faults. Recovering from a disaster when you have virtual machines is much more comfortable according to geek-university.com. You don’t necessarily have to have fully-operational hardware on your premises. All you require are a few working computers and a reasonable connection to the internet. Even after a disaster, you can still access all your virtual machines, even when their physical counterpart is out of action.

The Cost Savings Are High

Finally, virtual systems are much cheaper than their physical counterparts. You have lower on-site power usage, and lower requirements to replace hardware – that all happens in the background.

Have you considered going virtual? You probably should.