Hybrid Events Dominating 2022
2022 is backed by advanced event technology. In the past few years, virtual and hybrid event trends have contributed enough to the event industry. Virtual events dominated for years until hybrid events made their way through the tide. For sure, hybrid events are here to stay. The advanced technological innovations, tools, and software successfully help bring together physical and online audiences. Thus, most of 2021 witnessed corporate, health and educational events turning hybrid. Now, it is only safe to say that 2022 will witness an abundance of hybrid events. Therefore, businesses need to follow interesting tips for hybrid events to compete in the market.
With the decline in pandemic restrictions, these events seem like a logical next step for businesses and organizations. However, there is a need to make hybrid events more interesting and keep global audiences hooked to your events. So, how would you spice up hybrid events to attract the target audience to your live or online event? It is all about creating an exciting and engaging event experience for the audience.
You see, hybrid events are already a blend of two-way interaction and networking among onsite and remote attendees. So, the more engagement opportunities you provide for your audience to communicate two ways, the greater their interest in your event. Are you ready to explore how 2022 would turn out for the corporate world? Let’s first learn why to choose hybrid events.
Why Choose Hybrid Events?
Hybrid events have become essential to your business plan as everyone is already in the game. Your competitors now host a global audience by combining physical and virtual event features. Can’t blame it when hybrid events are everything the business world needs. Surprisingly, it comes with tons of benefits for your organization. It combines both remote and on-site attendees to offer a seamless event experience. For instance, hybrid events help score a global audience, offer great flexibility for your business partners, and create multiple engagement opportunities for onsite and remote audiences. Not just that, these events are time-efficient and cost-effective for everyone related to the event.
Do we have the event planners’ attention by now? The hybrid event model is most compatible when paired with a virtual events platform. However, these platforms take up your headache to further organize and execute your hybrid event. Therefore, it is necessary to partner with a virtual events platform to help you execute the entire event.
How Do You Host a Successful Hybrid Event?
Organizations put on a big show to showcase their business to make a standing in the global marketplace. When you live-stream your onsite event to a virtually present audience, they get to engage and interact with each other through a virtual events platform. For instance, there are live engagement features such as Q&A sessions, live Polling, meeting scheduler, chat options, audio and video conferencing.
Here are some key factors to consider to run a successful hybrid event.
- Create a personalized and branded virtual environment
- Create engagement and networking opportunities among both audiences
- Offer an Integrated Virtual and Physical Event Experience
- Live-stream HD presentations/webinars to remote audiences
- Get in-depth event reports, attendance, activity and analytics
- Offer 24/7 support for the end-to-end attendee experience
However, all your actions depend on careful planning and execution before, during and after the event.
Tips to Host an Interesting Hybrid Event
Do you wish to do something out of the box? Are you tired of the old methods of organizing virtual or physical events? Well, let us enlighten you with an advanced and recent approach to event industry trends. Hybrid events make way into 2022 with an all-new avatar. However, there remains the need to make these events more interesting and appealing for the audiences. Be it a remote audience or onsite attendees, your hybrid event should be compelling and favourable for audiences alike.
Put on a magic or puppet show, and do whatever shows your audience a good time at the event. But first, it is essential to plan and execute the entire event wisely. We have devised strategies for organizations and businesses to follow when setting up grand hybrid events in the future. Let’s consider the following tips for hybrid events!
1. Analyze Your Audience Expectations
If you plan to welcome a remote audience for the first time, you would need some strong plan and assistance throughout. So, to begin with, determine the type of audience joining in. Then, once the number of audience is confirmed, check with each individual how they would join in the meeting or workshop, either online or live at the venue. An easy approach to communicate is to run a live poll at your social media platforms or streamline the registration process to know the number of individuals joining online or live.
The set of expectations the audience may mention are;
- Top speaker sessions
- Advanced audience engagement
- Informative sessions
- Takeaways and Goodie bags
- Structured segments
- Time management
- Healthy professional relationships
- Special Individual attention
Now, do you wish to run a successful hybrid event? Then get to work as soon as you receive registrations. Run email campaigns and inquire about audience expectations from your event. This provides a clear view for you to streamline the content for the event. Also, it helps merge the segments and speaker sessions as per the preference and liking of attendees. Now you know;
- How you would welcome the audience
- Who would present first
- Who is the best fit to engage the audience
- What activities would work best for the kind of audience joining you
- How would you close the event
As a result, the audience receives a great impression from your organization and the execution of the event. You’d score good remarks and earn their loyalties.
2. Plan Killer Ice Breaking Activities
Once everything is planned and organized, it is time to set up killer ice-breaking activities. It shall help build a lasting impression on the audience. How you welcome and settle both the audience speaks to length about your hybrid event setup. For instance, the first step is to welcome remote audiences online and introduce them to the onsite audience, speakers, organizers, sponsors, and management. Also, familiarizing the onsite audience with prestigious online chairs and audience is essential to kick-start the event.
Our platform encourages businesses and organizations to cut off mainstream methods and adopt advanced approaches to hosting events. Therefore, we have devised a bunch of ice-breaking activities, games and sessions for your audience to receive a wholesome experience from the events. Check out the following ideas to engage remote speakers/audiences with onsite speakers audiences;
- Share nicknames
- Video rock/paper/scissors
- Share pet-peeves
- Share Phobias
- Truth and Dare
- Laugh out loud
- One word answer
- The hot seat
Once both the audience has heard each other, shared a laugh and commended everyone, it is 80% confirmed that you pushed forward a successful event. So, keep up the good work!
3. Plan a Fun Tour Through Event Segments
After familiarizing the audience with each other, it is time to brief them all about what they would get out of the event, venue, and scheduled sessions. Firstly, give a tour of the event venue to both the audiences. You do not want your attendees distracted or misguided, right? Therefore, it is better to give out brochures or set up virtual standees at halls where attendees receive all the information on speaker sessions, topics, webinar room details, tea breaks, Q&A sessions, games, activities, lunch or dinner break, and closing sessions.
An understanding of the upcoming sessions answers any questions attendees may have and leaves no surprises. Time management is the key to carrying out the scheduled activities and engaging the audience throughout.
4. Equally Engage Both Audiences
It can be challenging to engage a remote audience throughout your hybrid event. However, planning activities to engage them both is how you should go about it. For starters, ice-breaking sessions help familiarize the audience with each other and the event. But, how you engage the audience through the rest of the event is what counts. So, how do you plan on engaging the audience throughout the event?
Follow creative and practical engagement tips for hybrid events. For instance, visual content is considered the most appealing for humans. So, short video messages, virtual tours of headquarters, sponsors words, keynote speaker sessions should all go live in the form of video presentations. That is how both online and live audiences can tap on the same content and go side by side throughout.
Chat and networking opportunities exist within the virtual platform. Here, remote audiences can connect with onsite speakers or audiences through online portals activated for the hybrid event. Not just that, there are a number of activities that can spark engagement within the audience.
- One-on-one live sessions to allow individual interactions
- Audio/video conferencing options as per the audience’s ease
- Live games to encourage healthy competition
- Workshop activities to indulge the audience in practical work
- Q&A sessions to answer suspicions and queries
- Live Polling to gauge event progress or to make decisions
- Record event insights through live reports
- Live social media engagement to let outsiders participate
And many more engagement opportunities facilitate networking among live and online audiences. Consider the following tips for hybrid events to win at attendee engagement.
5. Add Gamification Features for Both Audiences
Now, gamification is something that would gather the interests of everyone onboard. Whether virtual, physical or hybrid events, gamification features play an important role in creating a healthy atmosphere. Right after the tea breaks, games such as scavenger hunt, help boost the energy of attendees. For reference, the following game ideas have proved helpful to engage both onsite and remote audiences.
- Virtual and live escape rooms
- Reinforce with vouchers or gifts
- Quiz sessions spark intellect
- Live polling sessions
- Leaderboards for both audience
Gamification allows the audience to stay interested in the event by participating in each segment.
6. Hybrid Event Ideas for Corporations
First, let’s explore the list of Hybrid Events ideas suitable for corporations to keep up with event industry trends in 2022.
Hybrid Recruitment Events
There is a growing need for a remote workforce to fill out major resource gaps of the company. Most talented pools of individuals come from hybrid recruitment events. For instance, applicants from around the world come together before leading corporations to demonstrate their skills. That is how global hybrid events benefit businesses to hunt the right fit for the company.
Workforce Training
With having a remote workforce onboard, there come several hurdles for the company. First, there’s a need to train remote teams so they do not miss out on anything when it comes to workforce training. It is important to conduct hybrid internal meetings and training where onsite and remote teams participate. Being on the same page is essential to a company’s overall success. For instance, official workshops, seminars, educational sessions, and training courses prove beneficial for briefing the teams on new projects.
Hybrid Annual Conference
The annual conference is considered the biggest business event. However, with Covid restrictions in place every now and then, it is not easy to gather people for face-to-face interactions. Therefore, people prefer hosting hybrid annual conferences. Wondering how it would help? Well, invite the local participants to attend the onsite meeting, while you can easily host the remote participants online. They don’t have to miss the conference and can fully enjoy the event from a safe distance. Consider a plus; remote speakers can easily address the audience virtually and speak at the scheduled time to save time on travelling.
Hybrid Alumni Networking
Gathering alumni at a single location can be a challenging task. Therefore, hybrid event solutions help organizations host alumni online or physically. It is a great opportunity for individuals to interact and network with people who have built remarkable careers and willingly guide others with their expertise. As a result, alumni build long-term professional relationships. In addition, if there are new business opportunities or jobs, the alumni network helps each other land stable career options.
Global Product Launch
Product launch events are the real big events for any brand or business. Presenting the product to a global market is the best approach to marketing the brand name. However, hybrid events give a maximized opportunity for promoting products and making excellent sales. Moreover, going both virtual and physical would double the market for your business. Moreover, the easy ordering process is carried out right at the virtual and physical venues.
In Conclusion
Hybrid events will now dominate the event industry. So, it is about time we put our efforts in third gear and start working on the most impressive business events. Fortunately, hybrid events prove as beneficial for us as imagined. With a global reach, small businesses or large enterprises equally get a chance for international market and sponsorship. So, hybrid events are all we need! The guidelines mentioned above assist you and other corporations in pulling off a successful hybrid event.
Virtual Days extends its feature-enriched virtual and hybrid event services to corporate, medical and education industries worldwide. So what are you waiting for?
Book a demo today and partner with us to deliver the most exquisite events worldwide.
