How to Create an Awesome Online Event for Association Members
Whether the Coronvirus has cancellations rippling through your events calendar or your members are simply spread all over the world, online digital events are the future of gathering, connecting, and learning together.
Are you prepared to host, engage and poll your membership audience today?
After you read this handy guide, you will be!
Author’s note: While this guide was created specially for associations to serve their members, it can be used for any organization that is looking to create engaging, impactful online presentations, education and events that bring people together!
Rachel Sheerin hosts webinars for MPI, ESPA, NACE and more. Hundreds of attendees, dozens of questions, and the most educational fun you can have in 60 minutes without margaritas involved 🍹
Questions to ask before you begin to make sure your hard work is going in the right places:
What topics, training, and engagement do our members need to stay engaged in my association?
What is the biggest hurdle in getting members to tune in? (date, timing, speaker, certification credits, technology, etc)
What events are our members asking for that we are wanting to provide but cost/timing/coordination is holding us back from executing?
Having answers to these questions will give you a starting list of accessible and welcomed events that you can host online for your membership base. Engagement spells out success for associations in the competitive landscape for attention of professionals, so make sure whatever you’re putting together are things that are desired, considerate and of high-value!
Once you’ve answered these questions, the planning begins.
Things to consider as you lay the foundation:
What kind of event do we want to host? Examples are:
Live webinar series (monthly, weekly, quarterly)
Virtual Summit/Conference (1-3 days of continuous online learning, live)
Course-style pre-recorded webinars (logins, available anytime at members’ pace)
What speakers are known for drawing your audience, what speakers are hot and new for your audience, and who are legacy speakers that have recognition in your audience?
What sponsorship packages are available to offset the cost (and possibly create income) for the event?
Will these events be ticketed or free?
Once you’re clear on these questions, it’s time to talk tech:
There are a LOT of webinar technologies out there, but I’ve combed through, tried, and tested a lot to give you some of my favorite services.
SCREEN SHARING, HOSTING, REGISTRATION SERVICES
All of these services below have free trials, so take advantage of them! They also all come with chat features so your members can engage with speakers during the events.
Zoom - easy to use, webinars up 100 people, 500 people and more. Able to record webinar for later use and easy to use.
GoToMeeting - an original in this space, this is most popular for Fortune500 clients and has lots of fancy features if you want to use it!
WebinarJam - a hot newcomer on the webinar scene, this service is easy to use and creates beautiful signup pages. Recommend if you’ve got a younger, stylish audience.
ENGAGING TECHNOLOGY FOR DIGITAL EVENTS
Google Slides - easy to use, free and easily shared on all computers (yes, even macs!)
VeVox - have attendees all over the world engaging in more than the chat box with this interactive text-to-word cloud service that creates visual engagement on the screen and keeps your attendees attention in real time.
SlidesCarvinal - free slide deck templates for use, a great way to get a base for slides that is stylized, fresh and trendy.
Canva - create a free account to easily create social media graphics, slide decks, worksheets and more for your attendees, speakers and sessions
Google Forms - poll your attendees for free post-event and have all the data sent automatically to an easy-to-sort Excel spreadsheet stored in your Google Drive
✅ Strategy, check!
✅ Technology, check!
Let’s get to content:
As you’re contracting speakers for your online event, you’ll want to be mindful of what’s needed from their side to make the event successful. This can include:
High energy + fast paced education (so folks don’t get bored)
Impactful, colorful slides (engagement soars with visuals)
Session overview with tangible takeaways and example of who will benefit most from this event (for example, check out one of mine here)
Worksheet and/or bonus resource to help attendees continue the learning (and use it in their real day-to-day)
Contact info shared for follow up
Ample time for Q+A
Social media content (video, wording, images - sometimes 1, sometimes a combination) so that membership can see, hear and know them before the event (trust building boosts attendance)
While speakers will be able to help you in many ways, it’s good to note that some speakers will have resistance to being recorded and distributed (may require an additional fee), so make sure you discuss your plans with them on use, recording and more before you sign your contracts!
After you’ve locked in speakers, you’ll move on to promoting on your channels (social, email, word of mouth, etc) and after hosting a wildly successful event (you go, you awesome professional!), it’s time to hear from your members on how you did!
A follow up survey is one of THE keys to hosting a series of successful online events, so be sure you have one ready to send and share as soon as the event ends. You can check out the example of one I use here for attendees who attend my keynotes:
www.rachelsheerin.com/attendee-survey (feel free to copy mine, I’m here to help!)
However you get the info, having it can unlock game-changing info for you and your association, plus future successes.
How many people attend, what they learned, loved and didn’t enjoy, plus who/what they want to learn in the future will all paint targets so that you can continue to thrive in your membership’s online events in the future. If you can, give your membership an incentive to do the survey using the “deposit before withdrawing” strategy of negotiation and sales.
I’ve put together this guide to help you out, and I hope it does!
The world is going more + more digital by the day and your association needs to be on the forefront of the trend to deliver high-quality, high-impact events to your global membership and keep engagement growing.
Overall, I’m wishing you luck and cheering you on! 🍀🎉
Have questions? Wondering about a specific strategy or tech tool? Interested in who I recommend for webinars or want to discuss my webinar topics? Let me know below!