With the threat posed by COVID-19 still looming large, and no relief in sight, businesses all around the world are scurrying to find new, innovative ways to keep operations running smoothly.
Since the disease spreads by being in close contact with the infected people, via respiratory droplets, it’s imperative for the whole world to follow social distancing norms to check the spread.
This inevitably requires people to #stayhome, mass quarantines come in force, and public events either get postponed or cancelled.
The event industry and the aviation industry has suffered the major brunt of this economic disruption brought about by COVID-19.
With people holed up inside their homes and international travel banned, there’s no way public events can take place.
But does this mean the event has to get cancelled, that all the resources spent on making it happen go to waste?
No. The advent of virtual events and meeting technology and virtual events platforms practically guarantee that businesses can take their events to the virtual world.
Virtual Events and Conferences
Virtual events and conferences help with following social distancing norms as people and participants don’t actually have to physically attend the meetings or events, and also help businesses keep their audience network intact.
Events, fairs and exhibitions carried out virtually can help brands maintain their audience base and keep engaging and interacting with them even during a global pandemic.
Even big, milestone events like product launches need not be delayed or cancelled. Such events can be carried out with virtual events technology.
One such example of such virtual events taking place successfully, is One Plus’ launch of OnePlus 8 series smartphones. The phone launched on April 15, 2020 through virtual events platform. The event was a massive hit, and millions of people watched it from their mobile devices.
There are a lot of events that you can stream live successfully during a pandemic. More specifically, there are 8 types of events that can be carried out successfully in the time of a pandemic.
In this article, we’ll tell you about the 8 kinds of events that brands can live stream and carry out online during a pandemic. Read on to know more.
1. Virtual Events
From product launches like the one OnePlus did, to big announcements to mergers and acquisitions to audience interactment campaigns, virtual events can comprise anything and everything.
Traditionally, product launches and mergers take place amidst huge crowd settings, with an almost festive celebration and loads of partying!
However, with audience attendance having become impossible due to the pandemic, these events now have to be shifted to the digital arena. Not that brands lose anything in the process. Virtual events have a lot of benefits.
Virtual events platforms offer brands interactive technology options to engage with their audience worldwide, interact with them in real-time and share brand insights with them!
You can easily redirect all your resources for a live event into a virtual event; human resources who can handle the event logistics smoothly, live streaming team that makes sure the event reaches your millions of audience worldwide, and money that could now go into setting up hardware, stream encoders and a good, reliable internet connection. Here is a guide on how to live webcast an event live.
With the right resources and opportunity, a brand can make their digital event popular and successful, even during a pandemic.
2. Virtual Conferences and Summits
Virtual conferences and summits are other events that can effectively take place even during a pandemic. Since most people are under some sort of home quarantine, having physical, face-to-face meetings and conferences are well nigh impossible.
Here is where virtual conferences and video summit technologies come into play. It offers participating parties with a way to participate in a meeting even while being physically far, far away.
Whether it’s a inter-organizational meeting, an inter-team meeting, or a B2B conference with your clients and stakeholders, virtual conferencing technology can come in handy anytime and anywhere. All that the participants need to do is get a working, speedy internet connection, hardware to carry out the virtual conference and a safe, encrypted online meeting platform.
Virtual conferences can help you engage with your clients, stakeholders and workforce even during restrictions from a pandemic. It helps keep them informed and updated about any new policies or developments in the organization. Here is an ultimate guide to video conferencing solutions.
3. Virtual Town Hall Meetings
Annual Town Hall meetings are important events in an organization. It help each stakeholder in the company to understand the organization’s goals, ideas and way ahead discussions.
They let insiders of the company get crucial insights on the functioning of the company and their motivations. Also, give them a chance to contribute to the company’s future business strategies.
Town Hall Meetings have long been an inter-organizational affair for corporate communications. However, as marketing experts have learned, making your audience and consumers a part of those can help increase transparency and trust.
Those factors play directly into the hearts of customers, thus making an organization their first choice of brand when they are looking to buy a certain product in a category.
Virtual AGMs and town hall meetings can go live easily using virtual meeting technology. The participants need a lag-free, speedy and reliable internet connection and streaming encoders to live-stream the entire town hall meeting, at the same time it’s taking place for everyone else.
To ensure your town hall meetings go smoothly and as per planning, you need to ensure good quality internet, top-notch encoder software and a safe virtual conferencing platform. Read this ultimate guide to Virtual AGM to know more about it.
4. Virtual Trade Shows and Expos
Trade shows and expos can really help maximize your leads, driveup sales and make customer pool expand to new heights.
They offer customer insights into your manufacturing process, your technology, your motivations and vision for your range of products, and also let them experience your product firsthand themselves.
During covid, when a third of the world is inside homes, trade shows and expos can be easily made virtual. Live streaming trade shows and expos can lead to business growth.
These virtual trade shows and expos can be carried out via specialized virtual events platforms. The shows can also go live on social media networks such as Facebook Live, Instagram Live, Periscope, YouTube Live etc. The choice will largely depend on your audience demographics, location of live stream and the technology at your disposal.
5. Virtual Exhibitions
The idea of a virtual exhibition might not sound too far out to you. After all, exhibitions are events where you pay to see products or art exhibited. When all you have got to do is see, taking the event on a virtual platform sounds quite logical.
Brands can use digital exhibitions to their advantage and deploy marketing strategies to lure new visitors to their brand. Brands can attract visitors by proper data collection techniques and attractive landing page creations coupled with smart following up.
If you are hosting a virtual exhibition for the first time, you can take guidance from a live streaming expert. A live streaming agency who is seasoned in the craft of live exhibitions can help you in this.
6. Virtual Fairs and Career Seminars
Job fairs and career seminars are also one way universities and schools take advantage of and profit from handling out some important, game-changing career advice to puzzled students and graduates.
Since this is the end of the academic year, many new graduates and school pass outs will be wandering around the internet trying to understand what field of career is best for them.
Even during a pandemic, when most universities have postponed academic sessions to late in the fall, there is no dearth of students looking for some expert career guidance and counseling. This is where you can benefit from hosting a virtual fair and career seminar for these students.
At the career fair and seminar, ensure that the students have access to a well-informed, updated landing page. It will help them to get all the information they need about your courses, fee structure and guidelines.
You can rope in some of your faculty in these virtual fairs and career seminars, to hand out professional, expert career advice to students and give them a familiar face to connect with for branding purposes.
7. Onboarding Fairs and New Joiner Orientations
Onboarding fairs and new joiner orientations are brilliant examples of events that can go virtual in such unpredictable pandemics.
Since most organizations already have in place remote orientation program technology, handling live onboarding fairs and new joiner orientations aren’t really much of a problem for them.
For small startups and companies, this could be an exciting opportunity to test out the wonders of digital onboarding fairs. Companies can give new joinee employees a virtual, visual orientation program. It makes them comfortable and aware of the organization’s working on their first day.
8. Benefits and Charities
It could be difficult for frequent charity givers and benefit guests to imagine them as a virtual event, however, when the situation calls for it, anything can be possible.
Benefits and charities can go virtual with the help of virtual events platforms, technologies and secure, encrypted payment gateways.
That said however, organizing charities and benefits through a virtual events platform can be tricky and daunting. It is advisable to enlist the help of professional live-streaming agencies to help you carry out a virtual charity event. Hiring a virtual event agency help in setting up virtual event smoothly, snag-free and successfully.
With an extensive portfolio of having aided some of the top fortune 500 companies and world-class universities with their live-stream agendas, town hall meetings, conference live streaming, webinars, benefits and charity events, career fairs and virtual seminars, Dreamcast holds the top position as professional live streaming service providers with intensive experience and expertise on all things live-streaming.
