Ever since we have observed the event industry stepping into the digital space, there has been a lot of buzz around virtual events.
Virtual award ceremonies are no exception, they can also be conducted utilizing a digital venue with people residing in any part of the world.
Conducting a virtual awards ceremony is not just possible today, but it can also be a lucrative and remarkable affair. A regular physical event has various overheads, which gets mostly eliminated when you adapt to a virtual platform. Since virtual award ceremonies eliminate the cost of hiring a venue, accommodation, meals, etc, it can be a great chance to generate a huge ROI for your event.
Keeping all these points in mind should you proceed further to make your virtual award ceremonies a success. We’ve curated some great ideas and practices that might help you for your next online award show.
Have clear goals and follow a strategic approach
Every prosperous event – both physical and virtual should be supported by clear goals and intentions. These definite goals need to resonate with your business proposals to promote brand awareness and reach global delegates.
Hence, when you choose to host a virtual award ceremony, make sure to keep specific expectations that you or your attendees would foresee from the event.
This lets you strategize your virtual award ceremonies accordingly and make the efforts in the right direction.
Choose the right virtual event platform
Determining the right virtual venue for your virtual award ceremony is a little complicated with so many options out there, with adaptability and scalability being the most crucial elements. Any technical or unforeseen error might hinder the experience of the attendees and lead to their drop-off. Hence, make sure to choose a platform that best matches your business needs and makes promising efforts to deliver a life-like event experience.
Make sure that the interface is simple and user-friendly because you would not want your attendees to waste time in setting up or downloading things to log in to the event. Another vital factor is promoting engagement and networking at any virtual award ceremony. The virtual venue you pick should be able to seamlessly conduct quizzes, live polls, games, surveys, Q&As, and a lot more.
Make the most of social media
To spread awareness to the potential attendees, you’ll have to promote your virtual award ceremony on various social media platforms. Keep posting updated and relevant pictures to continue the stir among the people. Live-streaming procedures concerning your virtual award ceremony are also an effective approach to spread the word. You can select one of these familiar platforms such as YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or Twitter to live-stream your virtual award ceremony.
Include innovative features
For any virtual event, the very first impact on your attendees must be quite impressive. Right from dynamic banners, 3D environment, animated lighting at the lobby, to keeping interesting award category titles, immersive graphics, or exciting background music helps keep your attendees energized and will lessen their chances of getting sidetracked.
Create a chamber for sponsors
Getting wonderful sponsors for your virtual award ceremonies is like the cherry on the cake. To keep them involved, you can create a networking lounge or give a specific space on your social wall to increase the visibility of their content. You can also consider promoting their brand logo on various digital screens, to ensure that your sponsors feel benefitted and hence, will willingly sponsor for your future events as well.
Include gamification
It’s understood that attending a virtual award ceremony by simply sitting at a place and staring at the screen for long hours can be irksome. Therefore, consider including games into your virtual event to continue the thrill and promote engagement. Games like crosswords, spin the wheel, shooting games, and word games are some popular choices that will be liked and enjoyed by most of the attendees and sponsors.
Leverage the right technology
Make sure the event platform you pick for the virtual award ceremonies engages the most appropriate technologies to deliver life-like event experiences. It should also be backed by 24/7 customer and tech support to troubleshoot any sort of issue or unexpected error before or during the virtual award ceremony.
Keep an exceptional award category enhance the event experience
Any awards event both physical and virtual is all about awards and the awardees. You need to make each participant feel special. Be imaginative in the way you value their accomplishments. Ask the design and video teams to include creative details to deliver a remarkable event experience. Try including awardee’s pre recorded acceptance speeches to make them feel different. Also, you can keep an exceptional award category at the end, which might be a surprise for all your attendees, and to identify the awardee for the same, they might eagerly attend the entire virtual award ceremony. This will further enhance engagement and keep them hooked throughout.
Meaningful analytics
Unlike physical award ceremonies, virtual award ceremonies maintain a complete record of attendees straight from enrollments till the virtual award ceremony is over. The virtual venue provides appropriate and comprehensive attendee data that helps in assessing the progress of the virtual event. It also helps the event organizers to estimate the ROI for prospective events and strategize it sequentially.
Perform a dry-run
Virtual award ceremonies are generally live events, there might be possibilities of glitches happening. Therefore, do not miss to perform a dry run or rehearsal before the D-day. Think of pre-filming the acceptance speeches because you would not want the awardees to present a long acceptance speech which might hinder engagement.
The key takeaway is, virtual award ceremonies do not revolve around the idea of just presenting awards. It requires putting yourself in the shoes of the attendees to understand their expectations in a better way.
Today, virtual award ceremonies also mean making meaningful connections to expand your community and get qualified leads.
Need a virtual venue that can help you host engaging and successful virtual award ceremonies?
Get in touch with Dreamcast today to make your virtual events a success.
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