Online is now the most popular place to have events due to its unparalleled convenience, safety, and reach.
Whether it’s for marketing, sales, recruitment, training, or communications (e.g., PR), there’s no denying people’s desire to attend such events, especially if you consider how valuable they already are and how even more valuable they’ll become in the next few years.
While that’s great news for the industry, more opportunities also mean more competition.
If more and more people are going to have and attend online events, you need to make yours stand out if you want the best possible chance of success. In these times, not being interesting can be devastating for online events, and that means spicing up yours and making them as fun as possible is crucial.
In this article, you’ll learn no less than eight tips that will make your online event a blast.
Gamify Your Virtual Event
Gamification is the application of elements and principles found in games onto something else. In the case of online events, gamification makes them so interesting that a lot of people would likely attend. If you’ve ever played a game you just “couldn’t put down,” you know what we’re talking about.
An effective way you could gamify your next online event is by rewarding the attendees for engaging. For example, you could give them points for each session they attend or each time they engage with the guests. This can give the same sense of achievement, pleasure, or satisfaction as the rewards you get by playing games. Featuring such incentives in your next online event gives attendees something fulfilling to work for, giving them more reason to participate. The more fun they have, the more successful your online event will be.
Use an Online Photo Booth
In-person events often feature a personalized photo booth for their attendees to take pictures in that they can then take home. But just because in-person events are restricted now doesn’t mean that you can’t take the elements of a fun photo booth online.
Online photo booths are browser-based apps where users can pose for photos with a pre-made, customized template. They’re pretty much an online video camera and an online photo editor all rolled into one, letting you and your online event attendees take amazing videos and photos and edit them with ease. Just like 360 photo booth San Francisco, they add more joy and success to your online event.
Host a Virtual Trivia Night
Hosting trivia nights has always been a great way to spend time with friends or family. Nothing brings loved ones closer together quite like testing each other’s knowledge over delicious food and drinks. Bring the same level of entertainment to your online events, and you’re sure to make your attendees happy.
How to Host a Virtual Trivia Night
Step 1: Recruit players. This can be done by sending emails or texts, creating a public Facebook event, or posting to your attendees’ favorite online forum.
Step 2: Prepare the questions. Doing so lets you come up with the most interesting questions to ask (e.g., pop culture, sports, or food and drinks).
Step 3: Make the rules. Not having any rules puts your online event at risk of becoming disorganized or even chaotic.
Step 4: Give out the instructions. Aside from explaining how to play, don’t forget to introduce yourself and build rapport with the players, such as by bringing up how you know each of them.
Step 5: Have loads of fun. The more you enjoy yourself, the more fun the players will have.
Provide Live Entertainment
If you’ve ever been to a concert, you know there’s nothing as enjoyable as seeing your favorite band or singer perform on stage. You can have that same experience with your online event by inviting singers or artists to perform.
Tips to Provide Live Entertainment Successfully
- Prepare the tech. Are all the devices fully charged? Is the Wi-Fi working properly? Is the sound coming through clearly? Making sure everything is in working order keeps you from having any avoidable glitches that could cause your whole online event to go bust.
- Engage with the viewers. Concert attendees love it when the artist or artists take time to actually connect with them. The same goes for those who watch live entertainment online. An easy way the performers you hire can engage with your attendees is by responding to their comments.
Hold a Raffle Draw
Having a raffle draw with your online event is another effective way you could incentivize people to participate in it.
Tips to Hold a Raffle Draw Online Properly
- Learn about the relevant laws on raffles. Some states consider online raffles as gambling, so they’re illegal in those states. On a federal level, you need to be part of a qualified 501(c) organization to host such an event. Each state also has its own restrictions and regulations for online raffles, necessitating you to get a permit before you can host one. If this is all too much work for you, you can have a giveaway instead, where you invite people to donate money or share your content to draw attention to your online event.
- Choose a place to hold it that would be most convenient for you. You can hold your virtual raffle on social media or an online raffle website.
- Come up with the format. If you’re holding it on social media, you could have the participants follow your account, like your post about the online event, reshare it, or tag up to five friends in the comments.
- Select the best prize. It can be a gift certificate or a desirable gadget, like a tablet.
- Provide the participants with all the information they need, including what you’re raffling, why you’re raffling it, and a little about yourself.
- Choose when to stop holding the raffle. Typically, virtual raffles held on social media last 1-2 weeks, while those held on online raffle websites last 1-2 months. The longer yours goes, the more donations or shares you can get.
Create a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure Activity
Named after the popular children’s book series, choose-your-own-adventure is basically a game where you make decisions while following a story. The ending you get depends directly on the decisions you make. Featuring such a game in your online event will surely make your attendees feel like kids again, letting them enjoy themselves even more. It doesn’t have to be complicated. Requiring the participants to only make a handful of decisions works just fine.
Give Away Exciting Prizes
As we already mentioned, giving away prizes as part of your online event is a surefire way to make it exciting—but only if they are as good as the event itself. Aside from gadgets, examples of such prizes include items the participants won’t get anywhere else, big discounts for products, and, of course, cash.
Thoughtfully customized plaques will make the event more memorable, serving as souvenirs that winners can talk about in the future as they reminisce about the good times.
Hold a Virtual Fun Run
Usually held to raise funds for charity, a fun run is a casual run involving many people who take part for their enjoyment rather than as competitors. It’s a clever way to bring people together through an unusual but enjoyable method: a fun workout.
Tips to Hold a Truly Enjoyable Fun Run
- Order the medals well in advance. Just like with ordering any item in bulk, it will be weeks to a few months before the medals arrive. Take that delay into consideration when ordering so you’ll get them all on time.
- Consider having custom bibs made. This will increase the costs, but these bibs will make your fun run appear more legit.
- Calculate shipping swag costs. Keeping such a close eye on your expenses keeps you from going overboard with your budget.
- Choose whether to track the runners’ times. Yes, fun runs are supposed to be casual, but you can still choose to track the times at which each participant finishes to give a sense of legitimacy to the prizes of those who finish in the top three. One way you could do this is by asking the runners to send you their times, complete with pictures of when they crossed the finish line and a shot of the time on their watches.
Final Thoughts
Online events are special kinds of events for many different reasons. For one thing, they can be held in ways that would be hard to replicate offline. You can take your online events to the next level with imagination, confidence, and the determination to make them the best they can be.
Check out this page to learn more about how to have amazing events.
