Are you planning a virtual event?

First impressions are everything. You want to make sure that your event is as engaging as possible – so the attendees come back for your future events.

There are so many ways to engage attendees before seminars, virtual events, or webinars. The best thing is, you can design them to accommodate the goals of your specific business.

So, roll over your sleeves, and let us begin with some virtual conference networking ideas.

Pre-event virtual conference networking ideas

1. Offer Early-Bird Tickets

If you are planning to sell tickets for your upcoming virtual events, consider running early bird ticket sales. This event networking technique will help create excitement and interest among your audience.

Offer the brimming price and early bird discount. At the same time, set a limit on it’s validity to build a sense of urgency and exclusivity.

The promotion should help you sell extra tickets. Additionally, the people who choose to take advantage of the offer are likely to tell their friends or colleagues about it, which could have a compounding effect on ticket sales. ‍

2. Schedule Frequent Posts

Before launching a virtual event, it’s important to build interest and engagement with attendees. Coordinating your marketing efforts across multiple social media platforms will gain you maximum exposure.

To save time, you can create posts in advance and queue them on your social media account, apps/website to post automatically. You can also create a hashtag for your event on Instagram, Twitter, and on Facebook & LinkedIn event pages.

Online event management platforms like Beetsol allow you to send email invitations to thousands of people at once, and also enable sharing of your virtual event on all social media handles seamlessly.

Not just that, you can send invitations and other information related to your event via WhatsApp. Therefore, Beetsol allows you to engage with multichannel marketing before the online event.

3. Organize Creative Activities

It’s a good idea to schedule some small activities before the virtual event, so people will be actively thinking about it. The more creative these activities are, the better.

For example, within your online event management platform- you could create different rooms for attendees to wait in and socialize before the main event starts or host a small break ground introductory activity to help attendees know about one another.

4. Create Promotional Video

A promotional video serves as a preview of your virtual event. This trailer shows the highlights of the main event, which creates a sense of excitement among the audience, making them intrigued by the main event.

During virtual event networking, you can include clips with interviews of the speakers or performers of your virtual event and also testimonials from past attendees.

5. Send Pre-Event Guide

A pre-event guide does exactly what the name implies; it guides your attendees through the event from start to finish. This gives them the agenda of the event and what information will be delivered at different points in time.

6. Encourage Active Questions & Discussions

Soliciting your audience for questions and feedback helps you get a better idea of what they expect to learn and experience at your virtual event. You can stimulate conversation and organic questions via email, polls on social media platforms, or even use Google forms.

7. Showcase Your Speakers

Promoting your speakers is an excellent way to boost registration numbers of your virtual events. One tried, and true method for getting attendees to register is by inviting celebrities, industry thought leaders, or experts to speak at your event.

One of the best examples that shows the benefits of leveraging celebrity power for virtual events can be seen in Ad World Conferences that will take place in the month of October 2021.

The event will feature a roster of celebrities. The list includes Rory Sutherland, Seth Godin, Kris Sugatan, Alex Cattoni, Eugene Levin, and many others.

To Wrap Up

The best way to build a large community for your virtual events is to engage your attendees before the event starts.

You can do this by providing them with a detailed agenda and compelling content that will help them prepare for the event and be excited about attending it.

These seven networking event ideas will definitely help you create a hype for your next online event, thereby increasing registration numbers and return attendees.