5 Ways Interactive Live Streaming Can Make Your Virtual Event a Success
Opportunities for taking your conference online
April, May and June are always busy months for conferences. But with the Coronavirus causing widespread cancellations, organizers, exhibitors and panelists are looking for different ways to reach and engage their audiences. This post explores how interactive live streaming can create a virtual conference that offers a similar experience.
The Coronavirus has created a ripple of event cancellations. Many music events, sports matches and other large gatherings are considering their options while entire sports leagues are put on hold.
Even digital native Esports are feeling the impact of match and competition cancellations. The Overwatch league has decided to cancel all events, but not matches. Many Esport events are built around a global online community of viewers, while local fans are able to attend matches in person. The online Esport experience consists of much more than just the live feed from the game. It includes structured interactions, chat and insights that activate the community. Esports show that popular events can continue, even if they can’t host an in-venue audience. This serves as a model for events in business, and beyond.
Indeed, if we look at the messaging from conferences that have been cancelled over the last few weeks we see an ambition from organizers and companies to recreate some of the experiences online.
SXSW is talking about a Virtual SXSW:
We are exploring options to reschedule the event and are working to provide a virtual SXSW online experience as soon as possible for 2020 participants — SXSW
NAB is exploring possible alternatives to engage industry:
We are committed to exploring all possible alternatives so that we can provide a productive setting where the industry can engage with the latest technology — NAB
E3 is exploring options for an online experience to showcase industry announcements:
We are also exploring options with our members to coordinate an online experience to showcase industry announcements and news in June 2020 — E3
But what does an online experience look like? Can you make this just as engaging as an in-person event?
Let’s first establish that online conferences are much more than a boring webinar or live broadcast of a panel. Webinar, community, and video conferencing tools like Zoom, Slack and Gotomeeting are great for calls between individuals and groups, but are too generic to bring your conference online. Although Ted Talks show that an engaging story can reach millions of on-demand viewers, they lack the engagement and networking opportunities that participants would get from a conference. Most standard tools don’t offer the experience you want to create for your biggest announcements, inspiring sessions, and product introductions.
Based on years of experience in creating engaging solutions that combine live video with audience engagement, we understand what it takes to make a great online event that is just as good, if not even better than a physical event. This is not just for the big consumer and industry conferences, also corporate trade shows, international company events and internal training sessions can all benefit from this medium.
Now, let’s take a look at five ways interactive live streaming can make your virtual event a success.
1. Live events create a fear of missing out
Live events create a sense of urgency. You have to be there to experience the moment that is created. These moments could come from big announcements from companies, a relevant panel with speakers, an engaging keynote, or simply other attendees at the event. We see this all the time with companies and professionals who look to create special events for a ‘big reveal’. They often start with press releases and updates to tease the announcement.
Urgency is often driven by conferences and companies that have an established brand and authorship in their field. That’s why when Adobe, Akamai and Cisco organize their conferences they attract popular speakers and can charge thousands of dollars for tickets. There is value in being on-site to attend the sessions; it’s a one-time, unique experience.
A large game publisher asked us to add interaction to the live stream of their showcase during E3, one of the world’s biggest game conferences. Over half a million people tuned in to the live stream. With the entire audience viewing the same polls and trivia at the same, we collected valuable insights. During each new game announcement we overlaid the video stream with interactive cards, driving pre-sales and subscriptions.
In short, live video can create a sense of urgency and a fear of missing out. Interactive, live video can help to:
- Allow people to sign up before the event (one-time event, your last chance, don’t miss this…)
- Send out announcements to tease the audience with preview content
- Send out notifications to users when you’re about to start
- Play a countdown before the start to build up excitement
- Allow viewers to connect through chat and other mechanisms to create shared hype
- (Pre-)order items in the moment they’re announced, or that may be limited edition
2. Structured interaction can increase engagement
Interaction with others is arguably the most important reason to attend a business event. Meeting other experts in your field, catching up with clients and partners and raising questions during sessions are all critical activities. Over the years we have seen that structured interactions increase engagement. Examples include polls with pre-set responses, trivia questions, predictions, upvotes, and many more.
We also see this in action with many social media channels. When Instagram added the option to add polls and questions to stories, engagement grew significantly. Research suggests that structured interaction on Instagram can attain 35% engagement, 15x more than simple, unstructured tools (comments and likes).
Digital events provide many opportunities to add interactions to the viewer experience, for example to receive feedback or questions. Not only can you prompt viewers to ask questions, but also ask other viewers to upvote the most relevant question. Choose from a library of interactions, and implement those that best fit your objectives: test knowledge with trivia, ask questions with polls, or create competition with predictions. We’ve all been part of conference sessions without any response from the audience — by making it easy for viewers to interact, there is a lower barrier to participate and ask questions, making the entire session more engaging and interactive.
Since structured interaction can increase engagement, consider the following for your digital event:
- Combine your live stream with structured interactions for feedback
- Use the feedback in real time, during presentations and discussions
- Acknowledge input from viewers in the broadcast or on screen
- Provide different types of interactions to match the objective
3. Live video creates a personal connection
Live video can create a more personal connection between the presentation, host and audience. You can address viewers directly (who can each respond in return) which creates immediacy, a feeling that the host or panel is talking to you. By producing video where the host looks directly in the camera you create a conversation-style experience.
This technique is most effective when you directly apply the input from viewers in your presentation and talk. For example, you can respond to poll results, incorporate viewer questions or show stats and results as graphics over the stream. A feedback loop between viewer and broadcaster creates recognition and the sense that it matters the viewer is there. You can encourage this even more by addressing viewers by their actual (user)name.
Chat and messaging are also useful tools to create interpersonal connections between attendees of the digital event. This may revolve around presentation topics, remarks or questions, or responses to others in the chat.
Live video can create a personal connection. Make sure to consider:
- A video setup in which the host or panel looks directly at the camera, and therefore the viewers
- Creating a personal connection between the host and the viewer by responding to feedback, comments and questions
- Including chat to support connections between attendees of the live stream
4. Video production enriches the live experience
Video production techniques allow you to enrich the live experience, for example by inserting (pre-recorded) video to explain topics in more detail, inviting other experts from anywhere in the world, or using graphics and visualised data to highlight information.
Outside the live video experience, you can make sure viewers are informed about the agenda, speakers lists, topics, and links to external sources. This keeps the platform relevant in between events and livestreams and ensures context for first time visitors.
Live streaming is a perfect setting to add gamification and reward structures. Award viewers points, show which attendee gave what answer, and show leaderboards with usernames of viewers. These methods can motivate attendees to join and participate, help them test their knowledge on the subject matter, lower the barrier to participate, and prevent any form of cheating or unfair advantages. Plus, it’s a great way to incentivize participation and reward those who can show they’re the best.
To enrich the viewer experience, and to differentiate your digital event from a webinar or live stream, you should consider:
- Inserting graphics and video into the live stream to tell your story
- Providing additional context on the platform including agenda, speakers and topics
- Adding gamification elements on the platform to increase participation
5. Live streaming offers full control
You could use mainstream, popular live streaming services to broadcast your event. But if you want to be in control over the experience and the data (and no pre-roll ads), an owned-and-operated solution offers much more flexibility. This lets you use your own user registration, define the user flow and additional information you want to show. You can track and validate who attended, and follow up with users after an event. When you own and operate the platform you also have more options to make your audience a recurring one, without the risk of alienating them with unwanted advertising and recommendations. This allows you to react to the latest developments and news, and ensures viewers get the latest information.
Another benefit of live streaming is the insights and data you receive from the digital event. Besides user profiles, you can get a better understanding of specific interests, the timing of people joining and tuning out of a live stream, what creates the most engagement and comments, and which viewers return for multiple sessions. Plus, you can monetize your event in any way you see fit, without external interruptions, platform fees or distractions.
Event live streaming should give you full control over the event experience including:
- Control over the viewer experience form registration to the design of the platform
- An understanding of registration and viewer numbers, attendance per session
- Ability to follow up with viewers on their attendance and interest
- Aggregated and long term insights in attendance and recurring viewers
Ready for your first virtual event?
Reach out to us if you’re considering bringing your conference, seminar or corporate event online and to make it as engaging as possible. At Ex Machina we have years of experience in interactive live streaming on owned and operated platforms, on third party solutions like Twitch, Facebook and Youtube, as well as successful interactive and gamified apps for media and TV companies around the world.
Reach out directly or visit our website for more information.
