Content Strategy for Digital Events: Part III – During Your Event

In Part II of this series on creating content for digital events, I outlined the tasks you should complete before your event.

Now that you’ve followed a standardized process for analyzing, designing, and developing more compelling content, you’re ready to implement your program.

However, your content challenge isn’t over. It simply shifts now to content delivery.

The greatest challenge with digital content delivery isn’t the content, it’s the digital environment itself.

How do you engage folks during your digital event? How do deliver value? How do you minimize distractions and keep participant’s motivated?

The good news is that by following the standardized process outlined in Part I, you’re in a much better position to address these questions.

Still, the digital environment presents unique challenges you need to address as well.

The status quo

Today’s digital event experience is pretty pathetic. Generally speaking:

• They’re poorly marketed. No one really knows what to expect.
• They over-promise, under-deliver and often skirt over crucial or complex topics.
• Moderators are lousy at moderating. They ask generic questions that elicit generic answers and spend too little or too much time on topics of little significance.
• Presenters certainly share responsibility for generic answers but they bare sole responsibility for not understanding their audience’s needs and customizing their content accordingly.

But the most pathetic thing about digital events is when you ask participant’s what their key takeaways were immediately following, and they struggle to answer. That speaks volumes about your content and delivery and ultimately, the value of your digital event.

“Wait just a minute,” you say. “I get plenty of registrations and everyone raves about our digital events.”

To which I say, registrations are a measure of interest, but they’re not a valid or reliable measure of value; which is the only measure that really matters.

And all those anecdotal comments you receive like, “Great job” and “Loved the speaker” and “Thank you” might give you the warm and fuzzies, but they’re no substitute for actual outcome data.

When it comes to your digital events, if you’re not determining the impact on individual or organizational performance, you can’t say with any certainty whether you’ve delivered any value at all. You just can’t. For more on evaluation, see Part III.

Given all this, it’s a wonder anyone attends digital events. Yet, they do.

I believe this says more about our persistent thirst for knowledge, our relatively low standards and frankly, what we’ve become accustomed to for…forever.

In the absence of qualitatively better alternatives, we’ve sacrificed too much.

There is a better way.

Implementation

During the implementation phase, you actually deliver the content you designed and developed in the previous phases. This all comes down to best practices.

Adopting best practices is going to make it easier to differentiate your digital event everyone else’s; to rise above all the noise that’s out there competing for your audience’s attention.

Best practices

• Use an MC/Moderator/Facilitator, depending on your content and your objective. Ideally, you want someone who’s very experienced or a certified professional. Many event professionals fancy themselves good moderators or facilitators, but professional moderators and facilitators are simply more efficient and effective at leading and guiding conversations, especially virtual ones. There’s often a cost to hiring a professional but it’s likely less than the cost to your brand and your reputation of a bad digital event experience. Alternatively, you can have one or more of your internal staff get certified. There are good programs out there for both face-to-face and online moderation/facilitation. For those of you hosting multiple digital events or who want to elevate your digital game, consider using a professional producer. You need to start thinking of yourself as a media channel now, because you are, you just don’t know it.
• Set the right tone by starting and ending on time and moving deliberately through your agenda (shared in advance). Out of respect for your audience, always allow time for Q&A.
• Briefly cover any housekeeping issues, platform navigation or functionality issues, sponsor info, etc.
• Review the event description, objectives and presenter bio (shared in advance).
• Consider starting with a polling question that helps you and your presenter know more specifically who’s in attendance. This question and responses should be fairly straightforward, simple to respond to and easy to interpret. Avoid too many response choices that don’t add clarity. This is just a quick pulse check. Try to avoid counting down before closing off the poll. Instead, tell folks how long they have to respond and/or have an announcement or two prepared in advance to share while participants are responding. Consider introducing a relevant or fun ice-breaker.
• Don’t let your virtual platform get in the way. This is not about the tool you’re using to deliver content, it’s about you delivering content using a tool. During rehearsals, you should familiarize yourself with your platform in order to deliver a seamless experience. You should also know what to do in case of a technical glitch (Murphy’s Law). You and your team should anticipate possible scenarios and prepare for them.
• Use your platform’s features wisely (chat, Q&A, whiteboard, breakout rooms, etc.). Again, which features you utilize should have been identified during the design phase and rehearsed during the development phase. Don’t get carried away with all your platform’s bells and whistles. If you want to use some of the lesser-known or rarely used features, introduce them sparingly over several sessions and allow time for your audience to acclimate to them. Again, making sure to focus on your content delivery, not the delivery tool. And make it as easy as possible for your audience to participate.
• Aside from content, the quality and quantity of participant engagement is the most critical element to manage. It’s even more critical for digital events for a variety of reasons like the lack of media richness, distractions, etc. During the development phase you should have identified a variety of engagement opportunities throughout the course of your event. Experts suggest at least one interactivity every 3-5 minutes. Engagement, of course, comes in many forms. It could be more polling, a suggestion (or reminder) to submit questions in the Q&A feature, soliciting responses to a posed question in the chat feature, etc. Instead of citing data, ask your participants to guess. Don’t forget to try the often-under-used peer-to-peer interaction opportunities. This is where you and your presenter can get creative. There are literally dozens of opportunities for engagement in a typical event. Granted, these interactions take time away from a presentation. However, they also contribute to a more engaged and informed (motivated) participant that’s likely to come back for more.
• Everyone will tell you that engagement is critical (see above) but the ultimate goal is retention – so participants can apply what they’ve learned during your digital event and apply it back to their jobs. If your participants are not applying what they’ve learned or improving their performance or that of their organization, what’s the point of your digital event? Here are some suggestions for increasing participant retention and application rates:
  • Make sure your content is as relevant and applicable as possible. Nothing kills retention faster than meaningless information. Remember your event goals and objectives and your participant’s needs.

  • Keep it simple, breaking down complex topics. Don’t overload participants (see below). Clear, concise content is the panacea to short attention spans. 
  • Tell participants what you’re going to say, say it, then remind them you said it. I cannot repeat this enough.
  • Break content into small, bite-sized pieces (aka “chunking”) that can be covered and consumed in 3-5 minutes. Notice how this syncs up with engagement opportunities. That’s no coincidence.
  • Use storytelling (especially storytelling), images, videos and other media at least as much as text to leverage other learning styles.

• Summarize key takeaways before, during (before moving onto another speaker and after at the conclusion of the event and in follow-up communications. Repetition is key to retention.
• Encourage participants to summarize their experience by sharing key takeaways, action steps or follow-up questions (fodder for future events) in the chat feature or some other feature. Don’t miss this opportunity to tap into the wisdom of the crowd. You’ll be surprised by the depth and breadth of ideas generated. Establish a “parking lot” or other area for new or difficult ideas you can follow-up on later, either during the event or afterwards. Don’t allow challenging questions to side-track you or otherwise distract you from your planned agenda.
• Leverage Q&A time. If you get to the end of your event and there are no substantive questions, there’s something wrong with your content. Good content raises more questions, not less. Some questions that commonly arise are too basic. Others are off topic. These both result from not knowing your audience and setting proper expectations in advance. Prepare some logical follow-up questions in advance or write down any that come up during the event to get the Q&A time started and give time for participants to reflect on and submit their own questions. Remind folks at the beginning and throughout the event to submit their questions in advance. I don’t advise stopping mid-event to answer spontaneous questions that come up. I do advice not forgetting to return to those questions. The most important question that needs to be asked, regardless of who asks it is, “What’s next?” This is obviously a leading question. It points the way for participants as well as your next digital event. It’s the rare event that tackles a goal, challenge, or problem and resolves it in one fell swoop. Your content strategy should reflect this. Even if you have to ask this question, have an answer ready.
• Finally, don’t bite off too much. We overwhelm participants with too many programming choices during in-person events. The same tendency is true for digital events. Good content and the conversations they stimulate need time to breathe, like a fine wine. Participants need time to listen, process, reflect and respond to what they’re hearing. Allow for that to happen and your participants will walk away with more insights and more value.

Summary: These represent a broad mix of both strategic and tactical, best practices. You need a balance between the two because each contribute a different value. And this is just a small sample of what’s possible.

If you’ve dedicated time and effort to understanding your audience needs, and designing and developing solid digital content, follow-through by delivering the most efficient and effective digital event. It’s your last chance to impact your participant’s performance.

If you have some ideas to enhance digital content during the event, email us info@event-strategy.net and we’ll add it here.

For Content Strategy for Digital Events: Part IV – After Your Event, click here.

A slightly edited version of this series appeared on https://www.northstarmeetingsgroup.com.