Planning and hosting events has never been an easy game. Especially since technology has gotten involved in the events, things have changed and become more complicated. It is not due to the fact that online events are complicated. In fact, online events are less complicated than planning and hosting offline events.
Online events are not complicated, only planning them can get a bit complicated at times. It is due to the fact that people have this misconception that things that have involvement with technology are more complicated than other things.
There are numerous challenges that organizers face on a daily basis while planning and hosting online events. But what are those challenges? Let us find out in this blog.
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Not Having Enough Technical Knowledge:
The first and most common challenge that the organizers face on a daily basis is not having sufficient technical knowledge. Though planning and hosting online events is not rocket science, it still needs some kind of technical knowledge that would enable users to go through the platform and host the event. However, it is mostly faced by first-timers. With time and events, this thing gets less complicated. But, experts suggest that before jumping into the ocean of online event hosting, organizers should try their hands at attending a few online events by themselves. It will help them get an understanding of how things at online events take place, right from the point where the attendee registers for the event to the point they submit their feedback.
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Not Having Enough Technical Support:
The other challenge organizers commonly face while planning and hosting online events is that the online platform they choose doesn’t provide efficient customer support. Even though self-managed online event platforms have become fairly common these days, there have been many issues where organizers face technical issues. In these cases, organizers need professional support. However, not every online platform comes with efficient and reliable customer service. And it is why most organizers find themselves stranded on an island whenever they require any technical assistance. Hence, it is always suggested to select an online platform that comes with reliable and round-the-clock customer support and solution. Always make sure that the platform you are choosing for your online event is efficient enough and worth all the money you are paying them.
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Not Enough Audience Engagement Opportunities:
Time and again, it has come to notice that event organizers don’t even consider online events as events. A few people are still of the opinion that online events are all about gathering people on a regular online meeting platform and conducting a regular online meeting. It is why they don’t pay much attention to other elements of online events, including audience engagement tools and opportunities. Not only this, but when it comes to audience engagement, offline events are more efficient than online events and come with more audience engagement opportunities. However, there is a downside to online events, or at least people like to believe that. But, this factor affects the audience attendance rate of the online event.
Therefore, experts suggest choosing platforms that provide users with several audience engagement tools and opportunities. And by audience engagement opportunities, we don’t only mean live polls, Q&A, and other such tools. Focus on having more advanced tools that would enable attendees to have an experience similar to offline events.
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Not Delivering Strong Content:
The next major concern faced in the cases of online events is that the content that several organizers deliver is not strong enough to grab the attention of the audience. Most organizers pay so much attention to the other factors of the online event. This makes them forget about the content of the online event. And, if someone needs to hear this, no matter how efficiently you plan your online event, the content still remains the King. Hence, as an organizer you should focus on the content you will deliver to your audience. Keep your audience in mind while you are preparing the content strategy of your online event, and focus on delivering what would interest them the most.
Also, make it interesting which makes it easier for you to keep your audience engaged and hooked to the online event. Keep it short, and include other elements such as slideshows, videos, images, etc.
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Not Involving the Audience Enough:
While organizers plan online events, they mostly focus on delivering the content. It is due to this majority of online events look like nothing but video lectures. Not only this, but organizers also don’t feel involved in the event. It leads to less audience engagement during the event. However, to save the event from this, the organizers should focus on including elements and features that enable organizers to interact with the attendees during the online event. Some of those features and tools are live chat, live comments, live polls, Q&A, etc. This feature boost the audience engagement rate during the event. It would also make the attendees feel involved during the event, boosting two-way communication in a technology-inclined online event.
There are several other challenges that organizers and attendees face during the planning and execution of an online event. However, one needs to know that challenges and problems are a part of event planning. But, it solely depends on the event organizers how to tackle those challenges. You can take the idea of how to deal with those challenges from the blog mentioned above.