To Host or Not To Host?

How do you decide if your online event should be fully pre-recorded or live-hosted by an Emcee and broadcast? What are some of the factors in determining this? It depends on the goals and objectives of the event, how well you know your audience, and what experience you want for them.

Sure, you can string a pile of videos together and call it an online event. You can even craft it so no human is ever involved. This may be what you’re looking for. But I challenge you, if you were on the receiving end of 6-18 hours of talking heads, how long would you stick around?

With the online event I’ve been referencing in previous blogs, one of our goals and objectives was to keep the organization’s DNA intact. Of our core values, one is to foster community among our members. We felt that this couldn’t be done by just streaming videos one after the other. We needed to talk with them live. An Emcee who could look at the camera and reference something the speaker said who they were just listening to would bring a more personal touch. Ideally, we could make them feel more connected to the event and the content.

We know our audience well enough to know that they would expect to have their chat questions answered in real-time. It is something that we have “trained” them to expect as we have done webinars long before we were relegated to doing online events and meetings. We could also quickly respond if there were multiple comments about sound or video issues and tell them right away that we hear them and are working to address the issue. This was much better customer service.

And, we could curate the journey and provide attendees with the best experience possible by having an Emcee host the event. He could lean in and really talk with the attendees between sessions, counsel them or clarify something that might have been confusing in the previous video, engage them with a drawing or raffle, and put photos on the screen he got from social media so everyone could share in the fun.

Given what we know now, I wouldn’t change a thing. Being able to respond in real-time to different scenarios would never have been possible if we were not physically there and available, monitoring the chat, scrolling our social media, and staying true to our organization’s mission.

Have you live-hosted an online event or seen one done well?
Share your experience here or email me.

I’d love to share what I’ve learned with others planning online events!
Share the blog with someone you know and be sure to like it!

Check out tracybaer.com for more!