Hybrid events combine elements of both in-person and online audience. They offer attendees the opportunity to interact face-to-face while also having access to information through webinars, presentations, and other resources. The best part of hybrid events is the ability to reach audiences around the world, without them needing to attend the event in person. Now, anyone from anywhere can attend a conference or event from the comfort of their home or office and be a part of it. In order to make your online audience feel like they are there in person, your hybrid event needs to be engaging and entertaining. Here are five ways to make your next hybrid event successful.

Choose the Right Venue

Choosing the right venue for your next hybrid event will make a big difference on how successful it is. Hybrid events need to be more like studio style set up similar to a TV production than a traditional live event. Because you are producing the event for live and virtual audience, your venue needs to have space for video production equipment and large video screens. So that wherever the audience is watching the event, they are getting the same experience as in-person audience.

Select the Best Technology

To ensure that your event runs smoothly, you need to select the right technology, which means you need the right type of AV equipment. You should consider the following when choosing the right AV equipment for your event:

• How many cameras are you going to need?
• Where to set up the cameras?
• Which video switcher is the most user-friendly and reliable?
• How much power do you need?
• What kind of audio equipment do you need?
• Which platform are you going to use to share your content to the online audience?

Engage and Communicate

This is one of the most important steps in making your hybrid event successful. You need to make sure that you are constantly keeping your audiences, both live and virtual, engaged. To do that, communicate with not only your live audience but online audience as well. Ask open-ended questions during your presentation in an effort to get your audience to participate. A good way for your online audience to participate is to run a contest or giveaway prizes for those who typed in questions or who asks questions virtually during the video conference. The more you keep your audience engaged, the higher the chance of them continuing to watch and share the event.

Create Good Content

Even if you have chosen the best venue and the right AV equipment to produce a high-quality hybrid event, your event will not be successful if you don’t have interesting and entertaining content. If you don’t have good content, you will lose audience engagement. Your content should add value to the audience. Think about what they will gain from watching or attending your event. A good starting point when creating captivating content or presentation is to understand the need of your audience. Identify their need or problem and provide a solution.

Use an Event App

It is important to keep live and virtual attendees connected during the hybrid event. Using an Event App where you provide information on agenda, attendee directory, activity feed, chat rooms or message boards, survey, polls, and Q&A is going to keep everyone engaged and on the same page about what’s happening at the event. Virtual audience will feel like they are not missing out on any in person event or activity because everything is accessible via the app.

The reason hybrid events have been so popular in the past few years is because they truly offer the best of both worlds where they combine live and virtual experiences. Hybrid events also offers organizations detailed statistics on how long someone spend watching the presentation or how much engagement they get from individual attendee. These are valuable information that organizations can use to improve their services or products as well as how they can improve on making their events more engaging the future.