The 10 Most Engaging Virtual Event Formats You Need to Try

Virtual events are designed to help individuals worldwide meet great people and build virtual networks, beginning with engaging with other attendees, guest speakers, and organizers. Sometimes, all it takes is to break the ice, but some attendees might be nervous to engage with others in virtual events. The right virtual event engagement plan will allow organizers to help attendees achieve their personal and professional goals.                                   

Here, we will discuss the top 10 virtual event engaging formats to help event organizers strategize and execute a successful engagement plan for their attendees, including training sessions, think tanks, product demonstrations, happy hours, and more. Through this, you will have the necessary tools and resources to execute a successful virtual event engagement plan and achieve your personal and professional goals. 

One type of virtual event is a webinar, a web-based seminar designed to provide insight into a specific topic. While webinars typically consist of presentations, meetings, or workshops, they also offer myriad benefits regarding educational content delivery that allow attendees to soak in data and information they can use to enhance their personal and professional lives.  

Some tips for hosting engaging webinars include defining your audience, consistent event promotion, guest speakers, reliable webinar platforms, post-event follow-up emails, and much more. Through this, your webinar will deliver impactful content that your attendees can use to build their virtual networks and advance their personal and professional goals. 

Additionally, panel discussions are excellent ways to keep your attendees engaged, as they are designed to foster conversation and debate in a safe and welcoming environment. Through this, attendees can engage with each other and the panelists regarding a specific topic or series of topics while building their virtual networks. 

Hands-on learning opportunities through virtual workshops and training sessions are excellent ways for attendees to engage with each other, enabling them to ask questions and demonstrate effective teamwork toward achieving a common goal. The engagement aspect can be further enhanced with interactive elements, including live Q&A, breakout rooms, virtual booths, real-time chat, and much more. By incorporating group activities and exercises, your attendees can engage with each other while simultaneously building their virtual networks. 

Multi-day events with diverse content tracks are excellent ways to keep your attendees engaged, as these provide an assortment of opportunities for attendees to learn while connecting with individuals worldwide. This can include keynote speakers and thought leadership sessions where attendees can ask questions and spark discussions about a specific topic or series of topics. These tactics provide your attendees with networking opportunities, which can also include exhibit halls where your attendees can gain educational experience and learn more about the event’s many sessions, as well. 

Small group discussions on specific topics are excellent ways to keep your attendees engaged, as they serve as a reprieve from the chaos of the virtual event, enabling attendees to engage and participate in a closed environment which promotes facilitated conversations for idea sharing with other attendees and guests. This can also include brainstorming sessions and problem-solving workshops where attendees can use teamwork to solve a specific problem while building their virtual networks, as well. 

Virtual events provide excellent opportunities for meaningful connections with speed networking, which allows attendees to engage in structured networking sessions with time limits. While this might only last a few minutes, attendees can learn how to conduct pitches on themselves with other attendees, which holds promise for how they can promote themselves for future career opportunities. This enables leveraging technology for efficient networking that lets your attendees build their virtual networks with individuals worldwide. 

Showcasing products and services in a virtual environment is an excellent way to keep your attendees engaged, as this allows them to learn about a brand while gaining knowledge on potential employment opportunities. This can be accomplished with interactive demos, Q&A sessions, and virtual booths for exhibitors and sponsors, which help companies build their brand while connecting with individuals worldwide. 

Successful engagement involves strengthening team bonds in remote work environments, and virtual events are excellent ways to provide team-building activities that break the ice, build camaraderie, and boost morale for everyone. This includes gamification, which offers fun and engaging activities for team cohesion, including leaderboards, scavenger hunts, personalized avatars, quizzes, and much more. Virtual events enable successful and impactful engagement opportunities for individuals worldwide by incorporating games, challenges, and icebreakers. 

Virtual events don’t have to be all-business, as they can create opportunities for informal interaction between attendees, organizers, and guest speakers. This is accomplished through virtual happy hours with team-building elements that enhance the engagement experience among attendees while allowing them to build their virtual networks with individuals worldwide. This also includes themed social events designed to boost morale among attendees, whose theme can be the virtual event or whatever company is hosting the happy hour, as well. Through this, companies can build their brand while providing impactful engagement opportunities for everyone. 

Celebrating achievements and milestones is an excellent way to enhance the informal aspect of virtual events further. This can be accomplished with internal events for companies, their employees, and attendees, which provide creative ways to recognize individuals and teams for their hard work. For further enhancement, engaging presentations and acceptance speeches enable awardees to share their insights on how they achieved their milestone while thanking those who helped them along the way. 

Live music performances and entertainment acts are excellent ways to enhance engagement among attendees while providing them with a reprieve from the chaos of the virtual event. This can be accomplished either at the halfway point of the virtual event or near the end, thus allowing attendees a break or a great sendoff before they conclude the event. This is further enhanced with interactive elements like shoutouts, quizzes, live Q&A, and much more to engage the audience. Through this, you leverage technology for immersive experiences that will last a lifetime. 

Conclusion 

Here, we discussed the top 10 engaging virtual event formats, including training sessions, think tanks, product demonstrations, happy hours, and much more. We also emphasize encouragement to experiment with different formats through trial and error with the goal of creating memorable virtual experiences for individuals worldwide. 

We encourage readers to explore virtual event format options to enhance engagement opportunities for attendees worldwide. Through this, virtual events will maintain their mantra of providing individuals with impactful experiences while enabling them to build their brands and virtual networks. 

We invite feedback and comments from readers regarding how Chati can stay updated on engaging virtual event formats, thus enabling attendees to learn and grow both personally and professionally. We invite readers to contact Chati for further inquiries regarding engaging virtual event formats.