Running the Event

Team Demio
5
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Similar to the previous lesson (on Promoting the Event), running the actual event is an area where there is a lot of ground to cover. We're also planning an upcoming course around the exact topic: Hosting Your Event (coming soon)

With that said, we'll tackle a few of the key components in this lesson and cover a few tactics to keep in mind.

Practice Makes Perfect

With most things in life, it's a great idea to have a practice run of your event. This gives you a great opportunity to practice the content, but also run through any technical kinks in the platform itself.

You'll want to create a practice event that mirrors the regular event and run through a test directly on the platform.

With Demio, we allow users to quickly Copy any current/past events. This automatically pulls in the same settings and saves you the headache.

You can use our Copy Events option to duplicate your event for your test run.

Notifications

Setting up reminder notifications can help ensure a successful turnout. It's also a great opportunity to engage with your registrants and get them excited for the event.

Using our default notifications, you can craft a custom message to include in each notification.

Engagement

Sharing different engagement tools like polls and call-to-action links can help drive engagement (and results).

We covered the part of adding them to your event in an earlier lesson (on Creating your Event) and we highly recommend using these resources to get your audience involved.

Aim to keep interaction high and try to avoid putting your audience in listen-only modes.

Incentives

Another powerful tactic is through the strategic use of incentives: a bonus that is shared with Attendees at a certain point of the event.

You can announce the upcoming incentive early in your event which will encourage your audience to stay tuned, or you can even also announce it prior to the event to help increase attendance.

Demio offers several different resources to help drive engagement on your webinar.

Polls: engage your entire audience and capture a few handy answers during the process

Handouts: share almost anything with your Attendees including handy resources, slide decks, and bonus incentives

Featured Action: drive your audience to a specific URL with a dynamic call-to-action link

Presenter Checklist

There are also several best practices that any Presenters may want to take into consideration.

Here's a quick checklist that you, or any fellow presenters, may want to go through:

  • choose a quiet, distraction-free location
  • have a strong internet connection
  • invest in a high-quality microphone/webcam
  • test your microphone/webcam prior to the event
  • use headphones (particularly for multi-presenter events) to reduce feedback
  • be mindful of your backdrop (the background area behind you that will be shown on webcam)
  • close out of any unnecessary applications/programs that compete for computer resources/bandwidth
  • login to your webinar at least 20 minutes prior to the event
  • have water handy!

Event Flow

Finally, here are a few quick tactics that you can use to improve the overall flow of your event.

Start: Add a Buffer

Give people time to join your event at the start; allowing 5-10 minutes for those that are running late is a great option to allow everyone a chance to join.

You can use this opportunity to engage with your current audience while they wait.

During: Continually Engage

Throughout the presentation, you'll want to make sure you set aside moments where you engage your audience.

Asking them questions, responding to chat messages, or even having them vote on polls are all great ideas.

End: Opportunity for Questions

Having a Q&A period can be beneficial, both in terms of engagement, but also by adding further value for any Attendees.

That's the gist of it!

Last, but certainly not least, we'll take a quick look at what we might want to do after the webinar has ended.

Run engaging webinars that deliver results.