Entertaining Virtual Event Ideas
Real-Time Illustrations During Sessions
Bringing artists on board to create real-time illustrations — known as digital live scribing — is a great way to engage your audience with a unique type of content.
These talented illustrators create artwork live as panel discussions go on, providing a graphical representation of the speakers and takeaways that are entertaining, informative, and most importantly, widely shareable/postable. These illustrations can also be used in any future marketing materials.
Live Games or Competitions
As part of Salesforce’s World Tour Sydney Reimagined virtual event, they implemented a live “battle of the apps” competition between exhibitors — complete with audience voting — called AppExchange Demo Jam.
During this session, Salesforce AppExchange partners were given three minutes each to do a live demo demonstrating their apps. The audience was then asked to vote for their favorite, and the winner was announced on Twitter the next day.
Featuring sponsors and exhibitors through this kind of competition is a creative way to provide engaging demos while also getting the audience involved. Plus, this kind of activity will have people checking back to and engaging with the event’s social media pages to see who won.
Virtual Concert
Just because you’ve brought your event online doesn’t mean that you need to forego entertainment. Certain virtual event entertainment opportunities, such as musical performances, can translate very well to virtual events.
EventMB has integrated musical guests into several of our events, which adds a fun element and helps keep the audience engaged. People are missing concerts and other in-person experiences, so incorporating a performance of some sort is a nice way to bring entertainment directly to them. Just like every other part of the industry, event entertainment companies are pivoting to virtual and can assist with bringing different types of entertainment to your online event.
Health and Wellbeing Activities
Many people have been struggling with physical and mental health during the pandemic, and incorporating these types of activities into your event is a good way to switch things up and deliver unexpected value to attendees.
Depending on the format of your event, you could organize a short workout or meditation break in between sessions, or have a separate stream for these kinds of activities that attendees can tune into throughout the event for a change of pace. In our Hybrid Revolution Summit virtual event, we included a fun workout break to get everyone moving, which was a big hit with attendees!
Build Unique Immersive Environments
The SBC Digital Summit that took place earlier this year took the virtual concept one step further by designing their virtual space based on a physical conference center. For example, the Networking Lounge feature looked like an actual lounge with chat windows that attendees could interact with.
Although not quite VR, these environments allowed attendees to feel familiar aspects of event spaces through the virtual format instead of just clicking through screens and videos that all look the same. Using design elements to give your event a unique look and feel will help set your event apart and serve to distinguish various spaces within the event as well.
Attract Star Talent
If content is King, delivery is Queen. There’s so much more to consider in virtual events, but especially for very content heavy events, the delivery needs to be an 11 out of 10.
Get star hosts, moderators, and speakers that can own the virtual setting and encourage engagement throughout the event. Do your research to optimize who is delivering your content and how to energize the audience and create an exciting atmosphere.