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Ultimate Guide to Hosting Your Virtual Award ceremony

Aman

Among multiple shifts and advancements in 2020, virtual events have been the most notable shift that gained immense popularity. Virtual award shows are one of the most distinguished events that happen over the Internet using a robust virtual event platform.

To know more about virtual award shows, let us take you through a simple guide;

What is a Virtual Award Ceremony?

A virtual award show is an online event where the associates, employees, and clients are appreciated and praised for their hard work and endeavors. It involves participants attending an event digitally and remotely from different locations across the globe. It is an excellent chance to break the standards of a typical award show and add new features and tools to make your event unique and realistic.

How to Plan a Successful Virtual Award Ceremony?

Today, various businesses and industries have adopted virtual venues to celebrate wins or departmental achievements. Here are a few steps on how to plan a successful award ceremony;

  • Determine the event goals

Before you begin with the planning part, make sure to identify the objectives of your event. It is important to understand what you want to achieve from your award ceremony. Simultaneously, it is also necessary to know the expectations of your target audience. Setting definite goals helps create a path to a fruitful online event.

  • Begin with a proper planning

It is vital to create an effective plan and a strategic approach for hosting an online award ceremony. Ask event-related questions and determine the following points;

  1. Do you wish to keep the event chargeable?
  2. What will be the date and time of the award show?
  3. How will the attendees register for the event?
  4. What engaging features do you want to include at your award ceremony?
  5. Which KPIs will help you determine the event’s success?

These determinations are crucial. They simplify the planning process of your online award show.

  • Choose your virtual award ceremony platform

A virtual platform has a vital role in elevating the level of your events. Therefore, do your research and reasonably choose your award show platform that can involve excellent engaging tools and innovations to make your event a memorable affair.

Look for a platform that can seamlessly organize engaging quizzes, surveys, live polls, and games to keep the attendees hooked and excited throughout the event.

Check the technical aspect and make sure that your platform is supported by 24/7 customer support. It is to ensure that the attendees can get immediate help and face no issue while they sign-up or log in.

  • Make your virtual stage super attractive

This step involves asking your service provider to create a 3D environment with eye-catching visuals, graphics, and images. It is an effective way to deliver immersive and remarkable experiences to the audience. You can think of keeping dynamic GIFs, animated light at the lobby or 360-degree tour features to make the online stage more compelling. Add exotic award categories, exciting sound effects, emoticons, or clap and like feature to generate buzz and excitement among the attendees.

  • Live-stream your virtual award show

Live-streaming is an efficient way to boost your social presence and enhance the outreach of your event. Use multiple social media channels such as YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter to reach a wider audience and create unique brand experiences.

  • Promote your virtual award show

Create effective promotional strategies to let the potential attendees know that it is happening. Create buzz and excitement among everyone by making compelling landing pages, posting images and clips of the speaker. It is a great way to draw more attendees. You can also write SEO-optimized content to boost the search potential or practice email marketing to remind the potential attendees about the date and time of the award show.

  • Include sponsors

Luring attractive sponsors to your virtual award show can help increase the ROI of the event. You can display the content and offerings of the sponsors on your digital screens to make them feel profited. You can design a customizable interface that will include their brand colors and logo to obtain more leads and added visibility.

  • Perform a test rehearsal

Once you have finalized the previous steps, make sure to perform a dry-run with your service provider’s platform and its features. It is to ensure that there are no technical or any other unexpected errors on D-day.

Now that you are aware of the steps involved in hosting a successful virtual award show, let us understand the benefits of these online award shows;

Benefits of Virtual Award Ceremony

  • Increased Attendee Count: Often, people miss attending virtual events due to unexpected circumstances. So, hosting online events are an excellent option to welcome more attendees without any geographical barriers. The only thing the virtual attendees require is a reliable Internet connection and a compatible laptop, smartphone, or tablet.
  • Recognition: Presenting an award to an employee or attendee in front of the entire organization or a wide audience leads to more recognition and appreciation.
  • Long-term benefits: You also have the option of recording your virtual award show. It can be further used as on-demand content or for promotion approaches for future events.
  • Significant cost savings: With award shows happening online, you can save your expenses or costs of traveling, accommodation, or meals. These savings can be invested in enhancing the reach of your event and making it more unique and realistic.

Tips To Keep Your Attendees Engaged At a Virtual Award Show

  1. You can start your award show with an icebreaker activity to grab the attention of the audience.
  • Conduct multiple live polls, surveys, and Q&A sessions to let the attendees connect and interact in real-time.
  • Make the most of virtual networking tables like live audio, video, and chat features to promote 2-way interactions.
  • Consider adding exciting games to your online award show to make it more likable. To name some, you can think of spin the wheel, crosswords, word games, guess the award, tic-tac-toe, and more to keep the attendees hooked and involved throughout the event.
  • Make use of an AI matchmaking tool to let people connect with like-minded people at an online event. Recommendations based on similar interests and concerns are an excellent way to make new connections.

How to Measure the Success of Your Virtual Award Show?

The success of an online award show is decided by the attendee ratio (AR) that determines the percent of attendees who visited the virtual event versus those who registered. An ideal virtual event software also helps you with comprehensive data, right from attendee navigation, the total number of downloads, to the most used feature of the event. Through this significant data, you can make necessary improvements for your future virtual award shows. You can also organize simple polls or surveys to obtain the worthy feedback of your audience. It will help you understand if you were able to meet their expectations.

Wrapping Up

Celebrating the company wins is necessary, and with advanced event technology, you can make your attendees feel special and deliver immersive experiences. If your virtual award show can lure attendees, promote engagement, generate revenue along with celebrating the wins, then it is indeed an exceptional event.