What Makes a Good Hybrid Event?
A hybrid event is where you have in-person talks that are streamed online for people to watch live or on-demand. This opens up your event, enhancing accessibility and broadening your audience. For example, a conference that Inclusive Digital helped with had 1,190 attendees, 589 of whom attended in-person and ~600 live remote in 15 countries. Hybrid wasn’t an add-on; it was half the audience.
So how do we ensure that we are hosting a good hybrid event? Engagement should be considered during the three key stages of your event.
Before the event, we will decide together what success will look like. We will design online interaction intentionally, not as an afterthought. We will brief the speakers for multi-format delivery and plan how content will live beyond the day.
During the event, we ensure that we are keeping online audiences engaged by displaying and referencing remote questions, letting them know of any changes to the timetable (such as a speaker starting late), and use engagement tools such as polls, Q&A, newsfeed and gamification to keep them involved throughout the event.
After the event, your content doesn’t end like it would as an in-person only event. Many attendees can’t attend live and some prefer to consume the content selectively, so on-demand views continue for months after the event has ended.
We can also consider short-form content to drive reach. We know that 60-90 second clips perform best socially and key quotes from speakers travel well. Panels can be broken into topic-led segments. One keynote can become six pieces of content to post on your social media and continue engagement.
Hybrid is now an expectation from audiences. The majority of post-pandemic attendees say that they prefer having a virtual attendance option available, and 74% of polled professionals said that hybrid events are here to stay. Audiences now expect event planners to consider their costs to attend, both in time and finances, their family responsibilities and their ability limitations. Hybrid isn’t about adding a stream. It’s about removing barriers to engagement. Making sure your event doesn’t disappear the moment it ends. If we think beyond the room, engagement follows.