A virtual event isn’t just a moment in time. It’s an important part of the communications continuum with your audience. It’s a powerful pillar in a comprehensive content marketing plan—a strategic approach to creating and distributing valuable content to connect with a target audience.
Prepare for the virtual event just as you would plan for a physical event. The same strategy and planning apply. Define your event personas, theme, and message map. Strategize how to translate your agenda and show flow into an engaging virtual event and identify the right technology. Define a marketing flow to include all post-event plans for maximum impact.
Promoting a virtual event takes a different level of communication than a live event. You need to keep your desired audience engaged right up until show time. Launch an event trailer and drip agenda teasers and speaker announcements and speaker video clips. Create a user friendly registration and preview sponsor commercials.
Your virtual event is a content engine that provides a trove of valuable assets to share post-event, so plan to capture the content and the analytics to fuel your messaging later. Presentations, Q&A’s, poll results, notable quotes, and panel roundups can fill social media calendars.
This is your chance to build a community around your event by providing branded content to create a continuous engagement. Offer an event recap, on-demand presentations, repackage content as topic specific e-books, share keynote quotes, event analytics, and audience testimonials.