Town hall meetings are a great opportunity for everyone at an organization to get together, share updates, decisions, company achievements, and the way ahead. But with the remote working culture on the rise, people have shifted to virtual town hall meetings.
This article provides you with 11 tips and tricks for your virtual town hall meeting.
1. Get Your Technology Right
Determine the technology you will need to host a successful virtual town hall meeting. Explore the internet and find the best technology to use while hosting your virtual meeting. Moreover, even a small technical difficulty during the event can make it frustrating. Therefore, you must conduct a thorough check before hosting the actual event. You must check if all the technical equipment is ready to use.
Check that your audio and video are working properly and you have the bandwidth to host a video call or audio call. You can also conduct a dry run and call some of your team members to check the audio and video.
2. Keep Sessions Shorter than 60 Minutes
You must already be aware that the attention levels of online attendees are less than that of offline attendees. While it is easier to keep the offline attendees engaged for a longer time duration, it is difficult to keep the offline attendees engaged. Therefore, try to keep the sessions shorter than 60 minutes each. Select software that you want to use to broadcast your online event.
While planning the sessions, keep in mind that the attention spans of online attendees are shorter. Rather than keeping intolerably long sessions, make the sessions shorter and provide the attendees with more breaks in between the sessions.
3. Select a Good Virtual Town Hall Meeting Platform
Select a DIY virtual town hall meeting platform that enables you to create, build, manage and deliver the entire event experience by yourself. This will help you improve the overall event experience of the attendees.
With DIY platforms, you can customize your event according to the choices and preferences of your attendees. This helps enhance their event experience. Moreover, a DIY platform allows you to add your favorite games and other elements to your online event.
4. Get a Good Host
Find a good host for the event. Make sure that the host has a great personality and a good sense of humor. He can crack one or two jokes whenever the event gets boring and keep the audience entertained. The host must also be aware of the schedule, the timings, the number of guests, and the topics covered.
Moreover, the host will also be responsible for keeping the meeting on track whenever the participants or speakers move off-track.
5. Try Wrapping in a Guest Speaker
Explore the popular speakers among your potential attendees and try to rope them in to present or speak at your virtual town hall meeting. This will help attract more people to attend the event. It will also help add more perspectives to the event. Moreover, you can also create hype around the event by keeping the speaker’s name a secret and revealing it only at the end.
6. Make a Schedule
Make sure you prepare a schedule consisting of the time given to each speaker and performer. Also, write down the time allotted to each of the sessions during the event. Making a schedule will help you to stay on time and finish the tasks and the event on time, thus leading to a better experience for the attendees.
7. Remind Your Attendees
Remember to send reminder emails to the attendees. Moreover, make sure that you send the invitations well before the actual event. This will provide them with plenty of time to research and be prepared for the meeting. In addition to that, send regular emails to the attendees.
Furthermore, you must include the link to the event in your invitation. This will make it easier for them to find and register for the event. Once a person registers for the event, you should send reminder emails at regular intervals to make sure that the registrants don’t forget to attend the event. Make sure your reminder emails are compelling enough to keep the audience convinced about the benefits of attending the event.
8. Get Your Audio Right
Audio plays a very important role in the success of any virtual town hall meeting. Make sure that your mic and other external audio supporting devices are well configured and ready to use during the event. Moreover, conduct an audio check and see if everything is working fine. This will help ensure a smooth and enriching event experience.
9. Celebrate Your Winners
Celebrating and recognizing the hard work of your employees is an effective way to increase attendee engagement at your virtual meeting. You must not forget to reward or appreciate the exceptional work of your employees. Try to dedicate a small portion of the virtual town hall to celebrate the achievers.
10. Start a 2-way Conversation With Ice-Breakers.
It is important to note that many of your employees will be attending the virtual town hall meeting for the first time and might not know others. Therefore, you must include ice-breaking activities or questions in your virtual event. This will help kick start a two-way conversation between the attendees and allow them to speak their minds engage, and interact with others.
Including an ice-breaker at the beginning of the event helps set the mood for the entire event. You can either include games or ask simple open-ended questions allowing the attendees to show extensive participation.
11. Use a Variety of Speakers
Using the same speaker every time you host a town hall meeting can make your meeting boring and monotonous after a point. Therefore, try to rope in different speakers every time. You can also consider using more than two speakers in a virtual town hall meeting. This will help add new perspectives to the meeting and make it more engaging and interesting.
Wrap Up:
Now that you have read this article, you can go ahead and plan your next online town hall meeting. Don’t forget to follow the tips mentioned here.