If you have planned an upcoming meeting, seminar or workshop involving a presentation and are likely to be cancelling your event due to Coronavirus (COVID-19), consider conducting your presentations virtually as a live event/webinar.

 

The added bonus of implementing a virtual format for your presentations is that it reduces the need for business travel given the current climate around coronavirus (meeting host and attendees can be located anywhere in the world). In the longer term virtual meetings may help improve work-life balance and minimise impact on the environment.

 

There are many meeting and webinar software solutions on the market, including Zoom, Skype, Clickmeeting, EverWebinar, Gotowebinar, Livestorm and Zohowebinars. Research which one is best for your needs. Partner with your IT department to help set up and provide technical support to ensure your virtual event runs smoothly.

 

We’re pleased to say that the ParticiPoll audience polling platform is fully compatible with webinars. As long as your audience can see your live PowerPoint presentation and have access to a web-connected device for voting then ParticiPoll will work as normal. Audience participation can really help make remote audience members feel closer to the action.

 

Here is what your audience will need:

1. Access to your live Powerpoint Presentation on their computers via the webinar/meeting link.
2. Access to a mobile device with either a WiFi or mobile connection to access your ParticiPoll URL to vote or participate.

 

ParticiPoll has many features to help drive audience participation, engagement and understanding of content. To produce the best quality virtual event, try to use the features creatively, to peak your audiences’ interest and leave a lasting impression. 

 

Planning is key, and if you have your presentations/lectures/workshops already designed, consider the following points when re-designing for a virtual setting:

 

Starting the session:

• Start by running an ice-breaker to get your audience comfortable using their mobile devices virtually. This could be answering a simple poll by asking how everyone is doing, or contributing to the creation of a wordcloud.
• This will get the audience participating and will give you an idea of how many people are voting. It gives you an opportunity to drive full engagement from your virtual audience from the very beginning.

 

Main body of the session:

• Identify the key learning objectives/key takeaways from your session. What is it that you want your audience to understand and what is their call to action after they leave the session? 
• Create interactive poll questions to ensure you know the audience has understood the key takeaways and can demonstrate their understanding.

 

Conclude with an interactive Q&A session:

• ParticiPoll allows you as the presenter to solicit comments from the audience and for the audience to ask you questions at any time during the session. 
• As the presenter you can view these live on your mobile device and moderate the questions/comments. Plan how you intend to respond to these during/after the session. 

 

Feedback:

• Follow up with your audience once the event has concluded. You’re unlikely to improve future virtual events without customer feedback. Use the feedback to build bigger and better virtual events!

Trial your webinar with a small group of people. This will help you gauge if the technology set-up is working, and your session’s content is hitting the spot.

If you are planning an upcoming webinar and have any questions about using ParticiPoll, please get in touch with us.