Category Archives: Audience Engagement

Grow Engagement With A Virtual Community

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Building a virtual community is a powerful way to have a positive impact. Online communities have tremendous flexibility in terms of time and participation. Yet many organizations miss opportunities to enrich their live events with an online community platform.

What Is A Virtual Community?

There are various ways to define a virtual community. Some researchers focus on questions of social identity, but our definition is more straightforward: a virtual community is a group of people who communicate digitally around a shared interest.

For example, there is a thriving virtual community in many parts of the technology industry. If you want to ask questions and get advice about Microsoft, Salesforce, and other platforms, there is an online community for those interests. Many virtual communities are also dedicated to sports, movies, TV shows and hobbies.

For publishers and companies, starting or growing a virtual community or even a series of online communities has significant attractions.

The Pros and Cons of A Virtual Community

Starting and growing a virtual community has multiple benefits for your community members and the event organizer. Here are some of the essential benefits to keep in mind.

Pros of Having a Virtual Community

Establishing a virtual community for your audience offers significant benefits, including making it easy to find warm leads.

  • Get More Leads

Thriving online communities related to your company are a ready source of potential leads. With the right approach, your community may act as a sounding board for new product ideas and as early adopters. While that is an exciting benefit, your virtual community has to offer your community members appealing benefits, or you will lose people over time.

  • Increase Engagement

For some organizations, like online media companies, growing audience engagement is their top goal. For publishers seeking to maintain or grow their paid subscriber base, offering a virtual community goes a long way toward achieving those goals. Online community growth becomes more manageable when your audience responds to new posts, announcements, and more. A more engaged audience is more likely to purchase and engage with advertising.

  • Differentiate Your Brand

You’ve probably spent considerable time and effort creating a distinct and memorable brand. Yet few people outside the company likely understand your brand promise as profoundly as you might hope. Most potential customers are thinking about their families, needs, and problems – your brand probably doesn’t come to mind too often.

That’s where offering a compelling virtual community makes a positive impact. When people associate your brand with a community of friends who share their interests, your brand will become more appealing. Over time, a strong community can translate into significant brand loyalty and a greater willingness to accept premium prices.

  • Improve Mental Health

Seeing mental health on this list might surprise you because it may not be one of your goals. However, giving people access to a solid online community where they can connect with others who share their interests matters. Developing a positive and inclusive virtual community may help people reduce anxiety and the impact of other problems like loneliness.

That said, a thriving online community hub is not the same thing as treatment. But every bit of positive human connection your community offers can help people get through a rough time.

Cons of Having an Online Community

While there is much to be said about running a virtual community, there are some disadvantages to keep in mind.

  • Virtual Community Is A Long-Term Strategy

Developing a thriving virtual community will yield results, but these results often take years to yield fruit. In that sense, a running virtual community tends to produce better results when running alongside other marketing strategies. That said, there is a shortcut to building a virtual community faster, which we will reveal in the next section.

  • A Virtual Community Requires Leadership and Content

Most thriving online communities revolve around leaders and content. For many small businesses, the founder may act as the leader, content creator, and community facilitator. In a larger organization, these roles can be shared among several people. In the long term, it is sometimes possible to recruit members of your community as well.

In the beginning, expect to invest considerable sweat equity in your virtual community. A successful content strategy is vital to making the community attractive. Without an appealing content strategy, it will be hard to see the value of your community. When the community is small, take the time to interact with each new member who signs up.

  • A Virtual Community Requires The Right Technology

Setting up the technology needed to launch a digital community may feel daunting. At a minimum, a virtual community needs message board capabilities so that people can post messages and receive a community response. While useful, a message board is probably not enough to make your virtual community appealing. Instead, take inspiration from thriving online communities (e.g., the gaming community), which include video chat, live chat, and virtual events.

One Shortcut To Jump Start Your Virtual Community

Developing a thriving virtual community takes time, but there is one way to accelerate the process: events. Specifically, running a virtual or hybrid event can help ignite your community’s growth. Unlike a simple online message board, events are different.

In contrast to an always-available online group, an event is a limited and scarce experience. Since the event occurs at a specific time and place, there is a real sense of scarcity. That scarcity helps to make the event more valuable. Furthermore, a virtual event that uses a proven process, like our virtual event checklist, is well organized and tends to offer relevant content to participants.

How To Bridge The Gap Between Virtual And Real Communities

The value of connecting a virtual community and a traditional community is all about finding the best of both worlds. Let’s look at a few examples in both the corporate and educational settings that illustrate the power of these events.

Specifically, adding live chat to your online events makes a tremendous difference in bringing your community together. With live chat, you can get feedback from your peers, answer questions and build connections.

Bringing Together In Persona And Virtual Communities For Companies

The booming popularity of remote and hybrid work arrangements has delivered considerable benefits. Flexible schedules and greater work-life balance are precious. Yet the lack of real-time interaction over coffee or lunch can make it more difficult to form strong relationships. The critical technology to enable these virtual communities is implementing a live chat, because it makes it easy and simple to share comments, questions and more.

To enrich your community, start with these virtual community and virtual event ideas.

Annual Company Conference

Many companies run annual conferences to connect with their customers, recognize top performers and announce important events. Adding a virtual community to this type of corporate event helps in several ways. First, you can accommodate more participants, including those who might be unable to travel to the event in person. Second, you can extend the conference experience before and after the official conference date. For example, you might launch “teaser videos” about the conference keynote speakers in advance to spark greater excitement.

Sales Kick Off

Supporting the company sales team is a critical leadership responsibility. Success in sales requires perseverance in the face of pressure, disappointment, and stress. Offering encouragement, relevant training, and other resources in a sales kick-off event can help the sales team to thrive.

Enriching your sales kick-off event with a virtual community helps deepen the event’s value. For example, you might invite a sales expert like Jeb Blount about one of his books, “Fanatical Prospecting” or “Selling The Price Increase.” To support your team in applying the lessons of the book covered in the keynote, set up a virtual community where people can come together to share their wins, questions, and other comments weekly.

Recruitment Events

Attracting high-quality graduates and employees to work for your organization is becoming more difficult in many countries. As of July 2022, the US Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that US unemployment has fallen to 3.5%. In other words, many workers have choices. New methods like recruitment strategies are needed for employers seeking to compete for the best talent.

Enhancing recruitment with a virtual community starts with taking a long-term view of talent. Instead of engaging students when they are a few months away from graduation, start earlier. This might take the form of establishing a virtual community for your summer internship program. Give your current and prospective employees a chance to interact with your current staff, ask questions and find out why they should consider working with you.

By the way, you don’t have to restrict yourself to cultivating graduates and younger professionals only. For inspiration, look at the virtual communities that the world’s leading consulting firms have long cultivated. PwC, a global leader in accounting and consulting, runs a US alumni program that offers on-demand learning to help alumni succeed, networking opportunities, and career opportunities for former employees.

Fostering Higher Education Using Virtual Communities

For colleges and universities, virtual communities can make an even greater impact. The following introduces a few opportunities. For a comprehensive guide to virtual event ideas in higher education, see our post: 60 Awesome University Virtual Events Ideas. Organizing a virtual event series is a powerful way to grow your virtual community.

Just make sure that you include live chat so that your students, alumni and other community members can easily participate – not everybody likes to appear on video after all.

College Orientation

Many colleges and universities have reported lower enrollment numbers over the past few years. The pandemic, high costs and the growth of alternative online learning opportunities have some questioning the value of traditional post-secondary education.

Offering a robust college orientation experience is one way that campus leaders reach out to their students. In addition to traditional orientation activities and parties, look for ways to build a virtual community that starts before students arrive on campus.

The assigned reading of new books includes memoirs, novels, essays and other works. For example, the University of Delaware assigned “While the Earth Sleeps We Travel: Stories, Poetry, and Art from Young Refugees Around the World” by Ahmed M. Badr. Meanwhile, Siena College has assigned the Pulitzer Prize winning novel “The Nickel Boys” to new students. Giving students a book to read before they arrive on campus gives them a tangible connection to campus long before they show up in person.

These reading recommendations help to give students common ground with their peers and to start their learning journey. Why not invite students to join a virtual community where they can discuss the book and raise other questions before they arrive on campus?

College Career Fair

After paying thousands of dollars in fees, many students are hungry to discover their career opportunities. Traditional career fair events offer invaluable networking opportunities. These events are not accessible to all students, especially those with significant family or work commitments. Asking a student to give up a paying shift to attend an event may not be realistic in some cases.

Offering a virtual community to support college career events makes a big difference. For instance, you can invite students to join sub-groups focused on exploring certain professions like accounting, nursing, nonprofits, or engineering. By giving students more time and space to come up with questions and seek support, students are more likely to discover various career paths.

Alumni Organization

Once students leave campus, that doesn’t mean they have left the college community. Many colleges have long-established alumni associations that organize events, networking databases, and other resources. Keeping alumni engaged with valuable insights and opportunities means your alumni are more likely to be open to making donations and volunteering. Just think about the opposite case – what if you only heard from your college alumni association when they had a donation campaign? It might feel like a one-way relationship, and such relationships tend not to last long.

What if you’re not sure what to offer your alumni? Take inspiration from the McMaster University Alumni Association. In 2020, they solicited feedback from their alumni and received dozens of suggestions, including requests for online events. Many of these suggestions could be integrated into a virtual community format. For instance, one alumnus requested computer skill training for older people curious about digital technology.

Get Started Building Your Virtual Community

Starting a virtual community is an exciting journey, but it’s not one you should take alone. Find out about Arena’s Social & Communities page for more information on how we can help you grow faster.

Why Virtual Events Are Better With Live Chat: 9 Reasons

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Virtual events and hybrid events have boomed in popularity recently. More companies are using a chat platform for live events to make their events more interactive. Your event team can see and answer questions and encourage connections with a chat service. 

If you’re new to offering a chat experience in your virtual events, use our tips to grow audience engagement, increase your attendee count and offer a memorable attendee experience. 

Nine Reasons Why Companies Are Adding Live Chat To Virtual Events

Here are a few ways adding a chat tool can help your live events strategy. Live chat is influential in lifting sales, marketing, and growing your online audiences. Let’s start by looking at how virtual events powered by live chat grows top-line revenue.

How To Get More Sales With Virtual Events and Live Chat

The sales team can benefit from live chat in several ways. For the best results, invite a few people from sales to each chat experience you run. If they cannot attend live, offer to provide the chat transcript for their review after the event.

1) Get Warm Leads

A warm lead is someone who already knows, likes, and trusts your brand to some degree. From a sales perspective, converting warm leads into customers is usually easier and faster. 

Let’s say that you have 100 chat users in your virtual event chat. Following up with all event attendees is worthwhile, but the follow-up process should be tailored. Review questions and comments chat users post in the chat module. A person who asks about product pricing, shipping, or features is likely to be a high-quality warm lead. Such a lead merits immediate follow-up.

Use the attendee report as a resource for the rest of your chat participants. For example, you may have ten warm leads and 90 other chat users. The sales team will immediately respond to the warm leads. Engage the rest of your chat users using your marketing engagement platform. Check to see if your chat options include the functionality to export a transcript and attendee report so that you can quickly identify the right people to interact with.

2) Deepen Product Knowledge

The ability to answer product questions in a detailed and persuasive manner is crucial for sales. Paying attention to the questions and comments that business professionals and other attendees ask in your chat session has training value. Attending streaming events alongside customers is a powerful way to keep your sales team informed about the latest features and product developments.

After each virtual event, compile a list of the most common questions. Share these questions with the sales team. It may help better interact with prospects during sales calls and meetings.

3) Improve Sales Win Rates With Market Understanding

Understanding your customers’ needs, problems, and concerns is vital to sales success. When a salesperson attends a virtual event, they have a chance to see their customers in action. In particular, sales reps can deepen their understanding of the market by looking for the following:

Questions, especially those questions asked more than once, can help the salesperson improve their prospecting. Knowing the questions prospects tend to ask means you can develop better pitches. Customer feedback can also improve sales presentation slide decks and similar resources.

Reviewing chat messages for problems that people mention is helpful. For example, your prospects may not know that your company offers advanced analytics. If you see users complaining about working with data, paying attention to problems can help.

These benefits for the sales team are significant for newer salespeople who may not know your product and market deeply.

What A Chat Platform For Live Events Improves Marketing Results 

A chat platform can help you reach your key marketing metrics faster and more efficiently. As you become more familiar and skilled with running virtual events, these marketing benefits will compound over time.

4) Boost Engagement

What if your users attended a company conference and could not interact with anybody? That would be a painfully dull event, and those attendees would be less likely to register for future virtual events you offer.

Several factors matter in creating a compelling virtual event like offering a high quality of video, exciting content, and a sense of community connection. Adding live chat to your virtual events transforms your virtual event from a boring lecture to a community experience.

While attendee questions to your company are highly valuable, it is smart to encourage community connections as well. For example, you might organize breakout sessions where current customers can share their experiences with each other and prospects.

5) Increase Time Spent On Your Content

According to SEMrush, the average worldwide bounce rate for all websites is 30%. However, several industries have a bounce rate of over 40% including news & media, real estate, and groceries. When users leave your website quickly, it’s tough to build a connection.

Offering a virtual event with chat apps gives you the power to cut your bounce rate down. When a person signs up for a virtual event, they are usually planning to attend for an extended period of time. As a result, bounce rates fall. By maintaining low bounce rates and engagement, you have an excellent opportunity to grow organic search traffic.

Further, highly engaged prospects are more likely to give you useful feedback about your concern. That qualitative feedback is a useful supplement to your customer data platform. Over time, you will be better able to predict the types of content that reliably connect with customers.

By increasing time on site through virtual events and live chat, you have more opportunities to present calls to action for your users. That means more leads for your sales team to engage after the event.

6) Earn Google’s Trust (and Traffic) 

In digital marketing, the term “E-A-T” has recently gained popularity. The EAT acronym means “Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness.” Becoming a trusted authority in your industry takes deliberate effort over time. It includes publishing useful articles, videos and other resources on your website.

In addition, you can earn credibility through virtual events and by offering a chat window. For example, you can harness the power of content curation. Imagine you are running a tax accounting firm. Earning the attention and trust of accounting clients is challenging. That’s where organizing live events with a chat service helps. 

Global accounting firm Deloitte offered a virtual conference in May 2022 with live presenters and engagement tools. While the Deloitte event was aimed at accounting professionals seeking continuing education, similar events on tax (e.g. tax planning strategies) could be offered to clients. The Deloitte virtual event included two partners serving in co-host roles. Having more than one event host is wise, especially when your virtual events span several days.

An accounting firm that offers tax planning virtual events from December to March can earn trust. The firm can invite speakers to discuss changes to tax laws and regulations that may help their clients save money or avoid audits. Furthermore, you can record the virtual event and then use the transcript to create additional expertise-boosting content assets.

Pursuing E-A-T with live events and live chat also matters for media companies and publishers. Your staff editors, experts, and contributors will draw in the core audience. But why stop there? Increase credibility further by adding more diverse voices to your coverage. For example, you could invite a few well-regarded social media influencers to serve as remote presenters and chat with participants. Those influencers will lend your event more credibility and further grow your audience.

7) Make Your Virtual Events More Compelling With A Social Event

Recent research from Harvard University found that 36% of all Americans experience loneliness. Your virtual events play a role in addressing the loneliness and isolation epidemic. Your virtual event will help people connect with others who share their interests and passions by offering live chat. 

To further encourage social connections and networking, offer a mix of experiences in your virtual event. It is especially important to provide breakout sessions and small group experiences. These smaller group gatherings make it easier for your audience to connect with each other. 

Growing Your Audience With Chat-Powered Virtual Events

Online publishers and media companies are increasingly turning to online events as a strategy to grow their audience. Adding live chat makes publisher virtual events more effective in several ways.

8) Increase Subscriber Retention

In publishing, it is traditional to put significant effort into acquiring paying subscribers. Retaining subscribers is a different story. Your subscribers have many different demands on their attention. One-quarter of American households pay for at least three streaming services today. 

Offering virtual events supported by live chat as a subscriber-only benefit is a powerful way to keep your subscribers engaged.

9) Develop Strategic Alliances With Virtual Events

Alliances with influencers, experts, and authors can all play a role in helping you to grow your audience. As you plan your event series, set a goal to include special guests interesting to your audience. 

The Wall St Journal has a conference series called WSJ Live that includes online events for different executive audiences like CIO Exchange and the CMO Network Member Breakout. You may not have the Wall St Journal’s resources, but this strategy can be adapted. For example, a lifestyle publication might offer virtual events with up-and-coming chefs to spotlight the most exciting restaurants.

What To Look For In Your Live Chat Tool

You’ve seen many ways a live chat app can lift marketing, sales, and audience growth results. Now, you might be wondering – which chat tool is right for you? Arena Live Chat is a great choice, of course. If you’re curious to compare and contrast Arena to other platforms, there are a few key features to keep in mind.

To successfully use live chat for live events, make sure your app includes the following:

When you offer virtual events to your event attendees, participating in live chat should be seamless. That’s why it is essential to have a chat widget appear on your website. There’s nothing for your attendees to install.

During event chat sessions, emotions may run high. Often, that’s a great sign of highly engaged attendees. However, there is also a risk of inappropriate content and chats. Providing detailed instructions to your event moderators is one way to reduce inappropriate behavior. In larger events, chat event moderation is easier when you have a chat tool that automatically filters profanity.

Think of your virtual event as a traditional conference. Some people will be happy to raise their hand and ask a question in public – like posting a question in a public chat. Other people prefer to raise questions and comments privately. Your audience chat experience should include both a public chat room and the capability to send private chat messages back and forth.

It’s crucial to select a live chat platform that works for you today and your future events. 

Today, you might run virtual events for a few dozen attendees. Attendance will increase as your audience grows and more people become interested in your online events. Check to see if your live chat tool can accommodate larger audiences.

Planning a successful virtual event takes time and effort. Your event technology should not add to the burden. Make sure you select a live chat tool that is simple and easy to install and configure. Likewise, your event team should be able to set up events in minutes without resorting to complicated instructions.

Want to see how Arena Live Chat performs? Contact us today to request a demo and you can see how our platform enhances virtual events.

Ready To Try Live Chat For Free?

Now that you know how Live Chat tools can enhance events, your next step is to try a Live Chat Tool. Arena’s group Live Chat tool is simple and allows you to create and embed a chat to your site in minutes. You can see how easy it is to set up in the video below.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5c2aNilRUqM

Increase Live Stream Engagement: 11 Tactics That Work

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Do you want more live stream engagement from your target audience? It’s getting more complex. The competition for viewer engagement is significant.

For example, in a 2020 study, the top three distractions for US employees working from home include social media, smartphones, and binge-watching content. These distractions make it difficult to maintain high levels of live stream engagement.

Whether you are focused on a product launch or other types of virtual events, video streaming technology can help. When you have the right content ideas, delivering engaging content gets much easier. Use these live streaming tips and examples below to create your rough plan to lift streaming engagement over time.

What Is A Live Stream?

A live stream is an online video broadcast where an individual or group of people appear on video to engage with their audience. As a rule of thumb, the live stream experience often includes screen sharing and individuals appearing on camera.

Typically, there are two ways that companies use a live stream to earn revenue. Some companies earn revenue by selling advertising space or sponsorships, especially in entertainment. Most live stream companies use it as part of their content strategy to attract prospects and fill their sales funnel.

Why Now Is The Time To Add Video Streaming To Your Marketing Strategy

Streaming sessions have fast become one of the best ways to attract prospects to your sales funnel. By 2027, the live stream market is projected to grow to $250 billion. The most successful early adopters of livestream video have been in the entertainment niche. Millions of people watch gamers play their favorite video games on Twitch, YouTube, and Facebook.

The stream experience is not limited to gamers, though. Live stream sessions are increasingly being used to sell products (i.e., live shopping), promote products, and supercharge influencer marketing campaigns.

The growth of Live Stream Video Sessions is Booming, as Shown in the Following Statistics:

Investing in live streaming now means you have the opportunity to win in the marketplace as an early adopter.

This finding reveals that live streaming video experiences can become a profit center! Take note of media and entertainment brands looking for ways to grow their subscriber base!

There’s a reason why so many YouTubers and other online content creators encourage their viewers to like and comment on their videos. These techniques are proven to grow their audience.

That doesn’t mean you have to improvise every moment of the session. By all means, script out your content ideas so that you have a rough plan to follow.

Live stream content must be part of your marketing strategy if your target audience includes younger consumers.

This pattern is especially common in industries like apparel, fashion, and beauty, where a video demonstration adds value. It can be difficult to imagine if a piece of clothing or makeup is right for you. Seeing a popular influencer try out these products can make a big difference in conversions.

To grow engagement in your online events, live streaming deserves a place in your strategy. The good news is that you probably already have plenty of content ideas if your company has already published successful social media posts, blog posts, and other forms of content.

Four Companies Winning With Live Streaming

If you’re excited about the potential of adding live stream engagement to your company, your might be wondering: who else is succeeding with live streaming? Several businesses have are successfully using the power of live video to sell products, generate leads and grow their audiences.

The following examples show different types of online events where live streaming played a role

Bloomingdale’s Uses Livestreaming To Sell Products

The major US retailer invited Sandra Choi, creative director at Jimmy Choo, to present a 45-minute live stream session in 2021. To encourage immediate sales, the retailer offered a free personalized product for buying. All told, the company has run dozens of live streaming events to engage customers.

Burberry Partners With Twitch For A Live Stream

Promoting a product for immediate purchase is just one way to use a live stream. Luxury fashion brand Burberry streamed a fashion show in 2020 in partnership with Twitch. This event builds on the brand’s commitment to online events – it ran its first online event in 2010.

SAP Connects With B2B Customers With LinkedIn Live

SAP, a multi-billion dollar technology company based in Germany, has successfully used live video to grow its audience. The tech business has run its online show – SAP BTP Better Together: Customer Conversations – for over a year. Season 1 of the live stream show featured interviews with customers like Ferrara, the Gates Corporation, Evernex and others.

Eaton Answers Customer Questions Live

Eaton, a multi-national power management company, is successfully using LinkedIn Live to create live content. The business has created an “Ask the Experts” video series on various topics like career growth and diversity and inclusion. Eaton’s success shows that you don’t need to have celebrities or influences to make your live stream events interesting. Your employees have amazing expertise that is just waiting to be unlocked!

Outside of fashion and retail, live streaming experiences take different forms. For example, many B2B companies use webinars and other online events to connect with their prospects.

There is one challenge associated with focusing more resources on live stream events. Unlike prerecorded videos and webinars, live stream events require more effort. At a minimum, it is helpful to have at least two people – the presenter and the support person – involved in every live stream. Putting in the effort to create an excellent streaming experience, you will find it easier to maintain audience engagement.

Live Stream Engagement: 11 Ways To Get More Viewers

Now you’ve seen how companies are achieving wins with live streaming, it’s time to build your live streaming session. These tips can be used to enhance an existing live stream program or help you launch your first live stream session successfully.

  1. Set Your Marketing Goal For The Livestream 

Planning and executing a successful live stream video experience will take time and resources. Before you commit to those resources, choose a key metric and goal to evaluate the success of your event. For example, you might track the number of orders for the promoted product or the number of leads generated.

  1. Start With What Works With Your Audience

Coming up with amazing content ideas is tough! To save time, review your analytics software to see which content has resonated with your audience in the past. A customer data platform makes it easier to attribute purchases and lead generation to specific content posts. If you don’t have a CDP in place, use other metrics like pageviews, shares, and engagement time to measure what’s working.

  1. Seek Out Product Demonstration Opportunities

As you plan your live stream experience, plan a few ways to show your product. For software, a demo with real data can work well. Even colleges and universities can use demonstrations – use a smartphone and show people around your campus. These product demonstrations can form the core of the live stream in a live shopping event. Or you can add a product demo to the end of a different event.

  1. Invite A Popular Influencer To Join You

There’s a reason why well-known authors and actors are often asked to give keynote talks at conferences – it helps to draw in the crowds. Apply the same principle to your streaming events by inviting an influencer to join you. When you strike the deal with the influencer, invite them to help you promote the event.

  1. Marketing The Live Stream Event Is Critical

Once you’ve chosen a live stream platform, it’s time to promote your event. You can do this by posting on your social media platforms, running paid ads, and sending email sequences to your list.

Give your audience to register for the event by clicking a link and entering email information. Once someone is registered, send them automatic email reminders to be more likely to attend.

By asking your audience to register, you get a clearer idea of how many viewers to expect. It also helps to include an event hashtag on social media. This can increase follower engagement and generate more excitement for your live stream.

  1. Select Your Live Stream Platform

There are two ways you can run a video streaming session: use an existing social platform or set up a branded platform that you control.

Social platforms like YouTube, Facebook, and Twitch make it easy to start a live broadcast. If your brand already has a significant presence on one of those platforms, it makes sense to stream there. However, there is a downside to relying on a third party. Your audience may become easily distracted by notifications, messages, and other interactions.

To minimize interruptions and distractions, set up your own platform using a tool like Restream lets you broadcast on more than 30 social media platforms simultaneously.

A professional platform also comes with features that help you monetize your live stream, increase audience engagement, and run post-broadcast analytics. If you don’t go with Restream, consider other industry-leading platforms like Vimeo, Dacast or Brightcove.

Vimeo OTT offers a seamless integration with Arena Live Chat. This way you can provide your audience with better engagement experiences during your live events.

  1. Commit To A Livestreaming Schedule 

Your live stream performance may have limited results when you first get started. That’s why a one-off approach to running a live stream is less likely to succeed. Instead, successful streaming strategies tend to commit to an ongoing schedule of streaming. Running a multi-year streaming show like Twitch’s Critical Role is one approach. Alternatively, consider setting up a three or part-event series tied to a specific theme like the holiday shopping season.

  1. Use Incentives, Urgency And Deadlines To Lift Engagement

Urgency is a time-tested principle in sales and marketing. It also applies to growing your live stream engagement. Remember Bloomingdale’s live streaming example from above? The company offered incentives to encourage people to show up at the event and place an order during the event. There are multiple ways to implement this strategy: discounts, limited edition products or offering early access.

  1. Get Inspiration From Other Live Streams

When you focus too much on your live stream engagement metrics, staying creative and fresh gets more difficult. Certainly, measurement matters (we’ll cover it in the next tip). However, engagement also requires ideas and inspiration!

That’s why we’re giving you the performance to spend an afternoon hanging out on live streaming platforms. Ideally, look for streaming shows and episodes that are appealing to a similar audience. If you don’t find any streams like that, look at how entertainment-oriented streamers keep their viewer count high throughout their videos. For example, look at how often live stream content creators interact with their audience via the live chat during their stream. In addition, look at how streamers presented sponsored content and messages to their audience.

Making time to study those who have mastered the art of live stream engagement is one of the best ways to shorten your learning curve.

  1. Level Up Your Audio and Video Equipment

Upgrading the quality of your gear is a smart way to make your live stream come through loud and clear. Tools like the Shure MV88+ Video Kit connect directly to your smartphone for enhanced audio and video quality. It comes with a microphone, tripod, and headphones. You can also stand out with a multi-camera setup by purchasing software like OBS Studio, Wirecast, or VidBlasterX.

  1. Measure And Optimize Your Live Stream

The final way to improve your engagement and conversion numbers over time is to measure each streaming event. Start with the easy to measure metrics like viewer count, activity levels in your live chat and traffic on your website. If your live stream event includes coupons or other trackable calls to action, measure those factors as well. With each live stream you run, taking 15-30 minutes to analyze what worked and what didn’t will gradually lift your engagement numbers over time.

The One App That Lifts Live Stream Engagement Every Time

Your live stream events should be a two-way street. You present and your audience raises questions and gives you feedback. That’s why adding Live Chat to your website is so important. Arena Live Chat only takes a few minutes to install and set up.

Set Up Your WordPress Live Blog Plugin In 7 Steps

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Adding a WordPress live blog plugin to your website is one of the best ways to lift audience engagement and conversions. This step-by-step guide will discover precisely how to install the Arena Live Blog WordPress plugin. You’ll also discover why using a live blogging platform benefits your business.

Use the table of contents below to jump straight to the WordPress live blog plugin setup steps if you’re ready for that. Not sure if a live blog makes sense for your organization? Jump ahead to section 2 of this definitive guide. 

How To Install Live Blog Plugin To Your WordPress Website

The Arena Live Blog WordPress plugin is simple and easy to install.

With Arena’s plugin, you can create Live Blog sessions for live events, event coverage for news, and more. That’s not all – it can also be used for sports coverage, covering court proceedings, and engaging conference attendees. 

With our blogging plugin, your Live Blog can be fully automated or moderated by an editor or community manager. Besides, you can mix content generated by your content team with user-generated content from social media. 

Arena’s Live Blog platform and plugin provide critical features such as:

  • Real-time Live Blogging functionality
  • Social Media monitoring 
  • Social Media integration (i.e., Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, Instagram)
  • Posting user-generated content curated from social media 
  • Automatic or moderated sports play-by-play
  • Configuration options to make the plugin fully brandable 
  • Sports calendar integration 
  • Real-time audience analytics
  • Cross-posting to social media
  • Optimization for mobile 
  • Unlimited editors to manage your live events
  • Live Chat integration to encourage ongoing discussion about your event

7 Steps to Live Blogging with WordPress

Getting started with live blogging is fundamentally similar to posting a regular post in WordPress.  

It takes just a few steps to get started with a Live Blog on WordPress and offer your audience updated content in real-time. With Arena’s Live Blog, you can quickly start a live blog, including the ability to embed photos, videos, and other media types in your posts. 

Step 1: Install The Arena Plugin On Your WordPress Website

To get started, simply access the “Plugin” section within WordPress and click “Add New.” Then, all you have to do is search for Arena.im in the list of featured plugins and click “Install Now.”

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Step 2: Setting up your account 

The next step is to set up your company’s account with the Arena plugin. To do that, go to the “Settings” section and click “Arena.” That’s where you will find accounts, organizations, and site preferences. You must select the account you will use to live Blog, choose your site, and click. 

The plugin will then grant you access to Arena’s tool so it can automate Live Blog posts. Depending on your WordPress configurations, you may need to activate the Live Blog function in your posts. 

 Tip: Don’t have an Arena account? You can start using Arena for free.

 

 

Step 3: Create Your First Live Blog Post 

Creating your first Live Blog post is simple.

  • Open the Arena plugin in WordPress
  • Click “Create New Event” 
  • Set up your preferences for the new event
    – Title and Description (keep SEO requirements in mind here because an optimized Title and Description can help you to rank better on Google)
    – Choose an Event Category: For example, News, Film and TV, Shows, or Finance.
    – Choose Real-Time Options: To maximize real-time blog updates, ensure you enable real-time updates.

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Step 4: Add A Social Stream To Your Live Blog

Want to add social media content to your Live Blog? Use this step!

From the Arena plugin dashboard in WordPress, you can click “Add Stream” to search for accounts and keywords from social media and add content to your Live Blog curation. For instance, you could choose to display tweets or videos from a news channel or influencer account. All you have to do is insert the link to the channel or account.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nxgRBLN5cGU

You can also set up the event status (live, upcoming, or done), add elements like tags, and enable comments or a chat room in the Live Blog post.

Remember that it is best to ask permission before repurposing social media content in your event, especially with influencers.

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Step 5: Customize the Live Blog Appearance And Advanced Options 

Use the Arena Live Blog customization features to provide a seamless experience for your audience. When the look and feel of the Live Blog match your brand, users are more likely to engage because the Live Blog will be consistent with the rest of your website.

Arena Live Blog on WordPress offers the following customization options:

  • Color
  • Position in the blog post (we recommend placing the Live Blog close to the top of your WordPress blog to maximize engagement)
  • Language
  • Enable sound alerts so that users get an audio notification when a new update is made
  • Add polls (polls allow you to pose questions and get feedback quickly. It’s one of the best and easiest ways to engage your audience).

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Step 6: Publish Your Live Blog

Now it’s time to publish your Live Blog in your post. 

To integrate your WordPress editor to the settings you did with the Arena plugin, click “Add Interactive content by Arena” in the editor interface.

You can click to add a new Live Blog or select an existing one. All you have to do next is click “add” to the Live Blogs you want to publish and simply click “Publish” on the WordPress page. 

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Step 7: Share The Link To Your Live Blog With Your Team

Get the link to your Live Blog, follow these steps:

  • Go to the Arena dashboard
  • Find the HTML code for the LiveBlog
  • Copy the HTML code to the Live Blog 
  • Paste it into the HTML box in the WordPress editor. 

This link will be seen only by you and other team members with access to your company’s WordPress credentials. The link will open in a new window on the editor page where you can write and publish updates.

You’re practically done! You can click “preview” to visualize how it will look and “update” to apply changes.

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Video: See The Entire Process Of Creating a Live Blog In WordPress

In the video below, you can better understand the entire process of creating a Live Blog.

 

 

Now that you know how to set up a WordPress live blog plugin for your website, you must set up your Arena account. Create your own Arena Live Blog – it’s free to try! And check out this list of more WordPress plugins for live events.

3 Reasons You Need A Live Blogging Platform To Win

Real-time coverage was a luxury offered by the world’s largest media brands. That’s changing today for a few reasons.

1) People Expect Real-Time Coverage

Twitter and other social media platforms have conditioned millions of consumers to expect fast responses. News organizations offering breaking news style coverage of important events like elections, sports, and beyond find it easier to win attention online.

2) Growing Competition For Audience Attention

More and more consumers expect real-time coverage of news and fast responses to questions. Your audiences expect speed because they are used to one-click ordering and finding exciting content in seconds.

Attracting and engaging your audience may become very difficult without a blogging platform that makes it easy to create and share relevant content. 

3) Increased Customer Service Expectations

Brands and publishers are expected to post updates to keep their audiences engaged. Publishers and media brands focused on current events, and coverage of sports events need new ways to connect with audiences. 

What is a Live Blog?

A live blog, also known as “live updates,” is a content platform that makes it easy to create and publish content. Journalists were among the first to use live blogs to cover breaking news stories in politics like elections. Today, the benefits of live blogging go far beyond the news media.

A live blog is unique because it’s designed for rapid updates as events unfold. As you find out more details, your team can update a live-blogged blog entry regularly. As a result, your reader will keep coming back over and over again because your website offers new and exciting information. 

While written blog posts are the most common format in live blogging, they are not the only option.

Live blog posts can also include:

  • Photos
  • Videos
  • Social media posts

With a Live Blog installed on your website, you can create a curated experience for your audience as breaking news, current events, and other developments unfold. 

Who Uses Live Blogs?

Initially, media organizations and journalists used live blogging the most. If you have ever seen “live updates” on a news website like CNN or FOX, you’ve seen live blogging in action. It’s especially common for current affairs situations with intense interest, like conferences, elections, and sports.

How Live Blogging Enhances Your Content Strategy

Adding Live Blogging to your toolkit is a powerful way to reach your publishing and marketing goals. Many organizations use Live Goal to reach new readers, increase audience engagement, or automate content production workflow. Live blogs optimize editorial work while offering the final audience a seamless content consumption experience. 

Grow your audience  

A study conducted by the University of London found that readers increasingly prefer live blogs to static content, discovering that live blogs can get up to 300% more views and 233% more visitors than conventional online articles on the same subject.

Just imagine if your website doubled its views and visitors. You’d grow revenue, conversions, and leads immediately.

Increase audience engagement time on your channels

Building a relationship with your audience takes time. If visitors leave after a few seconds, connecting with them is tough. A live blog can be transformational because this technology encourages readers to interact more with your content. 

Also, a live blog empowers your team to keep users on your web page, rather than leaving your website to share their views on social media. Your organic traffic will likely grow when search engines see users spending more time actively engaged on your website.

Diversify your content beyond traditional formats

When Content Walls and Content Hubs have become trendy, Live Blogs help brands stay competitive by diversifying the myriad of content they display on their official channels. Liveblogging is a great way to enrich static content and incorporate short-form content pieces – increasingly valued by audiences – into traditional formats.

Bringing new revenue opportunities

Live Blogs can foster new revenue streams for your company once they boost engagement and content syndication from a monetization standpoint. 

How? A live blog gives your audience a reason to stay on your website longer and keep hitting refresh. More time on your website means more pageviews and opportunities to generate revenue through advertising or selling your products and services.

Becoming an authority in your market

From a branding perspective, Live Blogs allow companies to position themselves as authorities in content curation, which is valuable for brands that deal with massive audiences and those that target niche audiences.

Liveblogging in your content strategy makes your brand more credible and relevant to your audience.

Learning about your audience

Integrating live blog tools into your analytics enables you to get better data for social listening. Live Blog represents a new way to observe your customers’ navigation behavior and how they respond to your content. Ultimately, you can get valuable insights that will lead to a better understanding of your target audience and needs.

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Try Arena Live Blog Today

Want to give Arena’s Live Blog tool a try? You can access our trial version in this link or install our plugin directly on WordPress. Publishers use our tool across 120 countries, including Fox Sports, Microsoft, and Turner.

5 Tips When Setting Up Arena Live Chat For Virtual Learning

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Virtual learning is much more than just educating via the web. Powered by the best technology, it can enhance the learning experience with the right tools. 

More: virtual learning is a whole new way of thinking and teaching, which has a lot of benefits. 

There are also some challenges to be solved, like student engagement.

That’s when a Live Chat tool, like Arena’s, can make a real difference. 

Connecting instructors and students on a friendly platform, Arena Live Chat can be a powerful ally to those who want better results from virtual learning. 

See below for tips & tricks for setting up Arena Live Chat before your class starts.

Planning Digital Education: Create Live Chats In Advance

 Digital education has possibilities that only digital can offer. Arena Live Chat allows you to create chat rooms in advance, thus, saving precious time in the future.

This is especially useful when you are planning an entire course with multiple classes and modules.

And, with Arena Live Chat, this is very easy to do. Just follow the steps below!

  1. Login into your account
  2. Inside the Dashboard, click on Live Chat
  3. Start creating chat rooms

The chat rooms will be automatically saved, and available for use whenever you want. 

For more detailed “how to” steps, check out our article on “How To Setup Arena Live Chat in Advance: tips, tricks & best practices.”

Preparing a High-Class Virtual Classroom with Content Manager

Virtual learning is very dynamic. Every minute is important, and no time can be wasted in a virtual classroom looking for content to illustrate a subject.

The risk is high: you can lose student engagement.

So, to help you get your classes 100% ready, Arena Live Chat has a Content Manager.

There, you can upload all the assets (images and videos) that you’ll use to enrich class lessons.

You can also create specific folders for specific classes to organize your material better.

It’s very simple to use – just a few clicks and voilá! 

  1. Inside the Dashboard, click on Content Manager at the Menu tab on the left
  2. Click on New
  3. Click on New Folder
  4. Start to drag & drop files

Use Polls to Get Real-Time Insights

Arena Live Chat has a polling tool, which can be used to get real-time insights from your students. 

They’re a great way to measure if your content is being assimilated by the students, for example. 

And, you can also prepare polls ahead of time, instead of creating them during the class, thereby, keeping the class involved. 

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In the dashboard, click on Live Chat, then on Polls, then fill out the fields, and click on Save Draft.

  1. Inside the dashboard, click on Live Chat
  2. Click on Polls
  3. Fill out the fields
  4. Click on Save Draft

For more detailed “how to” steps, check out our article on “How To Setup Arena Polls in Advance: tips, tricks & best practices.”

Get Closer To Your Team On Distance Learning 

Education is a team work. And, even working remotely, great teams equal great work when acting together as one unit on distance learning. 

That’s why Arena Live Chat can be controlled at the same time by more than one person, each with various roles and different access to functionalities. 

Roles like an instructor and a moderator, for example, which is very common in virtual learning.

Just follow the steps below.

  1. Inside the dashboard, click on Profile
  2. Click on Invite People
  3. Fill out the forms with the email addresses of your staff

Enriching Learning Experience with Conversion Cards

Conversion Cards are one of the most powerful features of Arena Live Chat to help improve virtual learning experience immediately. 

With them, you can easily share resources during a virtual class, like an Ebook, an exercise, etc. 

So, having the cards on hand is essential for fast deployment, and you can easily create them before the class begins.

One, two, three steps 🙂

  1. Inside the dashboard, click on Live Chat
  2. Click on Conversion Cards
  3. Create how many you think are necessary 

Conclusion: enhancing virtual learning with Arena Live Chat

Arena Live Chat can really take a virtual classroom to the next level. Using it, you can:

  1. Plan an entire course and create live chats for each class in advance
  2. Upload images and videos that you’ll use before the class starts
  3. Get real-time insights about your students with polls
  4. Work together with your team
  5. Easily share resources with Conversion Cards

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1XtqYhRxDM

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As a reaction to the COVID-19 pandemic, virtual learning became commonplace for millions of people around the world in the last few  years. There’s a lot of room for improvement yet, but some things are established already. Having a good tool to connect instructors and students (like Arena Live Chat) is a must-have, and, as in real life, good planning is essential if you want to achieve great results. 

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Future of Cookies In Marketing: Strategies That Work

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Prepare for the cookieless future. User privacy concerns have prompted the advertising industry, Apple, and Google to develop new marketing strategies. New privacy laws make the conventional approach to personalized advertising no longer work. 

To succeed, advertisers need to meet new consumer expectations and regulatory restrictions by creating direct connections with their audiences. Success in a world without third-party cookies starts with understanding how the world has changed.

New Opportunities In The Digital Landscape Changed

The future of cookies will take two primary forms: cohort-based marketing and first-party relationships. These opportunities deserve a prominent place in any effective marketing strategy today.

The Rise of Cohort Based Marketing: Not Ready For Prime Time 

Rather than tracking each user’s online behaviors, the new approach pioneered by Google and adtech companies is cohort-based advertising. This means aiming your advertising at a group of people with similar interests instead of a single user. One example of this trend is the federated learning of cohorts (FLoC) that Google has pioneered. This concept is exciting because it will leverage machine learning to enhance digital advertising.

The FLoC concept was initially developed in 2021 in a privacy sandbox created by Google. This particular technology came to an end in January 2022. There are some ongoing consumer privacy concerns with the approach taken at Google. As a result, the company is moving in a new direction called “Google Topics” (or Topics API). 

It’s not just privacy concerns that cause difficulties for cohort-based marketing. Fundamentally, tracking a large group of people may not be a good match for the customer journey you have developed.   

First-Party Relationship: The New Way To Understand Consumer Behavior

Also known as a first-person cookie, this marketing approach is exciting. A first-party cookie is direct rather than relying on third-party cookie data from others in the marketing industry. For example, a potential customer lands on your website and accepts browser notifications or signs up for your email list. 

Companies can target relevant advertising directly to their potential customers with this direct connection. Using your Customer Data Platform and Google Analytics, you might notice that one user is regularly visiting your “on-sale” pages. Based on that information, you can tailor marketing to that individual user. For example, send them more emails or notifications emphasizing your seasonal sales. In essence, establishing a robust first-party relationship means personalized messaging becomes much more manageable. A deep understanding of what your customers want means you can improve your emails, Google Ads, and other marketing campaigns much faster.

How To Succeed With First Party Cookies

Thriving in a 1st party relationship world requires solving two problems: the need for more website traffic and user consent.

1) Increase Website Traffic

First, this strategy requires potential customers to come to your website. That is getting harder today because many popular websites and tech companies operate as walled gardens. These walled gardens maximize user time on their website rather than sending people elsewhere. 

2) Renewed Focus on Earning Consumer Consent

The second challenge is that privacy standards require you to seek consent to establish a direct relationship with a user. The adtech industry has previously played fast and loose with the privacy rules. Also, privacy regulations like GDPR have pushed companies to change their advertising strategies. It’s not just regulations either – companies like Apple have pushed back hard against invasive tracking methods. As a result, third-party data like traditional cookies are largely becoming obsolete.

Gaining consumer consent in this brave new world requires offering something attractive to users. There are different approaches to gaining consumer consent to individual user tracking. Common solutions include promising users a personalized experience, offering a discount (i.e. a discount code) or a free resource like an exclusive webinar or report.

Audience Engagement: A New Hope For Marketing

The future of cookies is fundamentally focused on creating and deepening direct relationships. Your online presence has to become more exciting and appealing to your potential customers. Your online content, events, and experiences have to be so appealing that your audience happily agrees to receive marketing messages from you.

Three Strategies To Grow And Deepen First Party Relationships

Use the following strategies to keep users returning to your website week after week, even as the digital landscape changes. By the way, offering engaging content and experiences has a secondary marketing benefit. You’re giving your users more chances to share your content with other people. 

1. Boost Investment In Content Marketing and Online Events

To keep people coming back to your website repeatedly, appealing products and services are not enough. Your marketing itself needs to add value like original data, a community of like minded people and exciting content.

So, what exactly does a boosted effort in content marketing look like? According to the Content Marketing Institute, more than half of B2B marketers have increased their spending on video, events (including digital and hybrid), owned media assets (i.e., content you own and control), and paid media.

As third party cookies decline, it’s wise to take inspiration from a variety of brands who are achieving wins in content marketing. 

  • Salesforce offers a wide range of content marketing initiatives like podcasts (e.g. the Marketing Cloudcast and the Marketing Trends podcast), events (i.e. the Dreamforce conference has attracted tens of thousands of attendees) and much more.
  • Dropbox shows that interactive approaches to content marketing can become wildly successful. A few years ago, Dropbox created a “What kind of marketer are you?” quiz to create awareness – a campaign that attracted significant leads.
  • PayPal, the well known financial technology firm, shows a simple way to create content marketing: work with your users. PayPal Stories have recently featured a variety of successful small business owners and entrepreneurs. This PayPal approach to content marketing shows that you can make customers the star of your content marketing. 

Investing more deeply in content marketing matters because it gives your customers a reason to keep coming back to your website.  When customers are motivated to visit your site regularly, you have more opportunities to ask for their consent to market to them through their browser, email, and other means.

2. Grow Your Social Media Audiences

The best way to be ready for the end of cookies is to drive the audience to your own website. This way, you can generate proprietary, first-party data about your audience. Attracting your audience from social media is worthwhile because these audiences have already shown interest in your brand.

Since there are many social media platforms, there are two simple techniques to decide which platform to focus on. Start with your customers – what social media platforms do they like the most? Running a survey of your customers to ask them about their favorite social media sites can help to guide you.

Further, you also want to think about which platforms have sufficient reach and advertising opportunities. For example, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok have a significant market share and interesting significant advertising features. Building a following on those platforms is another way to grow despite the uncertain future of cookies.

3. Build Your Customer Data Platform

Simply increasing the number of website visitors and subscribers is not enough to succeed in a cookie-less future. It’s vital to deepen your understanding of consumer behavior.

Implementing a Customer Data Platform is a significant next step. A CDP connects to your existing apps and platforms like your email marketing software, Google Analytics, and CRM. Drawing together multiple sources, it can help you understand the content and experiences that your customers engage in before buying. 

Once you have a CDP in place, use to understand the customer journey in detail. Look at how many touchpoints a potential customer has with your brand before they buy. For example, you might see that high value buyers attend events like live shopping and download a few specific types of content.

As a result, you can quickly refresh your advertising strategies monthly based on the specific patterns your users are engaged in.

What To Do This Month To Thrive Without Traditional Cookies 

Choosing the right marketing strategy matters, but your team also needs to know what exactly to do this week and this month to succeed. Use these tactics to win in today’s marketing game without focusing on third-party cookies. 

1. Integrated Email Marketing Analytics

The emergence of new marketing opportunities like the metaverse is exciting. Positioning your brand to win in these emerging areas can pay off long-term. However, you also need to keep your eye on this quarter’s results. 

Optimizing your email marketing effectiveness remains one of the best ways to drive higher returns. For example, check if your email marketing software supports A/B testing on subject lines, links and other elements. This approach lets you achieve individual user tracking through email.

Logging into your email platform and reviewing its trends on open rates, clicks and replies only give you part of the picture. It is also vital to know whether a subscriber has attended an online event or engaged with your sales team. Arena’s CDP platform makes it easy to connect the dots between email marketing data and other customer interactions.

2. Boost Push Notification Marketing

While email marketing has exceptional ROI, it is not the only opt-in digital marketing option. With push notifications, you ask the customer for permission to send messages to them directly through the browser or mobile apps.

According to Airship research, opt-in rates for mobile app push notifications range from 29% to more than 70%! To earn high opt-in rates from your prospects, keep investing in engaging content and virtual events. When prospects enjoy your content and experiences, they will happily opt in to receive more information from you.

3. Review Your Privacy Policy

Customer expectations for privacy and data protection are increasing every year. As marketers pivot away from cookies, your privacy policy needs to keep up. There are several layers to updating your privacy policy for the post cookie era.

Start by reviewing your privacy policy to see if it reflects the customer data you are currently collecting. If your privacy policy was last updated over a year ago, it might be out of date. For example, adopting a customer data platform to build a comprehensive customer profile may require an update to your privacy policy because you are changing how you use data.

Next, take a hard look at your security safeguards. You probably have robust systems to protect highly sensitive data like payment data. However, your marketing databases also contain personal information, ensuring that data is protected.

The New Way To Achieve Personalized Marketing 

Cookies were powerful because they unlocked personalization for digital marketers. As we say goodbye to cookies as a central strategy, how can you keep data-driven personalization?

The answer lies in setting up a customer data platform for your brand. It’s more than data dashboards and exciting reports. A customer data platform is one of the best ways to identify advocates and passionate fans in your audience. With a CDP, your marketing team can also learn which marketing assets are driving your results.

Discover how a customer data platform can solve today’s most pressing problems in marketing. Download Arena’s CDP Ebook: The Future of Marketing and Sales. Your marketing personas will be grounded in factual data with a CDP in place.

The best Live Chat for business: a definitive guide

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Companies are continually battling to improve their audience engagement and offer more dynamic experiences for their customers. As a result, Live Chat solutions have increasingly been used to strengthen the relationship between customers and brands.

Live Chat is a tool that allows customers to send messages to each other, answer polls, ask questions, and interact with a company while browsing products and viewing content. 

Traditionally used to enhance the customer support experience, Live Chat has grown into something much more. Live Chat can also be used to enhance audience engagement by letting users interact in real-time, partake in relevant conversations, and share their opinions. 

When used for customer support, Live Chat quickly connects customers to support agents. But seeing the need for more user interaction, the role of Live Chat changed.

The community effect is more than conceptual, it is present live, at the time of purchase. Engagement with the public allows for better interaction between users and companies.

Today, Live Chat is used strategically to increase audience engagement. Companies can even set up live group chat rooms and create a community on their website, leading to a more favorable shopping experience.

Use cases for Live Chat:

The top criteria for selecting the best Live Chat Tool

Ok, so you have decided that it’s time to adopt a Live Chat solution to increase audience engagement, support your service or content operation, and of course, help and delight your customers. There are dozens of software options in the market, so how can you choose what best suits your business needs?

Different Live Chat tools come with varying options of setting and functionalities, so you should be aware of key existing features and best practices for Live Chat to make a more assertive choice. 

People are used to having hybrid conversations on a daily basis and sending pictures and videos all the time to their friends and family. So why should communication with brands and other users be any different?

By choosing the right Live Chat software, you’ll let customers seamlessly interact with each other and your company like never before. Absorbing these formats makes interactions more fluid and can help resolve requests faster since customers can send pictures related to products and services.

We have prepared a list of features to consider when choosing a Live Chat solution for your company. Check it out:

1) Direct Messaging

All Live Chat software should have a direct messaging feature. This lets users share their ideas about trending topics, live streaming, and live events. It also gives your brand a way to build relationships with customers. 

2) Social Features

Some Live Chat solutions offer GIFs, reactions, emojis and social features such as “like” buttons, which make the conversation more fun by simulating social networks. They can be great for companies that want to create a more personalized Live Chat experience. 

3) Group Live Chat

Companies that organize live events, conferences, and live transmissions should consider Live Group Chat as a channel to bring together the audience – where they can discuss your content in a real-time forum. 

Live Group Chat gives companies more ownership of their audience while allowing people to chat in their channels instead of social media, for example. Ultimately, it can boost engagement and time spent on your website. Brans like Vans, for instance, use Arena Live Chat to retain users longer in their website.

To organize the conversations, it’s helpful to find a tool that can categorize topics into separate channels. Find a Live Chat tool that can integrate with your broadcast or live stream event. 

4) Advanced Tools

Some Live Chat tools include advanced features for engaging your audience and making sales. 

To increase conversion rates, a conversion cards feature lets you add several calls to action in your chats. These can include product photos, pricing details, or sign-up links. 

Other features like polls allow you to gather user data and understand their viewpoint. Simply ask a question, create a few preset answers, and see which one generates the best results. 

A dedicated Q&A tool encourages users to ask questions and lets you answer them. This will encourage more user interaction and can keep users on your Live Chat longer. 

5) Integrations with third-party business software

Messaging app integration is one thing, but even more importantly, you should look for solutions that integrate into your business and analytics software. 

Live Chat tools don’t just work on their own, they offer better results when integrated to Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Customer Data Platforms (CDP), Customer Management Systems (CMS), and sales automation software, for instance.

Such integrations allow you to have a unified view of the customer and manage leads without leaving the chat interface – checking information about customers’ profile and sales records. 

6) Mobile app integration

Many companies bet on Live Chat only for websites. According to a study pulled from Google Analytics’ Benchmarking Feature, 68.1% of global website traffic in 2020 came from mobile users. 

Among the benefits of mobile app integration is the possibility to track customers on the go with geo-localization tools, for example, and better understand their mobile behavior. 

7) Pricing

Another major factor is pricing. Some tools might seem super complete, but their pricing is impractical depending on the size and scope of your business. Analyzing key engagement metrics and the aspects you wish to improve is a great way to understand your needs and find a tool with compatible pricing.

8) Analytics Tools

A good pack of Live Chat essential features also include analytics integration and monitoring of visitor details, average time spent on sessions, chat history, etc. Some platforms even allow you to generate reports on the sales that were assisted by chat, which helps in monitoring and improving customer care strategies. 

9) Brand Customization

It is important that the Live Chat you choose has good customization options. Just like other touchpoints with the customer, Live Chat should be consistent with your brand’s identity and color palette, so make sure you pick a solution that offers enough widgets to give your chat the right look.

10) Scalable Chat

For enterprise businesses and companies that want to offer massive Live Group Chat sessions, like publishers and live events companies, it’s important to have scale. If you want to gather multiple people in a chat session, you should choose a solution that can handle chatrooms with sometimes hundreds of thousands of concurrent users.

11) Security

One of the most important aspects to check with Live Chat vendors is security. Does the Live Chat have an active firewall and data backup? What are the infrastructure and privacy policies like? Are security issues related to the chat handled in house or by the vendor?

You should always make a risk analysis regarding data breaches and cyber-attacks before purchasing any software, and it wouldn’t be any different when purchasing a Live Chat tool.  

12) Spam Control and Shadow Banning

Live Chat is about being customer-centric, engaging customers, and helping solve their doubts, but it is not free of spams and abusive messages. Especially when it comes to open Live Group Chats, like the ones used by publishers and live broadcasters, it is vital to have a solution that automatically spots and bans spam and flooding messages.

13) Integrations with messaging apps

Some Live Chat solutions offer integrations with messaging apps beyond your website, like with messaging apps such as Facebook Messenger, Telegram, WhatsApp, and other social media messaging apps.

By integrating other communication channels into Live Chat, it’s easier to deliver contextual support without the customer having to move across different platforms and making the same requests repeatedly. 

A study from Aberdeen Group shows that companies can retain 89% of their customers by offering consistent service quality across multiple channels, while companies that don’t do that have only a 33% retention rate.

14) Cloud or on-premise deployment

Your company should also decide if the Live Chat system will be cloud-hosted (on a third party server) or installed on-premise (a dedicated server maintained by your IT department). 

Cloud-hosted systems are more friendly and flexible to the operations team. However, if you want to keep all data and information within your company, then you can choose an on-premise deployment. 

15. Level of proactivity

A Live Chat tool can be reactive, a window that is just there waiting for visitors to click on it. Or, it can offer settings for proactive communication, such as automated personalized messages to engage users in different moments. 

Even though it’s interesting to have Live Chat as a non-intrusive channel for the customer, you should have the option to personalize messages in the chat window according to visitors’ navigation patterns and behavioral indicators. 

Want to test Live Chat on your business?

If you want to test Live Chat Solutions, Arena has one of the most complete options on the market, and the best thing is that you can try it for free!

The 4 Best Gaming Chat Apps

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Gaming chat apps give players the ability to connect with their audiences effectively. Taking the time to find the right tool for your audience and goals makes all the difference. 

Livestream Gaming Is Worth Billions

Livestreaming video gameplay has become big business! Whether you prefer to play Dota, Overwatch, League of Legends, Elden Ring, or other popular games, eSports and game streamers are building significant entertainment businesses and careers today. According to Juniper Research, game streaming and esports are already generating $1 billion in revenue. That’s not all – the industry is forecast to generate billions of dollars – $3.5 billion to be exact – by 2025. 

That explosive growth means more and more players and entertainers will jump into the live streaming market. Those new perspectives and styles mean more options for people to find streamers they like.

There is a dark side to the growth of streaming – audience engagement will become more difficult. As your audience gets even more choices to get their gaming fix, streamers will need to look for new ways to stand out. Inviting special guests, developing new jokes, and playing the latest games will all play a role.

However, you also need to give your audience an appealing way to get involved. That’s where using gaming chat apps is powerful. When your audience has access to a chat room to ask questions, applaud your play and engage with friends, the stream becomes a social experience. That means that your audience is likely to keep returning to your session repeatedly.

5 Ways Gaming Chat Apps Will Grow Your Audience

Adding gaming chat apps to your game streaming brings several powerful benefits. Achieving all of these benefits may take some practice, so don’t worry if it takes you a while to realize all of these gains.

1 Verify streaming quality

Streaming technology has come a long way over the past few years, but it is still far from perfect. With a gaming chat app, you can run a quick soundcheck and instantly determine if your audience can hear and see you. Getting quick technical feedback means solving glitches fast and keeping your audience engaged. Neglecting this factor can drive your audience away.

2 Get more content ideas

As a streamer, you’re on stage! It is up to you to perform and share exciting stories and jokes with your audience. After a while, you might feel some level of creative burnout. Fortunately, your audience is full of ideas! By paying attention to the comments and questions in your chat app, you can get new ideas for future streaming sessions. Maybe your audience wants to see you play a different type of character or solve a problem? Add these audience suggestions to your ‘ideas file,’ and you’ll never struggle to come up with fresh ideas in your streaming sessions.

3 Test product ideas

What if you have a new idea for a product like a mod for a game or merchandise? Before investing significant time and energy into developing the product, use chat apps to get rapid feedback. For example, you could work with an artist to produce a mockup of a product idea and share it with your audience in a stream. If you see many people asking how to buy it, that is an excellent signal to move ahead! 

Likewise, the reverse reaction – a lack of audience interest in a new product idea – is valuable. You’ve just saved yourself from pursuing an idea that may not find traction in the market.

4 Deepen audience loyalty

Building an engaged audience for your streaming career doesn’t happen overnight. Instead, it takes regular engagement – answering questions, interacting with comments, and more. Using gaming chap apps in your live streams lets you interact with the audience as the stream unfolds. That’s a powerful way to make your audience feel valued and eager to keep coming back for more.

5 Increase advertising revenue

By adding chat apps to your streaming, you give your audience a social experience. Not only will they be entertained by your stream, but they will also have the chance to connect with other people. Now that your audience has an easy way to interact with other viewers, they are likely to stay engaged with you for longer periods. Ultimately, this translates into higher advertising revenues.

Now that you know how gaming chat apps can grow your audience and engage

The 4 Best Gaming Chat Apps

These significant platforms give you access to users, text chat features, voice chats, social features, and more to easily connect with channel viewers.

For many streamers, Twitch is a popular choice for streaming. Certainly, Twitch has advantages like a large user base. Yet Twitch is no longer the only or best option for all streamers today.

Arena

  • Chat Type: Text 
  • Key Features: social media integration, profanity filters, embed the app on your website
  • Pricing: the basic version is free! For game streamers with larger audiences, consider one of the paid plans. 
  • Free Trial Available: you can use the free basic plan or sign up for a free trial of one of the higher-end plans

You may not have used Arena yet, but it is one of the most powerful live chat tools on the market. This lightweight chat app is designed to keep large virtual audiences engaged. Arena Live Chat can be installed on your website in a few minutes, so there are no delays. This chat tool also has chat restrictions which means less work for chat administrators.

At this time, Arena does not support voice calls or video chats. However, keeping your audience in a text-only chat window is helpful. When attempting something difficult in League of Legends or other challenging online games, you may prefer to focus on gaming.  

Twitch 

  • Key Features: Twitch has millions of active users, including many hard-core gamers 
  • Pricing: $5 to $25 per month, depending on the plan
  • Free Trial Available: the partner program does not have a free trial app

Twitch has the advantage of a significant gaming community of game enthusiasts – over 2 million active users, according to the Business of Apps. The large audience potential Twitch offers is very appealing to game streamers. However, there are some drawbacks to Twitch. To access the platform’s most powerful capabilities, streamers must fee the company’s Twitch Partner Program requirements, including mandatory training. 

Discord

  • Key Features: Discord offers text chat and voice chat capabilities
  • Pricing: there is a paid version of Discord called Discord Nitro ($99 per year) that offers large file transfer options, custom emojis, and more customization options
  • Free Trial Available: there is a free version of Discord, so you can test the platform

Launching a Discord server has become a popular choice for social gamers due to the platform’s focus on audio means it has excellent sound quality. It is also easy to create a different voice channel for different groups of Discord users. High audio quality communication is the perfect choice for many hard-core gamers who want to focus on their gameplay. The service includes direct messaging (i.e., the ability to send direct messages to other users) and file transfer.

Join a few public servers before taking the time and effort to become a server owner. See how other streamers run their game nights, interact with fans and create a great gaming experience.

Epic Game Store

  • Key Features: among gaming platforms, Epic Game Store stands out because it offers free games and game communication. 
  • Pricing: None
  • Free Trial Available: you can play some games for free on the platform.

Like Twitch, the Epic Game Store has an application-based program for streamers called Support-A-Creator. Essentially, streamers earn a 5% affiliate commission on purchases. There are several requirements to qualify for the Support-A-Creator program, including having at least 1,000 followers on social media platforms and following the service’s terms of service. Beyond this core feature for monetization, the Epic Game Store website sets expectations: “please expect modest results.”

The Epic Game Store approach to streaming is best suited to a few cases, including playing Fortnite and other epic games. Larger entertainment companies may prefer to use a multi-gaming platform not focused on Epic game titles. 

Which Gamer Chat App Is Right For You?

With all of the chat applications on the market, choosing the right app for your needs can take time and experimentation. To simplify the process, ask yourself which of the following categories best suits your needs.

Entry Level

An entry-level gamer chat app like Epic Games is a good choice for someone just getting started. You might have one or two thousand people in your audience and have modest revenue goals. In that case, a more straightforward app makes sense.

Intermediate Level

In the intermediate category, you have more choices for a voice chat service. A Gamer chat app like Discord makes sense. Setting up private servers for each gaming community you serve can help to lift engagement – League of Legends fans might not be interested in Fortnite or DOTA. The lack of a video chat feature may benefit since it can help you focus.

Professional Level

In chat clients, the professional level of chat clients comes down to two options: Arena vs. Twitch. With millions of potential channel viewers, Twitch is a popular choice. Yet, Twitch is not suitable for everyone. For example, your live streaming events might need chat restrictions t0 keep the event family-friendly. Arena’s moderation features like the profanity filter make organizing events for a large community easier. 

Since Arena is installed right on your website, your audience will not suffer through a significant learning curve. 

Arena vs. Twitch: Which Offers The Best Game Chat Experience?

Game chat, whether by voice or text, is an important way to engage your gaming audience. If you’re currently using Twitch, you may want to reconsider your options.

Twitch: Pros and Cons

In the gaming industry, Twitch has become one of the most popular apps with solid video quality and voice quality. Also, Twitch offers a variety of additional features that end users like the option to offer exclusive content. For end users, the platform offers many different channels so you can easily find streams featuring your favorite game.

There are disadvantages to relying exclusively on Twitch however. It is difficult to achieve complete control over the streaming experience. Other channels are just a click a way. That means you may lose users from your game chat.

Arena: The Way To Achieve Complete Control Of Your Gaming Chat App

When you want to make the most of your game time, complete control becomes valuation. You might want a way to sell products or ask users to enter their email address to join your list. With an off the shelf gaming chat app, full administrative control is tough if not impossible.

The solution is to build your our gaming chat app. Fortunately, there is no complicated coding involved. Instead, you simply need to install Arena Live Chat on your website. By using Live Chat on your website, your audience doesn’t have to download anything from an app store. They simply visit your website and start engaging with their friends. It’s a great way to engage community-minded gamers.

From a business standpoint, using Arena Live Chat instead of Twitch opens up new opportunities. For example, you can gather new data on your audience’s preferences with a customer data platform. With that data in hand, it far easier to understand what your audience wants and what they might be willing to buy. The best part? Your audience will get used to associating your website with leisure time rather than viewing you as one channel among many on a platform like Twitch.

How To Create A Custom Gaming Chat App

Adding a custom gaming chat app experience to your website is simple. For the best experience, download our new ebook: Declare Your Independence From Twitch. Arena Live Chat can be installed in minutes. It’s one of the best ways to engage your audience without the distractions of a voice chat application.

Best Way to Make Live Shopping Successful

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The eCommerce industry boom, since the pandemic, has increased sales capabilities in thousands of different ways. Live shopping is now the new galvanizer. So, how can you drive more revenue to your website with live streaming?

A novel concept taken from an older idea – the Shopping Channel – is this live shopping solution.

This easy format mixed in with social media excitement is the current burner, and when you throw in the weight of Tik-Tok influencers or other media stars as hosts to live events, you have a solid winner on your hands.

If you are looking for some live shopping solutions use cases, Alibaba’s live shopping App Tabao just naturally springs from the ground. Dominating the field, at the moment, is the Chinese market. 

But you say to yourself, “Is this just a fad or does live shopping have substance to take the market by storm?” Tabao (mentioned earlier) generated more than 61 billion dollars GMV (Gross Merchandise Volume) in 2020, according to TDinsights. This spurred Amazon to invest in livestream shopping big time in 2021.

The secrets to make live shopping successful

According to an emarketer study, live shopping will be a market of 623 billion dollars in 2023. 80% of consumers prefer watching videos about products rather than reading about them. People expect to be entertained today. By next year more than 30% will increase. So, if you are planning to create an ecommerce presence or if you already work with this, you should dive into this amazingly fast growing market.

Just ask yourself this rhetorical question,”How can I use live shopping to generate ecommerce revenue?”

1- Live Events engage audiences

If you haven’t started using live shopping yet, time’s a wasting. Start creating live events and engage people with good content and tools that can provide you with insights, data, audience engagement and customer loyalty. Creating “Lives” is a challenge that you can surmount with some tricks, like good planning and organization . A big tip: you need to listen, ask, interact and just not create ads in a live streaming. The big picture comes when you provide content tailored to your customer and listen to their desires, then making this happen.

2 – Typing… making people generate insights

People love to be mentioned and honored. They like to be wooed and entertained. The pandemic has created a vacuum of boredom that is being filled with live shopping solutions.  

By giving them prizes, they will go crazy. Giving them discount coupons to use in a limited time will increase sales from their desires. 

Using a chat like Arena Live Chat, you can enrich your customer profile with their favorite products that you can get from Arena’s Customer Data Platform (CDP).

How does the audience speak about competitor’s products? Using personas and single sign-on you can read more data about them and make wiser decisions about your marketing mix.

The devil is in the details which is what you need to access your ideal customer from the audience.

Make them enjoy the shopping extravaganza your live event is all about and you’ll have a fan for life.

3 – Live shopping: Live conversion 

Imagine creating a live event on youtube or facebook. There you need to ask people to enter your website and then “shit happens”. Common sense says that it is impossible 100% of our clicks really become visits. People are fickle and have short attention spans in this go-go world. Also do you want to generate revenue or friction? 

Make your website the rising star instead of an external service. Guaranteed that more conversions will happen because people don’t like to change their navigation. On average, people click 22 times until they convert at ecommerce. Hit the nail once to drive sales.  

4 – Data can be creative

Imagine that you can manage an audience and create personalized offers during your live event, look at comments and, better yet, use what people are chatting about to generate creative things as you do on social media. If your audience is talking about other products, how can you use that to your benefit? What do they like the most about that product? What do they dislike? Ask them questions in real-time, make polls, request reviews, and create some fun with that. Understanding your audience will help you choose the optimum strategy.

5 – Answering your audience is intelligent

People with a buying intention normally have some doubts about prices, size, deadlines, colors. If they are buying, they want to know what they are getting for their money. And, they don’t like surprises because key information has been withheld. You can run a Q&A session to narrow their buying intention. By answering people at your live stream, you avoid them “googling” and becoming disengaged. Let’s be honest, if they google your product or categories, how many competitors will they find? So use the moment to answer objections and make deals.

In the end, it is easy to turn your website into a Youtube or Twitch type presence. With that type of venue, you can manage audiences, get to know your customers, enrich their profiles with preferences, and sell directly without needing to run ads to capture the audience again. Don’t let them leave your live event, on your website, with money in their pockets. Use the moment when  you have already acquired that customer in some way because it takes money and time to acquire a customer. Live shopping is bout a shortcut to your clients’ heart and better conversion rates and you can use any white label live shopping software, your live stream, and add Arena Live Chat to generate all those amazing solutions.

6 – Live Chat brings home the bacon

Putting Arena’s Live Chat to work to help you convert your live streaming events into revenue generators is easy. With guest influencers engaging the audience, and having the right format for your “lives” can make the experience become a real-time shopping extravaganza.

Adding that dollop of excitement where the audience can ask questions, get answers, and tell their stories will boost your brand at each successive event. Customers will have better experiences, and if there are other attractive products they may make additional purchases while there. An engaged audience that is having fun will shout this out to their fellow netizens and make referrals because of your outstanding products and services. 

Live environments are exciting because they have that sense of urgency, freshness, and professionalism. With content being continually refreshed, new products being placed on the  carousel, and the host adding to the excitement and fun of the moment, how can you not increase conversions with Live Chat at your event?

Have a Live Chat solution for free

You can magnetize new customers’ attention by giving them exclusivity. Personalized service while having an entertaining live shopping experience. Satisfied customers are repeat customers. Expect the crowd to turn out at your next “Live”.

Arena can give you a Live Chat solution right now with no code hassles.You can have it fully operating within minutes on your platform. Did we say it’s free?! Create! Embed! Ready to go!

The world is your oyster when Live shopping is done right.

8 Online Event Ideas for News and Media Publishers

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Online events for publishers and media outlets are a growing way to engage audiences. Run these events effectively, and you can keep your website audiences engaged longer, grow loyalty, and increase ad revenue.

Online Event Ideas for News and Media Publishers

1) Panel Discussions are Great for Audience Engagement 

  • Who Is It For: people interested in the latest insights in a rapidly changing topic
  • What You Need For This Event: a small group of exciting speakers to share insights.

Industry panels are a well-established concept that many publishers and event organizers have run for years. The key to making them successful is to offer a unique experience. The unique experience can be crafted in several ways: access (i.e. the chance for Q&A with CEOs, executives, journalists), networking (i.e. a small event limited to few people) or new insights. 

Note that industry panels go by various names, including summits and forums. For example, the Atlantic has held health-themed events like People v. Cancer and the Education Summit. You don’t have to limit the event to health content. Bloomberg is offering a Technology Summit in June 2022 that will have virtual and in-person options.

2) Executive Focused Event Branded by News and Media Publishers

  • Who Is It For: executives with a common focus like marketing or finance
  • What You Need For This Event: emphasize exclusivity and quality

That’s one reason why it can be hard to keep growing as an executive. Your direct reports may not always feel comfortable bringing new ideas. Conversely, sharing your leadership difficulties with the CEO or Board is not the right forum. Giving executives a place to connect and learn from direct peers is a smart idea. 

For the best results, we suggest filtering attendees for quality. You might offer free admission but advise attendees that you will verify if the event is appropriate to them before handing out tickets. The CMO Club, organized by Salesforce, has featured guest speakers from General Mills, Instagram, and Virtualware.

3) Hobby / Passion Themed Events bring Audience Engagement

  • Who Is It For: attendees passionate about interest and looking to share their interest
  • What You Need For This Event: a guest speaker with deep knowledge of the field is critical.

Connecting with like-minded people who share your passion for history, wine, literature, gaming, and other subjects is exciting. You may already have a lineup of potential speakers – editors, staff, and contributors with specialized expertise as a publisher. Decanter, a wine magazine publisher, has offered virtual events with two ticket options: a ticket with a shipment of wine (£195 or $324 US) and a ticket to the virtual event online only (£10 or $17 US).

As the Decanter example shows, passion and hobby-themed events can be structured in various ways. You can make your event more exclusive by offering to ship a unique item to the audience. This could be as simple as a copy of the guest speaker’s book or as rare as autographed memorabilia.

4) Viewing Party is Also a Good Event Idea

  • Who Is It For: participants with a shared interest in video or TV shows
  • What You Need For This Event: offering prizes or exclusive guests are one way to make a viewing party more appealing

It can be tough to find people who share your taste in today’s world of countless streaming services. Publishers can meet this need by organizing a viewing party. For example, Nerdist organized a virtual watch party for the classic movie “The Princess Bride” in 2020. You can use Arena to run your viewing party – just like Gizmoplex did with a classic movie recently.

5) Offer Early Access To Subscribers Will Grow Your Audience 

  • Who Is It For: publishers with well-known award lists and coverage that people look forward to 
  • What You Need For This Event: A significant audience passionate about a specific topic

For many years, the New York Times Book Review has published lists for the year’s best books. Recently, the publisher created an exclusive virtual event based on their list. The New York Times described a 2021 online event in the following terms:

How do editors of The New York Times Book Review choose the annual 10 Best Books list? Which fiction and nonfiction works made the cut, and why? This year, Times subscribers were the first to find out. On the morning of Nov. 30, before the list was published, The Book Review announced this year’s 10 Best Books list in a virtual event just for subscribers.

6) Organize An Event With Focused Demographic

  • Who Is It For: publishers looking to connect with a specific segment of their audience 
  • What You Need For This Event: A compelling virtual event concept that applies to the target demographic

Many publishers and news organizations have large audiences. Attempting to appeal to everyone in a virtual event is difficult, if not impossible. Instead, consider developing an event focused on a specific audience. Forbes organized the “Forbes 50 over 50” event to celebrate people who have achieved success later in life. Publishers can also apply this concept to other demographics like recent college graduates, women, and others.

7) Host A Multi-Part Virtual Event Series

  • Who Is It For: publishers with an audience passionate about reading
  • What You Need For This Event: A high profile author with a new book coming out

New books by well-known authors have a proven track record of attracting fans. The traditional approach to this type of event is to invite the author to read from their book and invite questions from the audience. That’s not the only way.

History Extra, a history magazine in the United Kingdom, recently offered a five-part virtual lecture series called “The Aftermath of World War II, with Keith Lowe.” Attendees can pay to register for a single event or pay to attend all of the lectures. In addition to the event itself,

8) Plan A Week-Long Event

  • Who Is It For: publishers with experience running more extended events. 
  • What You Need For This Event: a significant number of guest speakers.

Some publishers have a track record of organizing multi-day events. The organization has scheduled Future Healthcare Week Asia. This event is a hybrid format – attendees can participate in-person or online. The Economist event features dozens of speakers to fill a multi-day schedule.

Leverage First-Party Data with CDP 

Collecting data about what your audience likes with Arena customer data platform is vital. With a CDP in place, you’ll know which of your content sparks the highest engagement across all of your assets – articles, videos and events. Unlike surveys, Arena CDP is seamless and doesn’t require time from your users. Click here to start your Arena free trial.

Make More Out of Every Online Event

The online event examples above illustrate the wide range of possibilities publishers can offer. 

Whether you feature your journalists, invite external guests or take different approaches, excellent event content is the foundation of a successful event. 

As you offer more events, you’ll see the importance of interaction. Your audience wants the ability to ask questions and connect with others. Use Arena Live Chat – it takes less than 10 minutes to install – to transform your online event into a community experience.