Live blog monetization is a new, reliable way to add a revenue stream to your news website. Pay attention if increasing advertising revenue is a priority for your business model. We’ll show why and how live blogging is powerful.
Who Is Live Blogging For?
The first live blogs were run by major news organizations like newspapers and TV networks. Today, blog owners, video content creators, and others can use a live blog. This monetization feature on your website makes growing fan engagement much easier.
Live blogging has an advantage over relying on third-party platforms like Facebook Live, Instagram Live, or YouTube. When you publish original content on your website with a live blog, your audience will have a compelling reason to keep coming back. When your audience spends time on your website instead of your Facebook page, you’ll see several benefits.
Live Blog Monetization: Why Use Arena?
There are multiple ways to add a live blog to your digital publishing platform. With all your choices, there are several good reasons to use Arena.
Simple, Fast Installation
Do you have a breaking news style opportunity right now? You can install Arena Live Blog and be up and running in minutes. Arena is fast and easy to use, so you can start generating advertising revenue quickly.
Google AdSense Integration
Google AdSense is one of the most popular methods to generate advertising revenue. Arena has a built-in integration so that you can earn more AdSense revenue from your live blog. If you rely on AdSense today, Arena Live Blog will help you earn even more from Google.
Conversion Cards Expands Revenue Beyond Ads
Earning revenue from ads is powerful. What if your business model includes more than ads? For example, media brands often want to get more paid subscribers. Other companies are interested in lead generation and driving purchases.
We know companies want advertising revenue, leads, and sales. That’s why we build Conversion Cards. Adding a Conversion Card to your live blog makes it easy to generate leads, get more subscribers, and sell more products. You can pick and choose when to use Conversion Cards on your publishing platform.
Attract More Organic Traffic From Search Engines
Unlike a conventional blog post, a live blog makes it easy to create and post new updates. Some of the most successful live blogs are updated every 5-10 minutes where there is breaking news or exciting developments. Those frequent updates send a positive signal to search engines like Google that your website has up-to-date content. You are likely to get more traffic if you are posting quality content that helps people. As your traffic grows, you’ll get more advertising revenue and opportunities to grow your conversions.
Advertising Revenue Vs. Other Revenue Streams
Adding an additional revenue stream is important because it is simple and easy. Your website displays the ad, and you get paid. In contrast, selling digital products, managing affiliate programs, or shipping physical products is much more difficult. Without live blog monetization, your live stream content might excite people, but what if your audience isn’t in the mood to buy? When you have advertising in place, the online event will still bring in revenue.
No rule says you have to choose between advertising revenue and selling products. Many media brands sell physical products, and subscriptions and generate advertising revenue. For example, the New York Times and the BBC.
Running A Live Blog On Your Website Vs. Relying On Social Media
Adding a live blog to your website adds tremendous value to your business. While installing Arena only takes a matter of minutes, there is a learning curve if you are used to social media platforms like Instagram Stories, Facebook Shops, and Facebook Gaming. It’s natural for business owners, publishers and marketers to use their business profiles on social platforms especially when you have a large following.
Relying on a third-party platform exclusively to grow your audience engagement has significant challenges. For example, when you run an event on a social media website you will not get the same depth of information for your customer data platform. That lack of data means it is much more difficult to build a relationship with your audience, follow up or get conversions.
When you have live blog monetization in place, you have more options. For example, your live blog can augment a virtual event with a video streaming platform. This means you could run a virtual conference with a live stream video presentation. However, search engines (and people!) don’t always like to use video exclusively. By augmenting your virtual events with a live blog, you can pull in more organic traffic.
Three Ways To Boost Live Blog Monetization This Month
Once you have your live blog installed and configured, how exactly do you use it to drive more advertising revenue? Start with these five ideas to grow your advertising revenue in the next 30 days.
1) Celebrate Company News With A Live Blog
Company news – especially product releases – is prime material for a live blog. Just think about the excitement that comes with Google and Apple’s annual conferences. While new products are great to highlight, that is not your only option. Other types of company news such as an expansion to a new country or new integrations can also work well for a live blog.
2) Augment A Virtual Event or Conference With A Live Blog
Look through your events and marketing calendar for the next few weeks. Is your company offering any digital events, virtual conferences or other experiences for your audience? If the answer is yes, add a live blog to drive engagement up further.
Imagine you are running a one-day virtual event for your customers. Some attendees might attend the morning sessions while others may only show up for the keynote. By adding a live blog to the experience, you can provide key quotes, summaries and commentary on each part of the virtual event. That means your audience can learn and engage with the event content if they prefer to read over viewing video. After the event ends, the live blog will continue to help you attract organic search traffic to your website.
By the way, your live blog can help to increase live event engagement if you offer access replays to your audience. The excitement of seeing a live blog updated continuously during an event wouldn’t be available when viewing a recording. If there are other incentives to attend live (e.g. a promo code), you may be able to lift live engagement further.
3) Offer “Piggy Back” Live Blog Coverage
What if your company has no company news or virtual events coming up in the next month or so? In that case, there are still opportunities to run a compelling live blog but it does require a bit more creativity.
Take a few minutes to brainstorm with your team about what your audience is currently interested in, excited by or worried about. For example, a live blog experience in August or September might connect to the “back to school” season or the start of the football season. If there are breaking news stories that excite your audience, consider running a live blog about those events on your website.
This approach isn’t limited to consumer audiences either. Let’s say your goal is to connect with investors interested in up-to-the-minute coverage. In that case, look for economic announcements like the monthly jobs report released by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. Every month, there is significant coverage of this announcement. Your organization might decide to offer a short live blog session when the jobs report comes out. Help investors explore the implications such as which industries are growing and which parts of the country are struggling. If this live blog is a hit with your audience, you could transform it into an ongoing series and build a highly engaged audience.
Unlike the first two ways of using a live blog, providing commentary and coverage of an event may not be suitable for every company. It’s a natural fit for media companies, especially those with a specialized focus (e.g. banking news or tech news). It can also work with other types of companies. Keep in mind that it may be more difficult to get conversions or sales. When you have a live blog about company news like new product announcements, customers will have their credit cards to buy to some degree. In contrast, a person looking for general news coverage might not be in a spending mindset so generating direct revenue might be more difficult.
Live Blog Monetization: Where To Go From Here?
Live blog monetization is one of the best ways to engage your audience, grow advertising revenue and build your brand. Unlike running an event on a social media platform, you have the opportunity to collect rich customer data. That’s critically important as we move into the cookieless future. Learn more about live blog here.
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.
There are several virtual conference platforms you can use to host your online event. The best conference platforms let organizers host live stream events, accommodate large audiences, market their events, collect insightful data, broadcast on multiple platforms and devices, and encourage attendee engagement.
To select a virtual event platform for your online conferences and virtual meetings, use the insights provided in this guide to make an informed decision. While our focus is on the best virtual conference platforms for large events, these tools can often be used to run a smaller online meetings as well.
This guide reveals the top 10 virtual conference platforms, including features and pricing information for each so you can make a good decision as the event organizer.
Top 10 Virtual Conference Platforms
We have selected some of the best virtual conference platforms, according to user rankings on Capterra. Please note that these rankings change over time as more users review the apps and other solutions.
1. Grip (Capterra Average Rating: 5 stars out of 5)
Grip offers virtual conference tools suitable for virtual and hybrid event experiences. As the event host, you can stream your online experience to other major streaming solutions like Zoom, YouTube, and Twitch. The software enhances networking, a key part of the attendee experience, through its AI-powered event matchmaking tool. Organizers can add a live stream to Grip’s main stage, and it automatically shows content on the users’ feeds.
The platform’s Event Matchmaking tool creates a networking experience through speed networking, roundtables, instant video calls, multi-person meetings, and hosted buyer meetings. This matchmaking capability makes this platform stand out compared to other virtual meeting platforms.
In addition to major streaming solutions, Grip also integrates with Arena to enhance audience engagement. Arena Live Chat is a live chat tool that improves engagement through instant messaging, Q&As, polls, surveys, group chat, and more.
Arena Live Blog is another effective tool for digital agencies and companies looking to share quick updates as their conference unfolds. To capitalize on data collected from customers, companies also use Arena Personas plugged into their Customer Data Platform (CDP) to build customer profiles and better understand their preferences and interests.
2. Demio (Capterra Average Rating: 4.7 stars out of 5)
Demio is one of our top virtual conference platforms because of its simple event registration capabilities, engagement benefits, and analytics tools.
Demio offers real-time HD streaming, simulated events, and pre-recorded presentations. Organizers can add their own logo and branding, and attendees can join virtual conferences with just one click.
Notable, the Demio platform integrates with over 50 third-party software apps like HubSpot, Drip, ConvertKit, and MailChimp. Organizers can view attendees, collect contact details, manage their registration, and export contacts to a CSV file.
Demio offers a 14-day free trial, so you can evaluate if it is right for your needs. The company offers three paid plans: Starter ($34 per month with 50 attendees), growth ($69 per month with 150 attendees), and premium (request quote for pricing and support for more than 500 attendees).
3. Livestorm (Capterra Average Rating: 4.7 stars out of 5)
Livestorm is a browser-based platform that offers powerful live streaming features, where events can be hosted on desktop and mobile devices. The webinar software can be used for pre-recorded online events, live events, or on-demand events.
Organizers can track engagement, answer questions, add polls, chat with attendees, send emails, and use these insights to improve the experience for attendees.
Companies can promote their events through branded registration pages, built-in social sharing, company pages, automated emails, and more. Livestorm has solid features to enable an engaging interactive experience like Q&As for event guests, call-to-actions, live answer notifications, live attendees lists, and screen sharing.
Like several of the other online community platforms profiled here, Livestorm offers several plans. To take the platform for a test drive and see how it performs with interactive webinars, try the free plan which has a maximum event duration of 20 minutes. To accommodate more event participants, top-tier support, and other features, sign up for the Pro, Business, or Enterprise plan.
4. Communique Conferencing (Capterra Average Rating: 4.7 stars out of 5)
Communique Conferencing has effective solutions for audio conferencing, web conferencing, and virtual community events. Its webcasting software lets organizers broadcast video and audio to over 30,000 attendees. This large virtual venue capacity means the platform pairs well with even the largest events.
Its virtual conferencing platform creates an online environment that includes features for networking, keynote presentations, booths, exhibit halls, and conferences. It also has a custom solution for hosting virtual career fairs and hybrid events. To find out more about the platform’s pricing, contact the company.
5. Zoom (Capterra Average Rating: 4.6 stars out of 5)
Zoom offers several different products for video webinars, meetings, phone systems, events, chat, and more. Zoom Meetings can host up to 1,000 participants with audience chats, and Zoom’s webinar platform can broadcast to 50,000 attendees. Virtual conference hosts can stream HD video, cancel background noise, and add virtual backgrounds with Zoom’s software.
Zoom’s key features include the capability to create their own post-conference landing page and set up reminder emails. To encourage audience participation, Zoom also offers Q&A sessions and attendee networking via breakout rooms.
Zoom’s Webinars starts at $690 per year (up to 500 attendees) and Zoom Webinar is priced at $890 per year (up to 500 attendees). At higher price points, the virtual event platform can serve over 10,000 live attendees.
6. Cisco Webex (Capterra Average Rating: 4.6 stars out of 5)
Cisco Webex is a virtual event platform that supports up to 10,000 attendees. To keep your attendees engaged, the platform offers breakout rooms (i.e. a virtual networking lounge), polls, chats, and Q&As.
The platform’s webinars come with post-event reporting, moderator controls, custom presentation options, and personalized registration pages. Cisco Webex offers several different pricing plans depending on each organizer’s needs.
The free basic plan is limited to 50-minute meetings and 100 attendees. The Business plan is $25 per month with support for 200 attendees. The enterprise plan provides support for up to 1000 attendees (contact sales for pricing).
7. Airmeet (Capterra Average Rating: 4.5 stars out of 5)
Airmeet is a platform that lets organizers host up to 100,000 participants for a hybrid or physical event. Organizers can connect attendees through mobile devices, live stream events on Facebook and YouTube, and use integrations to exchange event data.
With this hosting platform, organizers can add real-time polling, collect event insights, sell tickets with different tiers, and easily register attendees with registration forms.
The virtual event software has several plans, including social webinars and events. Both plans include interactive features such as the ability to gather audience questions.
Its plans include Social Webinars for results-driven webinars and Events for large-scale conferences. AirMeet has three plans: free, standard and pro. The free plan is limited to 100 attendees per event, while the standard plan (starts at $2400 per year) supports more users. To access all of the platform’s robust features (e.g. virtual booths, email marketing support, and networking features), see the pro plan which starts at $7500 per year.
8. GoToWebinar (Capterra Average Rating: 4.5 stars out of 5)
GoToWebinar is another virtual events platform that checks all the boxes of a top virtual events software. The video conferencing platform comes with powerful integrations, helpful analytics, engagement features, and flexible webinar modes. GoToWebinar comes with advanced security features and can quickly process credit card payments through Stripe.
GoToWebinar’s Webcast solution can host 3,000 to 100,000 attendees and its webinars can be pre-recorded which makes it a great pick for virtual community events. Content can be delivered through pre-recorded webinars, webcasting, and interactive live recording.
The platform has four plans: lite, standard, pro and enterprise. The lite plan starts at $49 per organizer per month and includes support for up to 250 participants. GoToWebinars also offers automated emails in each plan to support your email marketing campaigns
Its four pricing plans categorized by number of participants range from $49 per organizer per month to $399 per organizer per month.
9. Eventzilla (Capterra Average Rating: 4.4 stars out of 5)
Eventzilla is an all-in-one virtual conference software that also offers event registration for hybrid, virtual, and in-person events.
Event organizers can use this platform to build event agendas, run marketing campaigns, create mobile-friendly pages, and manage multiple events simultaneously.
Users can try Eventzilla for free. The Basic plan starts at $1.50 per event attendee up to a maximum of 100 attendees. For additional users, see the company’s higher-tier plans.
10. ClickMeeting (Capterra Average Rating: 4.2 stars out of 5)
ClickMeeting is a virtual conference platform for hosting product demos, online business meetings, online training courses, and huge online events. Its huge virtual events product lets users host up to 10,000 attendees. Users can stream events live on YouTube or Facebook and add call-to-action buttons to generate conversions. The ability to connect to a wider audience on social media platforms when video streaming makes ClickMeeting appealing.
Some of ClickMeeting’s powerful features include paid webinars, live webinars, on-demand webinars, screen sharing, and webinar recording (i.e., support for event recording). The product comes with a 30-day free trial and three paid subscription plans.
ClickMeeting if one of the most affordable virtual conference platforms, with plans starting at $25 per month and pricing changing based on the number of attendees, integrations and other features.
How to Choose the Right Virtual Conference Platform
Assess Your Needs
Begin by identifying the specific needs of your event. Consider factors like the expected number of attendees, the type of interactions you want to facilitate (e.g., breakout rooms, Q&A sessions, networking features), and the level of technical support required. Understanding your goals will help you prioritize which features are essential for your virtual meeting platform.
Compare Features and Pricing
Once you have a clear understanding of your needs, compare the features and pricing of different platforms. Look for tools that offer the functionalities you need, such as live streaming, real-time chat, and analytics. Ensure the pricing aligns with your budget, and consider whether the platform offers scalable options to accommodate future growth.
Read User Reviews
User reviews can provide valuable insights into the reliability and user-friendliness of a platform. Look for reviews on trusted sites like Capterra and G2, paying attention to both positive and negative feedback. Reviews can reveal common issues and highlight features that users find particularly beneficial, helping you make an informed decision.
Conclusion
Whether you’re hosting a webinar, conference, or virtual training, consider using one of the top virtual conference platforms mentioned. One of the reasons that Grip is a fantastic option is because it integrates Arena Live Chat in its live event platform. To find out which product is best for you, sign up for a free trial and take each Arena product for a test drive yourself.
A common theme among many of these tools is the importance of attendee engagement. With software tools provided by Arena, you can enhance user engagement, collect customer data, and build relationships with your audience during video conferences.
To select a virtual event platform for your online conferences and virtual meetings, use this guide fully updated in 2022. While our focus is on larger virtual meetings, these platforms can often be used to run a smaller online meetings as well.
This guide reveals the top 10 virtual conference platforms, including features and pricing information for each so you can make a good decision as the event organizer.
Best Virtual Conference Platforms
Our rankings are informed by the Capterra average star rating provided to each platform as of August 2022. These rankings change over time as more users review the app.
1. Grip (Capterra Average Rating: 5 stars out of 5)
Grip offers virtual conference software suitable for virtual and hybrid event experiences. As the event host, you can stream your online experience to other major streaming solutions like Zoom, YouTube, and Twitch. The software enhances networking, a key part of the attendee experience, through its AI-powered event matchmaking tool. Organizers can add a live stream to Grip’s main stage, and it automatically shows content on the users’ feeds.
The platform’s Event Matchmaking tool creates a networking experience through speed networking, roundtables, instant video calls, multi-person meetings, and hosted buyer meetings. This matchmaking capability makes this platform stand out compared to other virtual meeting platforms.
In addition to major streaming solutions, Grip also integrates with Arena to enhance audience engagement. Arena Live Chat is a live chat tool that improves engagement through instant messaging, Q&As, polls, surveys, group chat, and more.
Arena Live Blog is another effective tool for digital agencies and companies looking to share quick updates as their conference unfolds. To capitalize on data collected from customers, companies also use Arena Personas plugged to their Customer Data Platform (CDP) to build customer profiles and better understand their preferences and interests.
2. Demio (Capterra Average Rating: 4.7 stars out of 5)
Demio is one of our top virtual conference platforms because of its simple event registration capabilities, engagement benefits, and analytics tools.
Demio offers real-time HD streaming, simulated events, and pre-recorded presentations. Organizers can add their own logo and branding, and attendees can join virtual conferences with just one click.
Notable, the Demio platform integrates with over 50 third-party software apps like HubSpot, Drip, ConvertKit, and MailChimp. Organizers can view attendees, collect contact details, manage their registration, and export contacts to a CSV file.
Demio offers a 14-day free trial, so you can evaluate if it is right for your needs. The company offers three paid plans: Starter ($34 per month with 50 attendees), growth ($69 per month with 150 attendees), and premium (request quote for pricing and support for more than 500 attendees).
3. Livestorm (Capterra Average Rating: 4.7 stars out of 5)
Livestorm is a browser-based platform that offers powerful live streaming features. Events can be hosted on desktop and mobile devices. The webinar software can be used for pre-recorded online events, live events, or on-demand events.
Organizers can track engagement, answer questions, add polls, chat with attendees, send emails, and use these insights to improve the experience for attendees.
Companies can promote their events through branded registration pages, built-in social sharing, company pages, automated emails, and more. Livestorm has solid features to enable an engaging interactive experience like Q&As for event guests, call-to-actions, live answer notifications, live attendees lists, and screen sharing.
Like several of the other video conferencing tools profiled here, Livestorm offers several plans. To take the platform for a test drive and see how it performs with interactive webinars, try the free plan which has a maximum event duration of 20 minutes. To accommodate more event participants, top-tier support, and other features, sign up for the Pro, Business, or Enterprise plan.
4. Communique Conferencing (Capterra Average Rating: 4.7 stars out of 5)
Communique Conferencing has effective solutions for audio conferencing, web conferencing, and virtual events. Its webcasting software lets organizers broadcast video and audio to over 30,000 attendees. This large virtual venue capacity means the platform pairs well with even the largest events.
Its virtual conferencing platform creates an online environment that includes features for networking, keynote presentations, booths, exhibit halls, and conferences. It also has a custom solution for hosting virtual career fairs and hybrid events. To find out more about the platform’s pricing, contact the company.
5. Zoom (Capterra Average Rating: 4.6 stars out of 5)
Zoom offers several different products for video webinars, meetings, phone systems, events, chat, and more. Zoom Meetings can host up to 1,000 participants with audience chats, and Zoom’s webinar platform can broadcast to 50,000 attendees. Virtual conference hosts can stream HD video, cancel background noise, and add virtual backgrounds with Zoom’s software.
Zoom’s key features include the capability to create their own post-conference landing page and set up reminder emails. To encourage audience participation, Zoom also offers Q&A sessions and attendee networking via breakout rooms.
Zoom’s Webinars starts at $690 per year (up to 500 attendees) and Zoom Webinar is priced at $890 per year (up to 500 attendees). At higher price points, the virtual event platform can serve over 10,000 live attendees.
6. Cisco Webex (Capterra Average Rating: 4.6 stars out of 5)
Cisco Webex is a virtual event platform that supports up to 10,000 attendees. To keep your attendees engaged, the platform offers breakout rooms (i.e. a virtual networking lounge), polls, chats, and Q&As.
The platform’s webinars come with post-event reporting, moderator controls, custom presentation options, and personalized registration pages. Cisco Webex offers several different pricing plans depending on each organizer’s needs.
The free basic plan is limited to 50-minute meetings and 100 attendees. The Business plan is $25 per month with support for 200 attendees. The enterprise plan provides support for up to 1000 attendees (contact sales for pricing).
7. Airmeet (Capterra Average Rating: 4.5 stars out of 5)
Airmeet is a platform that lets organizers host up to 100,000 participants for a hybrid or physical event. Organizers can connect attendees through mobile devices, live stream events on Facebook and YouTube, and use integrations to exchange event data.
With this hosting platform, organizers can add real-time polling, collect event insights, sell tickets with different tiers, and easily register attendees with registration forms.
The virtual meeting software platform has several plans, including social webinars and events. Both plans include interactive features such as the ability to gather audience questions.
Its plans include Social Webinars for results-driven webinars and Events for large-scale conferences. AirMeet has three plans: free, standard and pro. The free plan is limited to 100 attendees per event, while the standard plan (starts at $2400 per ear) supports more users. To access all of the platform’s robust features (e.g. virtual booths, email marketing support, and networking features), see the pro plan which starts at $7500 per year.
8. GoToWebinar (Capterra Average Rating: 4.5 stars out of 5)
GoToWebinar is another virtual events platform that checks all the boxes of a top virtual events software. The video conferencing platform comes with powerful integrations, helpful analytics, engagement features, and flexible webinar modes. GoToWebinar comes with advanced security features and can quickly process credit card payments through Stripe.
GoToWebinar’s Webcast solution can host 3,000 to 100,000 attendees and its webinars can be pre-recorded which makes it a great pick for digital events. Content can be delivered through pre-recorded webinars, webcasting, and interactive live recording.
The platform has four plans: lite, standard, pro and enterprise. The lite plan starts at $49 per organizer per month and includes support for up to 250 participants. GoToWebinars also offers automated emails in each plan to support your email marketing campaigns
Its four pricing plans categorized by number of participants range from $49 per organizer per month to $399 per organizer per month.
9. Eventzilla (Capterra Average Rating: 4.4 stars out of 5)
Eventzilla is an all-in-one virtual conference software that also offers event registration for hybrid, virtual, and in-person events.
Event organizers can use this platform to build event agendas, run marketing campaigns, create mobile-friendly pages, and manage multiple events simultaneously.
Users can try Eventzilla for free. The Basic plan starts at $1.50 per event attendee up to a maximum of 100 attendees. For additional users, see the company’s higher-tier plans.
10. ClickMeeting (Capterra Average Rating: 4.2 stars out of 5)
ClickMeeting is a virtual conference platform for hosting product demos, online business meetings, online training courses, and huge online events. Its huge virtual events product lets users host up to 10,000 attendees. Users can stream events live on YouTube or Facebook and add call-to-action buttons to generate conversions. The ability to connect to a wider audience on social media platforms when video streaming makes ClickMeeting appealing.
Some of ClickMeeting’s powerful features include paid webinars, live webinars, on-demand webinars, screen sharing, and webinar recording (i.e., support for event recording). The product comes with a 30-day free trial and three paid subscription plans.
ClickMeeting plans start at $25 per month and pricing changes based on the number of attendees, integrations and other features.
Conclusion
Whether you’re hosting a webinar, conference, or virtual training, consider using one of the top virtual conference platforms mentioned. One of the reasons that Grip is a fantastic option is because it integrates Arena Live Chat in its live event platform. To find out which product is best for you, sign up for a free trial and take each Arena product for a test drive yourself.
A common theme among many of these tools is the importance of attendee engagement. With software tools provided by Arena, you can enhance user engagement, collect customer data, and build relationships with your audience during video conferences.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.”
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
The days of sitting in a boring classroom are over, thanks to the rise of remote learning. Universities and colleges need to innovate to keep students engaged. These 60 university virtual event ideas will give you plenty of inspiration. Also, read this insightful How Stanford, University of Pennsylvania & Caltech Students Run Virtual Events article recently published by Arena.
Keep reading to discover ideas and examples from creative students and universities across the country. Whether you’re looking for a way to learn life skills like cooking, network with alumni or spend an afternoon creating music with friends, you’ll find something for you in this guide to online event ideas for college students.
Once you see an event idea you like, explore Arena’s solutions for education for the following steps on how to bring your event to life with technology.
60 University Virtual Events Ideas
1. Share documentation of previous university-wide lectures
Learning must always be at the student’s reach. If your university keeps records of previous guest speakers who made notable declarations, you can share them with your student body to keep their thirst for learning going. Keep them engaged by hearing them out through a follow-up discussion.
The concept of this virtual activity is to share bite-sized learning that is powerful enough to motivate students through tough times, for example. Some can also nominate a video clip to be played and make a thorough explanation of how the message of the clip got through to them.
3. Spill the Tea
This is a phrase commonly used by young students today when they want to get more information about a certain topic that catches their interest. It may not necessarily be a tea though, attendees can have their hot drinks like coffee, cocoa, or hot milk. The activity is as simple as picking one hot or pressing topic and allowing everyone to discuss their opinions in turns.
4. Lunch and Learn
This activity is somewhat similar to “Spill the Tea” but on a different setup. Instead of hot drinks, students can talk about interesting topics while having lunch and learn from each other.
5. Amateur Podcaster’s Corner
We are sure that in every group of students, some have an interest in voicing their opinions or talking about a certain topic over a mic, recording it, and sharing it with their peers. With this virtual activity, listeners can participate even when they are doing household chores.
6. Alumni Networking Activity
Keep not just your students engaged but also your pool of alumni. Through this, they will be able to network with your students and bring with them possible employment opportunities for your current enrollees. Students can also learn valuable insights from someone who has something in common with them, your university.
7. Workshop on Hosting Webinars
Many of these ideas involve technologies for hosting webinars and virtual conferences. To keep your students engaged, allow them to cast their ideas out while teaching them how to manipulate this technology on their preferences.
8. DIY Tutorials
It catches students’ interest if they can learn a simple skill aside from the lessons they learn from formal classes. A simple tutorial on how to do stuff that they will enjoy will also make them thirsty for more learning.
9. What-Grown-Ups-Do lessons
Adulting may be an informal term to call it but there surely is a lot of learning to be unlocked in conducting these lessons!
10. Master Chef lessons
Now that all of us spend most of our time at home, students can easily get bored. Help them appreciate the joy of cooking their meals instead of opting for microwaveable food. Simply livestream your creations, take the most “Instagrammable” picture of the food, and leave them asking for more.
11. Financial Literacy TV
Saving money is way beyond chasing discounts and coupons! Whether it is your students’ program or not, financial literacy is vital for them to acquire wealth. Teach your students the basics of saving, investing, and other financial instruments which we bet they will thank you later on.
12. Coping with COVID Groups
Besides the relatability of this topic, the long-lasting effect of the pandemic needs to be addressed among your students. Use this program for them to share their experiences and how they are coping with the pandemic.
The concept of this group is more of a Q&A discussion among the students where they can discuss their thoughts about life. Consider facilitating this with a Philosophy or Ethics professor and make your students appreciate Humanities on a deeper level.
14. Get-Psyched!
Let students know themselves more by administering personality tests to them. Nothing ever interests people more than knowing themselves better.
15. Learn a New Language Group
It is said that learning a new language improves the confidence and intellect of people because they form new connections now and then. Engage your Linguistics Department and help them teach students from other program languages that interest them.
16. Social Awareness Group
The pleasure of helping out others is the same as with the helpers. Volunteerism is a good value that your university can inculcate your students. Simply form objectives and together, a small effort of every member will go a long way when everyone does.
17. For-Cause Celebrations
Every month, you will find days of “international affairs” that are celebrated. Take part in these movements to keep your students abreast of what is happening in society. Celebrations like Earth Hour, Pride Month, World Youth Day, and a lot more can be an avenue for their engagement.
In learning more about our history, you do not anymore need to step inside an actual museum and glance at the richness of our heritage. With this program, you will be able to take your students on a virtual tour of museums.
19. Journaling Sessions
Little has been said about it, but keeping a diary has its benefits to us. By writing even some of the most menial tasks, it helps in storing and retaining information in our brain which makes it sharp. Pair this session with calming music to enhance the experience.
20. Indoor Jungalow
This concept is about teaching your students the hobby of gardening in their homes. Thus, the word jungalow. You can share gardening videos that will teach them techniques on taking care of plants and see them grow together.
21. Self-Awareness
Because of social media, students are bombarded with tons of information and sometimes, they can get easily distracted by all the noise. Help your students relax and get back to themselves through meditation.
22. Home Fitness Sessions
Encourage your students to get fit even at home. Collate exercises that are easy to do in front of their screen but will make them sweat. Through this program, you are helping your students maintain their physical fitness and mental sharpness.
23. Nest Incoming Freshies
Because of the many changes that are happening around them, a freshman will surely get anxious as they enter university life. Help them out by having currently enrolled students connect with them and share their own stories to break the ice.
24. Bark-ual Class and Meow-ferences
Let your students take a break from being in front of the camera all the time! Destress with the cuteness of every household pet and let them step in the spotlight for a change.
After having the degree, most of your students are motivated to join the workforce. Open opportunities for them by inviting organizations and employers who are on the lookout for fresh talents
26. Community Playlist
All students have different tastes in music, but a generation mostly knows similar ones. Get them in tune with music by contributing to a playlist they all love.
27. Dance Classes
Showcase your student’s talent by organizing a virtual dance showdown when they take your dance classes. Everyone is invited, even the ones who dance on two left feet.
28. Movie Critique Sessions
Film students will surely have their day when they share their opinions on a popular or independent film. You can stream movies so all your students can watch them together and discuss the events afterward. No spoilers are allowed!
29. Fine Arts Classes
Now, where is my beret? Let your students unleash their inner artist by holding paint classes and other fine arts classes. To keep them engaged, you can post a photo of a scenic view or a macro shot of food that they will paint. Disclaimer: This can get messy!
30. Vlogger-of-the-Day Competition
There are so many interesting things everyone can share throughout their day. With this competition, you allow your students to document their day and make it exciting. Students, staff, and faculty members can join.
31. Virtual Theatre
Even the landscape of theatre and performing arts has changed in the post-pandemic scenario. Showcase your students’ creativity by holding an online drama performance or an open-mic comedic monologue. When it comes to creativity and imagination, the sky’s the limit!
32. Best Room Decor Competition
All of your students probably take their virtual classes in their rooms. Allow them to showcase their study space by holding friendly competitions like this where they will take their creativity to the next level.
33. Holi-daily Celebrations
It is going to be a holiday every day somewhere in the world. Engage your students by asking them to research the most absurd holidays in the world that they can find and discuss them.
34. Crochet Match
Do your students have a hobby that they can share such as crocheting? Surely, not all of us know how to do it but holding this friendly competition is good for learning and developing a simple hobby.
35. House Tour
It has become popular content for YouTubers to showcase their homes to subscribers. Well, students may have something unique in their home that they can share with the group such as a walk-in cabinet, a fishpond in the house, or a golden staircase.
36. Sudoku Challenge
Sudoku is a great game for stimulating the mind and making it more analytical. Students will benefit from this challenge while incorporating this into their lessons. Simply reward the fastest student to solve the puzzle.
37. Crosswords Challenge
If your students get dizzy with Sudoku because of all the numbers in the puzzle. It is time to introduce this game to sharpen their vocabulary. Another similar game you can try is crossword puzzles.
38. Pets of the University Photo Competition
It is time to show off those pets whether exotic or not in a photo competition. Let your students dress their pets and post their photos on social media to capture the engagement of the netizens.
39. Online Charades
Take some time off from draining lectures and play charades with your students to break the ice. Plus, there are apps online where you can generate words to make your charades more exciting.
40. Online Quiz Bee
There is so much trivia around us where students can learn. Get creative by assigning themes like history, politics, or just some memes. The winner gets to choose the next round’s questions.
41. E-Games Tournaments
E-Sports has gained momentum when the pandemic arrived. Now, there are a lot of recognized E-Sports that are played internationally. Challenge your students to an E-Games Tournament and reward the Champion. There may be newbies but take time to educate them with this kind of sports.
42. Most Creative TikTok Competition
There is a lot of #challenges in the TikTok app nowadays. Encourage your students to post their most creative TikTok content and you will be surprised at how they manipulate the app because it is the younger generation’s forte.
43. Digital Scavenger Hunt
A scavenger hunt game may not always be physical, but it can translate to the digital space as well. Take your students to a hunt over clues to answer your cryptic puzzles.
44. Baddest-Joker-Takes-it-All Contest
A good joke is funny, but a lame one is funnier! Let your students tell their corniest jokes and see who gets all the laughter.
45. Lip-Sync Battle
Be on a search on who among your students is the most musically inclined person by hosting a Lip-sync battle. No inborn talent is required, just good coordination between lips and lyrics.
46. Your Holiday Your Rules Contest
Remember the most absurd holiday competition we have just discussed? Well, it is time for your students to make their holiday based completely on them. It can be about traditions, the birthday of famous personalities, or certain university events. Let the whole campus vote on it to engage the community.
47. Co-Curricular Elective Groups
Besides the program of your students, give them a chance to learn more about topics that interest them. Who would have known that an Engineering student is interested in Humanities unless these programs are hosted?
48. Career Counseling Sessions
To give your students a boost in enriching their career and their expectations toward work after they graduate, it is best to have your guidance counselors available for this type of situation. Through this, your students will get to know more about what awaits them after they finish their degrees.
49. Resume and Cover Letter Groups
Your students’ resume is their ticket to employment. Teach them to leave the best first impression to prospective employers with advice from professors and other lecturers.
50. Creative Writing Centers
For students who want a career in writing, it is important to hone their skills and teach them techniques as early as now. Creative writing is both an art and a science so they need to know the fundamental ways on how to write a masterpiece.
51. Peer Facilitators Group
This group is the student version of guidance counselors. Of course, because of limited manpower and somehow a big discord in the ratio of counselors against students, it is good to train their peers to help resolve issues that concern them be it academic, personal, or social.
52. Academic Advisors Guild
This group is intended to be a help desk for students who need assistance with the field of study they are currently taking. Because of several factors that affect students’ motivation, academic advisors are there to let them see the bigger picture and help them navigate smoothly with the end goal of finishing their degrees.
53. Student Awards Ceremony
It is time to recognize your exemplary and outstanding students and give them the spotlight. By hosting this kind of event, you can recognize student leaders from various recognized organizations, academic scholars, and other achievements from your student community that are worth recognizing. It will motivate your students to strive harder and inspire them to become active members of their community.
# No time to read this article now? – Download a free PDF version of this blog post
54. Religious Services Group
As discussed earlier, a student may encounter several issues in the course of their life in the university and one of them is spiritual. Keep your students’ spiritual health in check by providing services from the chaplain or from various religious sects that are part of the student community.
55. Virtual University Fairs
It is time to open your gates to prospective students and show them how the student life in your university looks like to give them a clearer view of the big picture. This is also an opportune time to showcase your outstanding alumni and entice them to enroll in your school.
56. Virtual Summits
Host virtual summits for important university events like your foundation day and hold breakout groups depending on your student’s interests and inclinations.
57. Live Concert
Admit it, we all miss going to a live concert since the pandemic started. Take advantage of today’s technology by holding live virtual concerts in the comfort of your students’ homes.
58. Online Photo Booth
Explore filters from social media apps with this online photo booth and you will find out that there is so much to discover there.
59. Code Breaker Games
Challenge your students’ mental capacity by solving complex questions as a group. Since there is a lot less physical requirement for this game, your students will get their brains to the test. The group that wins the most rounds gets the prize.
Tickle your students’ imagination by making a hypothetical situation of a crime and make them collaborate to solve this mystery crime team-building activity.
By implementing technologies like the Arena Live Chat and Live Blog, you will harness the ability to provide a platform where your students can voice their opinions, comments, messages to one another, participate in polls, and much more. In addition, with the integration of the Live Blog feature, your presence in the digital space is felt even more.
And, in case you haven’t yet, you should check out how Pecege Institute leverages Arena Live Chat to allow students to engage in real-time with their teachers and classmates.
Virtual events in higher education are among the most potent ways to engage students, alumni, staff, and faculty. The COVID-19 pandemic forced many colleges and universities to improve their virtual events and, today, virtual events are still critically important as flexibility is now expected.
Despite their growing popularity, running engaging online events and hybrid events doesn’t come easy to everyone. There are new tools to learn, like live chat and live blog. It’s not just a question of technology either.
It’s also essential to adjust your event planning methods as well. Some elements of traditional offline events for higher education, like understanding your audience and their goals, fully apply to virtual events. Other requirements like maintaining high levels of digital engagement require new techniques.
Virtual Events, Hybrid Events, or In-Person Events: Which Is Best?
Now that the pandemic is behind us, event organizers are asking themselves what type of event they should focus on. There are three main types of events for higher education, and they all have a role to play.
In-Person Events
This traditional event category is excellent for deep connections. There’s nothing quite like sharing a slice of pizza and a drink to engage prospective students!
The downside to in-person events is the significant cost (e.g., catering and event space) of organizing these events. In addition, in-person events have a limited audience. Only people near the event venue can easily participate in the event.
Virtual Events
Virtual events for higher education offer several advantages to students, alumni, and faculty. Compared to traditional gatherings, a virtual experience is fast and inexpensive to organize. It’s also possible to invite large groups to participate in the event. The registration process can be simple – simply offer an online form.
Hybrid Events
A hybrid event features a combination of in-person and virtual participants. Hybrid events offer the best of both worlds when they are well-planned and executed. That said, it does take some practice to make this event work.
While our focus is on virtual events in higher education, in-person events and hybrid events are valuable. All three types of events have a role to play in keeping students engaged.
Check out these virtual event ideas to help you save time in planning your next virtual event. Look at these ten ideas as a buffet menu: pick and choose the types of events that are most relevant to your needs.
Top 10 Trends for Virtual Events in Higher Education
1. Virtual Alumni Homecoming
Keeping alumni engaged in college or university after graduation is essential for a few reasons. Alumni donations to colleges were worth $11 billion in 2019 alone, according to US News. In addition to financial support, many alumni are interested in growing their networks and having fun with other alumni and college leaders.
Organizing a virtual alumni homecoming event is a great way to engage graduates for a few reasons. A virtual event eliminates travel time and allows people living far from campus to participate. Making the individual sessions of homecoming easy to attend is crucial to appeal to attendees who have significant family and work responsibilities.
To make your virtual alumni homecoming event memorable, offer a combination of content and connection. Content means offering insights relevant to the alumni audience, like inviting a successful graduate to share lessons from their career. Connection means giving alumni plenty of time to interact through live chat and other means.
2. Virtual Graduation Ceremony
Graduating from college is a significant accomplishment! It takes years of focused study and hard work to achieve. It’s important to celebrate this achievement with a graduation event.
A virtual graduation ceremony, or a hybrid event, is wise to offer. Many students move to new states or cities after finishing their studies to start the next chapter of their lives. As a result, graduates may find it difficult to attend a formal event.
Students aren’t the only beneficiaries of a virtual commencement event. In a traditional event, there is limited seating. A student might only invite one or two people to see them receive their diploma. With a virtual graduation event, it’s easy to attend many more participants.
3. Virtual Fundraisers
As mentioned above, donors to higher education contribute billions to colleges and universities annually. When donors are engaged and treated well, donors are likely to donate even more over time. To maximize donations to higher education, offering virtual fundraisers is smart.
Large institutions tend to have alumni spread over a large area. For example, the University of Central Florida has more than a dozen chapters across the US and other countries. Relying solely on in-person events would mean most alumni leaving far away would not have a chance to participate in fundraisers and other events.
Virtual fundraisers for higher education can take a variety of formats. For example, the Borough of Manhattan Community College (BMCC) held a virtual fundraiser in 2021. This event featured stories from students and recognition opportunities for donors. Benedictine College, based in Kansas, held a highly successful virtual fundraiser in 2021 that generated over $1.1 million in donations. To develop your virtual fundraising concept, review the examples above for inspiration.
4. Virtual Fun Run
Sitting at a desk for long periods to study is unavoidable. Yet, maintaining physical fitness is important to manage stress and live a healthy life. That’s why more organizations are organizing virtual fun-run events.
Virtual fun run events have two elements. Participants run the set distance or time for the event. The next element is a digital gathering to celebrate the event. For example, you might recognize the people who had the fastest runs!
To show how a virtual fun run is organized in practice, look at Florida Memorial University. This university offers multiple fun run events and charges a ticket price for each event. Proceeds from the fun help the university to fund scholarships.
Virtual fun runs are popular because of their flexibility. Participants can choose where to perform the activity, as long as they track and send it to the organizers. From there, organizers will take note of the distance and time, and medals will be mailed to the winners.
5. Virtual Happy Hour Activities
Bringing students together to enjoy beer and other drinks is a time-honored tradition at many colleges and universities. This unstructured social event is a great way to encourage students to make friends and connections.
Virtual happy hour events are worth offering for a few reasons. First, a traditional happy hour event may not work well for students with substantial work schedules. In addition, some students are not interested in consuming alcohol for various reasons.
A virtual happy hour event tends to work best when there is a specific theme or activity for everyone to enjoy. For example, you might invite people to play a game like “Two Lies and A Truth” to get to know their fellow students more.
Also, you might organize a virtual Bingo game. Rather than using traditional cards with numbers, replace them with words or phrases everyone in the group can relate to. By hosting this type of virtual event, you will leave your participants entertained, happy, and engaged throughout the session.
6. Virtual Dance Events
Like the virtual fun run, a virtual dance is a fantastic way to encourage people to move around while connecting with others. Dancing online has exploded in popularity over the past few years, thanks to TikTok. See this guide to 21 of the most popular TikTok dances to get inspiration.
Columbia University shows that virtual dance events can be short and sweet. Columbia has organized a 30-minute “dance break” event for students. Organizing this type of event when student stress is high – like during exam season – is one way to support students facing pressure.
In general, it is best to encourage a range of dance styles. Some students might like hip-hop styles, while others might not have a recognized style. All kinds of dance are enjoyable! The important part is to share a love of music and movement with your fellow students.
7. Virtual Book Club For Students or Alumni
Virtual book clubs are one of the best ways of bringing together students and alumni. For example, you might organize a virtual book club to help students discover new perspectives and enjoy fruitful discussions with their peers. There are a few different ways to organize this kind of event.
The University of Toronto alumni virtual book club takes a gradual approach. Alumni read a few chapters of the book and share their thoughts on a discussion board. Taking a slower approach is an excellent way to appeal to busy working professionals who may have limited time to participate in the event.
You can also use virtual book clubs to engage students with shared concerns. Washington State University has organized a virtual book club for those interested in disability issues. This focused book club concept can be adapted to suit a wide variety of student interests, including careers (e.g., finance book club) or types of fiction (e.g., science fiction and fantasy book club).
To make the most of each virtual book club session, check out Arena’s education solutions. With live chat, you can make it easy for students to ask questions, discuss their favorite characters and find students with common interests.
8. E-Sports Tournament
Fitness is great, but sometimes there is nothing like enjoying a few hours of gaming with your friends. E-sports – playing competitive video games – has become one of the most popular leisure activities for young people. By some estimates, there are over 200 million E-sports enthusiasts today.
An e-Sports tournament is a popular choice for college and university students as a virtual event. For example, Siena College has an e-Sports team that plays various games, including League of Legends, Fortnite, and Super Smash Bros Ultimate.
Unlike other events, e-Sports events are digital by design. That’s great because there is no need to adapt the activity to work in a digital environment.
To spark even more excitement for e-Sports, organize an e-Sports competition focused on charitable fundraising. If the fundraising idea appeals to you, look at the Esports Foundation. The organization brings together gamers to make the world a better place!
9. Virtual Meditation and Awareness Sessions
According to the American Psychological Association, anxiety and depression are prevalent mental health difficulties for college students. Supporting students through these challenges requires multiple approaches, including mental health professionals and medication. Providing virtual meditation events can also help support students to thrive as well.
UCLA offers free weekly drop-in meditation sessions to help students. These half-hour sessions are offered twice a week. In addition to video conferencing, you might also add live chat to the session so students can ask questions without disturbing other participants.
Some research suggests that offering meditation sessions can significantly impact students. A 2019 study found that offering a six-week yoga and meditation program “may reduce stress and anxiety in college students.”
10. Virtual University Orientation Week
Open week, frosh week, orientation week: the activity goes by various names. Whatever your college calls it, orientation week activities are a crucial way to introduce students to higher education. With the right approach, an orientation week with a focus on academic skills can lift graduation rates.
Some aspects of orientation week are best delivered in person, like taking students on a tour of important buildings and facilities at your campus. However, some orientation events work well in a virtual environment. In your list of sessions, try some of these ideas.
Virtual study skills event
This academic-style event helps students learn how to boos their study and research skills using your college’s educational resources. For example, a traditional arts program might have learning outcomes like critical thinking and writing skills as a focus. Introducing your college’s writing center can help students get started.
If your college offers digital learning options, you may also want to cover how to make the most of online classes.
Meet upper-year students
Senior students have a lot of insights to share with students. Host a virtual mixer event to introduce newer students to established students. To encourage an even deeper discussion between students, work with student affairs to build a mentorship program.
Virtual career events
This type of virtual event is especially important for graduate students and professional students. For example, a college of education might organize a panel discussion with local school principals.
Campus safety event
Some of your students may be anxious about living on campus. A virtual safety event is an excellent way to equip students with details on how to get help and avoid problems.
Introduce campus organizations and clubs
Making new friends doesn’t come naturally to everybody. For example, you might have some students who commute from their family home to save money. Give these students opportunities to discover campus life through a virtual event.
The Best Technology For Virtual Events In Higher Education
Now that you have inspiration for your next virtual event, you just need the right tools. In many cases, a video conferencing app is helpful. That’s not the only tool you need. A live chat app is a crucial tool as well. Some students prefer to type their questions and interact directly with peers through private messages. A live chat room is a great way to offer a safe space to your students.
Over 500 educational organizations already leverage Arena for their classroom engagement needs. Check out how Pecege Institute applies Arena Live Chat to make tia global success case. Want to see if Live Chat is suitable for your college or university website? Arena has the perfect tools for blended learning engagement.
Choosing between several video streaming platforms isn’t always that clear, specially when you are not familiarized with the existing options out there. This decision can profoundly influence user experience, engagement, and potential revenue streams. This article dives deep into two popular contenders in the video streaming arena: Vimeo OTT and Uscreen, exploring key aspects that can guide businesses in making an informed selection.
Let’s dissect Vimeo OTT and Uscreen on six key fronts:
1) Branding Consistency
Vimeo OTT: Offers an integrated experience. It provides not only the streaming service but also the tools to design mobile and smart TV apps aligned with your brand aesthetics.
Uscreen: While it allows you to produce branded apps, the onus falls on your team to manage the entire app development lifecycle.
2) Monetization Strategy
Vimeo OTT: Provides a flexible revenue model, catering to advertising, direct sales, subscriptions, and registrations. Additionally, it gives total control over subscriber data, aiding in decision-making.
Uscreen: Offers a range of monetization strategies such as royalties and in-app purchases. However, its advertising support remains ambiguous.
3) Playback Versatility
Vimeo OTT: Boasts extensive compatibility, supporting iOS, Android, intelligent TV platforms, and even the Xbox ecosystem.
Uscreen: Offers compatibility with platforms like Chromecast and Apple Airplay, yet its reach isn’t as expansive as Vimeo.
4) Industry Tenure
Vimeo OTT: With a legacy since 2004, Vimeo has been a trusted companion for streamers across various genres.
Uscreen: Launched in 2015, Uscreen, while competent, doesn’t share the same historical depth.
5) User Testimonials
Vimeo OTT: G2 ratings highlight its user-friendliness and support quality, although some users desire better pricing options.
Uscreen: Users laud its ease of use and exemplary customer service but do yearn for improved analytics and customization.
6) Integration Capabilities
Vimeo OTT: Exhibits a vast integration landscape, spanning Google Drive to Zoom, facilitating streamlined operations.
Uscreen: Prioritizes analytics and e-commerce with integrations like Google Tag Manager and Mailchimp, but appears limited in video distribution.
See our post, which highlights ten different Vimeo OTT examples for more details.
Amplifying Vimeo with Arena’s Touch
Our verdict tilts towards Vimeo OTT for contemporary video streaming requirements. Yet, regardless of platform selection, to genuinely enhance audience engagement, embedding interactivity is crucial.
Arena’s capabilities seamlessly marry with Vimeo OTT, infusing live chat and live blogs, enriching the passive video experience. With the introduction of Arena Personas, you can also deep dive into your audience’s behaviors and preferences, ensuring your streaming content is not just viewed but experienced.
For those steering their company’s digital footprint, understanding these nuances and integrating tools like Arena’s live blogs can be the game-changer in achieving your marketing objectives. Dive deeper, make informed choices, and watch your virtual engagement landscape transform.
What if you’re not sure what’s working in your video streaming? There’s no need to guess anymore. Use Arena Personas to understand what interactions and content drive your audience to engage, convert and buy.
Virtual events have continued to increase in popularity in 2021. To put the year’s virtual events in context, this year in review will reveal the virtual event stats, key trends and opportunities you need to succeed next year.
4 Facts You Need To Know About Virtual Events
Recent industry research commissioned by LinkedIn reveals essential insights about the evolving nature of business events.
1. Majority of Event Organizers Have Launched Virtual Events.
Across Germany, UAE, France, Spain, the Netherlands, and Germany, most event organizers arranged a virtual event, webinar, or online talk in 2020.
2. Fully Virtual Events Grow In Popularity.
50% of events organized in the UK and Ireland have focused entirely on virtual events.
3. Critical Drivers For Virtual Events.
Health concerns related to the pandemic are not the only driver for virtual events. In addition, one-third to one-half of event organizers think that virtual events are more cost-effective than traditional events. Further, saving travel time and environmental concerns are other key motivations for virtual events.
4. Virtual Event Content Quality.
A significant number (44% in the UK and 38% in Germany) of event professionals agree that content development is a key priority. As expectations for event quality increase, there’s no need to start your virtual event planning from scratch. Download a copy of Arena’s Live Events Ebook to make your next virtual event more engaging.
Virtual Event Best Practices: 3 Ways To Maximize Engagement
In the past, organizing a virtual event or webinar was something of a novelty. That novelty has long since worn off. To keep your audience engaged in your content, aligning with the following best practices is vital.
1. Adjust Session Length.
Asking attendees to sit through hour-long lecture-style events may not be effective any longer. Instead, consider adjusting your approach to emphasize shorter presentations. For inspiration, see the TED website, which features a significant number of presentations less than 20 minutes long.
2. Encourage Participant Interaction.
Use live chat capabilities to allow attendees to ask questions. If there is no easy way to interact, you run the risk of attendees becoming disengaged. To get started in live chat, check out our post What Is Live Chat?
3. Invite Multiple Speakers.
Offering diverse perspectives gives you more opportunities to connect with your audience. Use the live events script ebook to organize your content. Once your content is developed, invite multiple people from your company to give a presentation. If you have the budget, invite an outside speaker or influencer to deliver a short talk.
From Presentations To Live Shopping
Traditionally, virtual events like webinars and virtual conferences emphasized sharing content and networking. Those types of events are still important and worth organizing. That said, traditional virtual events do not directly drive revenue in most cases. If your company needs to grow revenue faster, you need a different approach: live ecommerce. In a live ecommerce event, you have the opportunity to present products to your audience and drive immediate sales. Livestream e-commerce sales in the US are projected to grow to $17 billion in 2022, up from $6 billion in 2020, according to Statista.
To plan your next live ecommerce event, use Arena’s Live Ecommerce ebook as your starting point.
The Most Successful Virtual Events of 2021 And What You Can Learn From Them
It is easier to plan your next virtual event with your team when you have examples to discuss. Use this list of events
Collins Aerospace: Keep Events Focused With Moderation
Remember when virtual meetings were disrupted by “Zoom bombing”? In its most extreme form, some of these disruptive participants posted harmful and alarming content. This kind of disruption is a risk that needs to manage in virtual events. Thoughtful event moderation can go a long way to prevent disruptions and keep attendees focused.
The; Collins Aerospace’s Introduce a Girl to Engineering virtual event was aimed at young girls to encourage them to consider careers in aerospace and engineering. In February 2021, the company invited students from five local schools to meet engineers and Joan Higginbotham, a former NASA astronaut. By using moderation, special guests, and a small invite list, the company created an engaging experience.
Virtual Event Lessons
There are a few lessons to adapt from the Collins Aerospace experience.
Consider Small Events. Events with a few dozen participants can be successful. Large scale events with hundreds or thousands of attendees tend to get all the attention but smaller events
Family-Friendly Event Design. The company’s decision to focus on teenage girls meant moderation was important. Arena Live Chat offers built-in moderation features so you can create a family-friendly experience.
Short duration events of 1-2 hours are popular, but they are not the only approach. In November 2021, the video streaming platform ran the event YouTube Holiday Stream and Shop. The event drew participation from multiple YouTube personalities like Gordon Ramsay, Patrick Starrr, Jackie Aina, and MrBeast.
Virtual Event Lessons
There are two key lessons to draw from YouTube’s live ecommerce virtual events.
Delivering surprises to attendees is the crucial learning from YouTube’s 2021 entrance into live shopping. In a recent survey, 75% of shoppers agreed that the video platform “enhances the traditional shopping journey by delivering unexpected inspiration.” This is a crucial lesson as you plan your virtual event. For example, how can you offer exclusive product news, limited editions, or access to exciting presenters? Take inspiration from YouTube’s live shopping development to engage customers.
Consider organizing events over several days and connecting those events back to a seasonal trend. In the case of YouTube’s virtual events, the event was tied to the holiday shopping season.
Berlin Energy Transition Dialogue
Held in March 2021, this virtual event was sponsored by Siemens Energy, ING Bank, and other companies. The event’s approach to attendee engagement included the event moderator highlighting comments from attendees.
Virtual Event Lessons
The Berlin event offers a key lesson for you as you plan your event. Event moderators encouraged attendees to post questions for speakers on Twitter. Seeking input from attendees is a great idea. However, there is a downside to relying on social media sites. Event attendees might get distracted by conversations unrelated to the event and disengage. A better approach is to use Arena Live Chat to keep attendees on your website while they ask questions.
Keeping attendees on your website also means you can form direct relationships with customers. Traditional Google cookies are disappearing due to privacy changes. Keeping virtual event attendees on your website makes it far easier to use a customer data platform to understand audience behavior.
Hybrid Events
In addition to entirely virtual events, many organizations and organizers are developing hybrid events. In this type of event, an attendee has the option to participate virtually or in person. For example, Social Media Marketing World is offering four kinds of tickets for its next event. The higher-priced tickets include in-person access to the event. At the same time, Social Media Marketing World also offers “streaming” and “on-demand” tickets to accommodate virtual-only attendees.
Without careful planning, keeping everyone engaged in a hybrid event can fail. Virtual event attendees may feel left out of the conversation happening in the conference center. Using Arena Live Blog to share live updates from your event as it unfolds makes it easier for virtual attendees to feel involved.
How To Get Started With Virtual Events
Virtual events and hybrid events are here to stay. Your only question is to decide when you will take advantage of this way to engage with customers. Adding Arena Live Chat and Live Blog to your website is fast to make your virtual events more engaging.
How to Make Powerful Live Ecommerce has become the first obsession among today’s top online retailers.
If live sales is a trend that will remain in the future, it is too early to say.
However, this is definitely the hot spot today when it comes to online sales.
It’s not hard to guess why.
Combining the convenience of traditional ecommerce with the dynamics of video streaming, Live Ecommerce has brought all the casual characteristics of stores and physical markets to the homes of consumers.
And the result could not be anything other than a resounding success.
In China, for example, where the format was first launched, the main presenter-sellers have already been elevated to the status of superstars.
In other places, large brands such as Amazon, for example, draw on the influence of celebrities such as Carla Stevenné, Gabrielle Union and Jessica Alba, among others, in their live sales. Shoply relied on an integration with Arena’s API to create a brand new revenue stream from Live Shopping: Shoply.tv.
After all, anything goes to win over the consumer.
But anyone who thinks that the phenomenon is restricted to the major players in internet retail is mistaken.
7 Steps To Make Powerful Live Ecommerce
With the popularization of video streaming, added to the dissemination of audience engagement tools, it is now perfectly possible for any ecommerce to promote a Live Ecommerce.
With this in mind, Arena prepared an infographic with the seven fundamental steps to be taken so that you know how to make a Live Ecommerce. And for your experience in the format to be synonymous with efficiency.
That is, boosting sales.
Check out this awesome infographic Arena has assembled to set you up fpr success.
Conclusion
Live sales literally brought new life to the ecommerce universe.
But as it happens in any new format, it is necessary to study and understand its nuances and peculiarities so as not to waste time or unnecessary efforts.
With the tips above, you can get into the mindset to structure your live streaming sales.
Good planning is at the base of every project that is intended to be successful.
And when it comes to how to make Live Ecommerce sales, remember: engaging the audience is paramount.
