Virtual or physical, town hall meetings are all about networking and bonding among the attendees. With so many platforms offering virtual town hall services, choosing the best one can be tricky. Don’t worry! This article guides you through the platform selection process.
Step 1. Know What You Need
Identifying your event goals and requirements is the first step to selecting the best virtual town hall meeting platform. Ask yourself the following questions –
- Why am I hosting this event?
- What do I aim to achieve?
- What features do I seek in the virtual event platform?
These questions will help you determine your goals and objectives for hosting the town hall meeting. Moreover, it will help you have a clear mindset regarding your aims.
Step 2. Go on a Platform Hunt
Once you have completed the goals determination exercise, the next step would be to hunt for the most suitable platform. The virtual town hall meeting platform you select will depend on the type of event you want to host and your event objectives. Therefore, make sure you explore very well before arriving at a decision. Read further to know what features to consider in a virtual town hall meeting platform.
Gamification
Townhall meetings are all about promoting bonding among the team members. Therefore, adding online single and multiplayer games is a great virtual town hall meeting idea. Gamification of the event provides the attendees with a distraction when they feel bored. Moreover, it also promotes networking and interaction among the attendees. Therefore, gamification should take the top few places on your list of features to consider.
Live Polls
Live polls are a great way to get insights into the thoughts and opinions of the participants. Mid-event polls help you gain the insights and event experience of the attendees. For instance, if the feedback suggests that the attendees are finding the event boring, you can instantly make modifications and add fun elements to your event. This will further help promote participant engagement.
Live Chat
Communication and networking is the main purpose for conducting any event. The live chat feature adds to the multiple channels of communication. This feature helps boost inclusivity within the event. Some people might find it hard to speak in physical events and can feel left out. The live chat feature acts as a saviour for such people by providing them with an opportunity to interact and network.
Leaderboard
Leaderboard helps motivate the attendees to be attentive throughout the event. It creates healthy competition among the attendees and incorporates a fun element to the town hall meeting. It keeps the attendees engaged by motivating them to participate in the event activities.
Emoticons
Emoticons are a great tool for keeping the attendees engaged. The attendees can show their emotions and feelings with the help of emoticons like clap, hoot, like, laugh etc. These emoticons also help make the event more interactive.
Real-time Event Support
Every virtual event requires live technical support. The high vulnerability to technical breakdowns makes live event support the most important feature to consider in a digital event platform. Therefore, you must ensure that the event expert you select provides 24×7 virtual event support.
Customization
Customization is another must-have feature for a virtual event platform. What could be better than being able to create what you imagine? The customization feature helps you play around with the event venue. Moreover, you can also get into the nitty-gritty of the virtual event. You can add your brand logo, customize the design, booths, add text, videos, images and play around with colours as per your choice. Some platforms allow full customization while some are partially customizable. You must look for a fully customizable virtual event platform if you want to provide a physical event like experience to the attendees.
Social Walls
Integrating social media into your virtual event can further add to the fun and excitement among the attendees. It can also play a crucial role in creating hype around the event. Social walls display the event-related social media posts in real-time. Moreover, you can also collect the past social media feed related to the event and embed it within your virtual event. Posts made using specific hashtags can be displayed using a social wall.
Signature Walls and Feedback Forms
Signature walls and feedback forms enable you to gather feedback from the attendees. Feedback forms consist of questions that can help you gather information about the attendee’s experience. Signature walls can work as a memory of the event where the attendees can write their experience and give suggestions for improvements. This information can be extremely useful for making corrections in future events.
AI Matchmaking
AI matchmaking saves the time of both the organizers and the attendees by analyzing the interests and goals of each attendee and sending them the best match recommendations. Therefore, you must ensure that the platform you select to host your virtual town hall meeting provides the AI matchmaking feature.
Networking Tables
Setting-up multiple networking tables can foster discussions among different groups of people on a variety of topics. Each networking table has a certain seating capacity, and the attendees can choose from among the various topics of discussion and participate according to their interests. This helps build an interactive and communicative environment within the event. Therefore, setting up multiple networking tables can help increase interaction and participation among the attendees.
Seamless Navigation
Seamless navigation is one of the most basic features to look for in a virtual event service provider platform. An easy-to-use interface makes it convenient for the attendees to navigate through the event venue without any external help. This further boosts participation rates.
Step 3. Make a Decision
Once you have explored all the features offered by different virtual event platforms, the final step would be to make a decision.
Conclusion
The above list of features is not exhaustive, and there could be something else you need for your online town hall meeting. Therefore, conduct your research thoroughly before making your final decision.