Inaugurated with 1991, world’s first cliff-hanger Livestream with webcam footage of coffee-makers in mid drip by Dr. Quentin Stafford Fraser and Paul Zardetzky, the trend of virtual events has buckled up its seatbelt to travel in such an aggrandizing manner. Going through a brief intro of the virtual event, a virtual event is an online interactive meet-up grabbing lots of momentum and engagement reducing costs and carbon footprints. In the present scenario, the virtual event has become a norm globally which has acted as the bridge between attendees and the speakers making the communication more effective and audience-engrossing.
The outbreak of the global threat, coronavirus, and stay-at-home orders all around the world have been the reason that the virtual events have set their peak position for the avoidance of contact to the deadly virus. Before the world got impended over the fear and dreadful impact of COVID-19, virtual events were conducted but not in a frequent manner and now the tendency of organizing and attending such events has been gradually increasing. According to Market Research Media, which mentioned that the virtual events will grow from $14b to $18b in 2023, with an unfaltering increase of 5% annually, and the pandemic assisted for the ultimate growth of such events. In 2018, Coachella’s YouTube Livestream brought Beyonce’s Homecoming to more than 41 million people in more than 232 countries, rather than the attendance of tons of people in a single physical location. Organized meet-up with the speakers, celebrities or industry leaders, inspired celebs, perfect and flabbergasting platform for the audience, these virtual events have generated tremendous opportunities to learn, participate, present known information and inner opinions. Regarding pros for the hosts and organizers, virtual events intend to: - Reduce costs
- No barrier of physical location, hosting can be done anywhere from the world
- Increase engagement with potential customers
- Building a brand and promoting networking and professional partnerships
- Fabricating trust among the audience and credence towards the host organization
Since, organizing events are an integral part of marketing campaign and strategy, these events abetting the organizers introducing as renowned creds and leaders in the market, the virtual events include webinars, demos, masterclasses, Q+As, panels, interviews with celebs, tutorials whereas virtual trade shows, conferences, workshops, summits, and company-wide gatherings in a larger scale. Due to more reliance on mobile phones and digital tools now, the virtual events in the nearer future will be more progressive with new hallmark. Regarding webinar and social media platforms, Zoom and 6Connex are used for frequent meetings, webinars including online classes of the students concerning different faculties, levels, and course of subjects. In a recent interview as mentioned in the popular news website, CEO of 6Connex, Ruben Castano, said in a statement, “Over the last few months, we have seen our business of virtual events grow by 1000%. We have been working overtime and hiring nonstop to keep up with the demand.” Not only 6Connex but the CEO and founder of Zoom earned millions in the lockdown period and its popularity went supersizing which used to be rarely used by the customers in the past days. Till May, the Virtual Events platform had seen 52000 events and subevents since COVID-19. Crowdcast, Demio, Livestorm, WebinarNinja, Vfairs, Run the World, Tiktok, Instagram Live, etc are some of the widely used platforms for virtual events. Some of the earth-shattering and grand virtual events are: - Octane Live- Gathering of thousands of IT professionals, product leaders, and developers
- Social Media Week- Insight on ins and outs of digital marketing with over 300 speakers and 150 virtual sessions
- IBM Think 2020- Latest advancements in open technologies like hybrid cloud and AI.
- C3 2020- Event on Content Marketing
Cognate to many mini and major events, such types of events are organized timely. Last-minute adjustments can be done in pre-event buzz whereas post-event comments and feedback are very helpful for the optimization of upcoming events. Such paid and unpaid virtual events have been of great support to the potential users plus the hosts themselves embracing lots of feasible pros and setting yardstick in the virtual world.
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