by admin | Aug 6, 2020 | Microsoft Teams Live
You might have already considered switching to virtual events for the foreseeable future if you’re in the event industry. Ever since the pandemic hit, virtual events are a new reality, whether you like it or not. While there are many platforms and tools/softwares that claim to help organize seamless virtual events, only a few are worth their claims. Two such are Microsoft Teams Live and Speaker Engage.
Microsoft Teams Live is an extension of Teams Meeting and takes live video streaming to a new level. Users can broadcast video and meeting content to large online audiences using Teams Live events for a spectacular experience.
While that is the case with MS Teams Live, Speaker Engage helps you with the event management. This fully-integrated, cloud-based platform makes the complete experience of event management as easy as possible. It makes managing and executing events easier through centralized content management and automated workflow as you can curate your speaker, sponsor, and community information.
Now, you must be thinking, “Wow, if I can get the maximum benefit from these two, my virtual events would be topnotch!”
Well, this is your chance. You can rock your virtual events with Microsoft Teams Live and Speaker Engage. You can have them for FREE!!!
We are conducting a giveaway contest where you can win free Microsoft Teams Live Assistance Services, Speaker Engage subscription plan worth $2000, Airpod Pros worth $250, Amazon gift cards, and many such prizes. All you need to do is, participate in the contest, complete the simple tasks, and win as many points as possible. We guarantee that you will be more excited as we dive deep into the details!
Prize Details
First Prize:
The first prize winner will get free Microsoft Teams Live Assistance Services, and Speaker Engage subscription plan (worth $2000). The winner can host a flawless virtual event seamlessly with ZERO chaos.
Second Prize:
We are giving away a one-time full event set up on Microsoft Teams and white-glove service for Speaker Engage that will make sure your upcoming event is a successful operation.
Third Prize:
The third prize is a pair of AirPods Pro that enhances all of your virtual meetings and events!
Random lucky draw:
Don’t fret if you haven’t won a prize. You still have the chance to win our random lucky draw prize. We’ll randomly select one winner from all participants for an Amazon Gift Card worth USD 25!
How to Win?
Honestly speaking, winning is the simplest part of the contest. You just have to complete some EXTREMELY SIMPLE steps to win the MS Teams Live Assistance Services and Speaker Engage subscription plan. Here is how you can win:
- Join the contest
- Complete the tasks to increase your score
- Win!
The more entries or actions you perform, the higher your chance of winning our prizes!
Last Date
You have time till 29 August, 11:59 PM (PDT) to participate in the contest. Make sure you have completed the tasks and scored the maximum points by the time!
How to Increase Your Chances of Winning?
The contest offers the same amount of points to everyone for each task. Once you enter the contest by providing your email address, you will be provided with a list of (pretty simple) tasks that you can easily accomplish. Each task is associated with certain points. Complete all of them and collect points.
Since everyone is provided with the same set of tasks, it is likely that all those who complete these tasks will score the same points. In that case, how do you increase your winning rate?
Well, most of these tasks are repeatable. You can accomplish those tasks as many times as you can and score the most points in order to win the contest! Additionally, you can take extra measures like sharing the contest on your social media channels, tagging your friends and peers, repeat tasks on a daily basis, and much more. The more you do, the more you win!
Simple, right? Now, what are you waiting for? Click the link to enter the challenge, follow the steps and guidelines to complete tasks and increase your score, and win. Your virtual event career is about to take a successful turn!
by admin | Aug 4, 2020 | Virtual Events
Make your Microsoft Teams Live Event stand out from the rest. A conferencing tool part of Office365, you can use it to broadcast webinars and other online events to up to 10,000 attendees. Microsoft Teams Live Event is different from Microsoft Team Meetings and is used for one-way communication with a larger crowd.
Why Use Teams Live
Office 365 subscribers get to use Microsoft Teams as part of the ecosystem. Apart from conducting a live event with 10,000 people, you can get an option to chat. Unlike Zoom, call time on this is unlimited. In addition to video conferencing, you can host audio calls with people inside and outside your organization.
Microsoft Teams allows you to set up smaller teams to increase collaboration within departments. For example, you can create a team for the digital marketing team or include all stakeholders working together on a specific project. The team members can share and perform documents, applications, video conferencing, and audio calls within the group. Users can access Microsoft Teams on their computers or mobile phones using their app.
Basic Functionality & Updates
Video conferencing has become so popular that it’s also used in post-work hours to meet your colleagues and friends, albeit the beer. Although Zoom has taken the virtual meeting world by storm, Microsoft Teams Live Event has added benefits that can improve your meeting experience.
- Chat, call, video conferencing, and collaborate within the tool
- Substitute your mobiles devices while telecommuting
Keeping smooth conferencing in mind, Microsoft Teams made few changes to the tool, making it a more reliable platform. Some of the added functions are:
- Users can move communication from Teams to Outlook and vice versa
- Message an entire department at once
- Improved security compliance and administrative tools
Without further ado, here are some tricks that you can enjoy to ensure that your event becomes a smashing success. These tips and tricks are for those who are either new or experienced using Microsoft Teams Video Conferencing.
A- Creating Invitations in Outlook
You can create Microsoft Teams meetings on Outlook with a plug-in that provides all users with a link to the meeting. Most companies use Outlook for emailing and communication. This feature makes scheduling and starting video conferencing a breeze.
B- Show a Cover Slide in Your Presentation
- It is essential to communicate clearly with the attendees about the status of the event. How do you do that? When the event is not live (pre-live status) at the scheduled time, people will see a black screen with a ‘The live event hasn’t started’ message. Or you would have gone ‘live’ but not started to present to give attendees time to enter.
- If you go live and there is no audio and people see the above-mentioned black screen, they might assume that there are sound issues and message you to fix it. To avoid this, let the first slide have the message, ‘the event will begin shortly,’ and unmute periodically to tell people to wait for a few more moments for the event to begin.
C- Change or Blur Background
If you aren’t happy with your background, Teams Live can blur the feature to frost the background. This feature is handy when you are in public or protect your privacy.
D- Define Roles for Your Virtual Event
Defining roles for your virtual event will decrease last-minute chaos and confusion during the live event. Let’s look at each position:
Presenter: A live event can have multiple presenters. All the presenters can present their audio, share their content, and stream images from their computers. You can also switch them to the moderator role if you have switched on the live Q&A session.
Moderator: It is good to have a moderator for every event to handle Q&As and enhance the audience experience. They can publish questions and can answer each question.
Producer: A live event can have only one producer. It is the producer’s responsibility to ensure correct content and format are presented at the right times to the audience. They can start and stop an event, share participant videos, and select layout. Unlike other video conferencing tools, the producer can share, access, and edit Word docs, PowerPoint, and Excel in real-time. They can open and discuss the documents on the call, share feedback, and collaborate to finish projects.
E- The 30-second Delay
Microsoft Teams Live Events has a 20-30 seconds delay, which may confuse. If people enter as an attendee on a device, they need to be aware of the Delay. Some may think that slides are not transitioning at the right place, forgetting that it isn’t in sync with the presentation. The Delay may also impact Q&A when the fall or topic would have moved when a question comes up. Presenters must build the skills to make the transition smoother, keeping Delay in mind.
Bonus Tip: Be Aware of the Presenter — Attendee Dilemma
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When you create a Live Event, write the message, don’t forward this invitation. Go to Microsoft Teams to invite additional people. All presenters will get the invite in the email as shown below that should not be sent to people who are not the presenters of the event:
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This is because the Get attendee link copies the link to the clipboard that you can forward in emails, social media, and communication tools. People who click Join will join as presenters and enter backstage as presenters when they are not. It will be a lot of work to get them to mute while the actual presenters present.
Remember to use a shorter URL to link the URL to a custom URL.
Restarting an Event
Live events that abruptly end due to circumstances due to technical issues. In that case, event organizers can create a new event using the same criteria, and team members can join. Use a shorter URL to create a custom URL for the event. You can also use the same URL to link the new URL to the customized URL you created earlier, helping everyone join quickly.
Microsoft Teams Live Event is a great platform to connect with your colleagues and external stakeholders. It can take your live event experience to a new level. The platform encourages connections with attendees before, during, and after live events. Try out Live Event in Microsoft Teams, test it, and get to know all the roles and features, and with enough practice, you will start creating flawless events.
To learn how to rock your online events with MS Teams Live, sign up to get our e-book in your inbox.
by admin | Jul 22, 2020 | Featured, Virtual Events
Ali Spain, Executive Director of the Microsoft Alumni Network
As a corporation alumni organization, connecting people is at the core of what we do, and events are an important aspect of our business.
Admittedly though, I’ve always had a love-hate relationship when it comes to events. We love seeing people come together to connect face to face, it’s important, fun, and valuable to our members. But we’ve always struggled with the fact that we couldn’t scale our in-person experiences to our growing worldwide membership.
Because we’ve wrestled with scale for some time, we had a pilot virtual event on our calendars prior to the pandemic. Thankfully, our fortuitous planning worked out, and shortly after the WFH transition, we held our first virtual event. A worldwide virtual career fair using a third-party online events platform called vFairs. In a 24-hour period, across four global time zones, we enabled 60 hiring companies (including Microsoft Corp.) to meet 480+ alumni candidates. The vFairs platform enabled us to simulate the experience one would expect at an in-person career fair, which is important for a highly collaborative event such as a career fair.
Since then, I’ve attended countless other online conferences, webinars, and virtual social hours. Here are some takeaways to keep in mind as you’re planning virtual events.
Content Takes Precedence
Taking time away from the office was a big part of going to in-person events. Now, attendance for virtual events is primarily driven by the information that one can learn and the information to be exchanged; opposed to who they might meet or run into. Thus, content must be compelling and the value of spending screen time (ie attending) — more so than shoulder-to-shoulder events. Prior to the event, communicate clearly, early, and persuasively what they will learn or gain by attending.
The Experience Still Matters
It’s human nature to connect with others. It’s the experience, the interaction, that drives people to an event, even online. It’s still important to enable attendees to connect with the presenter and with each other. Make it personal by asking presenters to acknowledge the attendee’s name when answering Q&A chat questions. You may also include polling between sessions and encourage interaction with prizes or recognition. And, if you’re goal is a collaborative event, select an event solution that enables break out sessions where attendees can interact with each other, like Airmeet.
The Swag
Let’s be honest here, what we all miss is the swag. Providing a token of gratitude for attending is still very important and can still be done virtually. And, if you’re charging a registration fee, you better be packing some decent swag. I recently attended an all-day conference that gave away Grubhub coupons for lunch and did surveys between sessions to break up the program. Trivia winners had pizza delivered to their door during the event, which of course was posted to social media to create buzz. While you may save budget on catering at virtual events, don’t skip the swag budget entirely. It’s also nice to send a little something post-event (digitally or via mail) for saying thank you for attending.
Yes, someday soon, it will be great to pack in shoulder-to-shoulder again. But out of necessity, we’ve learned virtual events can be scalable, economical, and as valuable. I’m convinced, post-vaccine, when our lives and work return to a new normal, virtual events will enjoy a new, elevated status in our business plans.
Connect with me on LinkedIn and share your event ideas.
by admin | Jul 22, 2020 | Microsoft Teams Live
We are in the era of virtual events.
Interactivity and engagement were the main concerns associated with virtual events. Today, technology has mitigated these concerns effortlessly and elegantly. This is why enterprises are increasingly open to the idea of virtual events and they have become a strong tool for lead generation. With technology, you can take your event online without compromising on networking, lead generation, and ROI.
Even though online events make perfect sense in this fast-paced, 24/7 world, the steps you need to follow to organize and produce such an event can be challenging. You can conduct any type of events online starting from virtual meetings/conferences to product launches, webinars, virtual career fairs, and virtual town halls. Therefore, it is vital to learn and use the best practices for organizing those events. Fortunately, creating engaging, value-generating online events is not as difficult as you think as there are many useful tools available to help you.
Here are two such tools/software that will help you organize webinars and virtual events seamlessly — Teams Live and Speaker Engage. Rock your webinars and virtual events with the help of these tools!
Teams Live
An extension of Teams meeting, Teams Live takes live video streaming to a new level. Users can broadcast video and meeting content to large online audiences using Teams Live events. By encouraging connection throughout the entire engagement lifecycle with attendees, you can create a live event wherever your audience, team, or community reside. Teams Live events are meant for one-to-many communications where the participation of the audience is primarily to view the content shared by the host as she/he leads the interaction. The attendees can watch the event live or recorded and can interact with the presenters using moderated Q&A.
Speaker Engage
Speaker Engage is here to make the whole experience of event management as easy as possible. By designing and developing an intuitive and well-thought-out software, Speaker Engage offers solutions to event organizing challenges. As a fully-integrated, cloud-based platform, designed by event planners for event planners, Speaker Engage helps event planners curate and delight speakers and sponsors with engaging communications, content, and logistics to remove the chaos from event planning and execution. You can sign up for a 100-day free trial of Speaker Engage here.
Best Practices
Now, let us see the best practices to organize a great virtual event, by using both Microsoft Teams Live and Speaker Engage.
- Plan
- Create an end to end plan for producing your event. This plan should include concepts, goals, audience, speakers, budget, social media promotion, communications to achieve your business outcomes.
- Select the right event hosting infrastructure for the experience.
- Setup the event infrastructure and have the right technical assistance in place to help you run the events smoothly.
- Establish roles for event execution. You will need to have a producer, presenter, and technical support.
- Programming
- Breakdown the 60-minute presentation into 3 parts:
- Engage the audience with interactive conversations or entertainment
- Educate on your topic through demos, panels or workshops
- Empower them to take actions such as signups, purchase, share, etc.
- Keep the session lively. Make it entertaining. Make it about them.
- Practice
- First and foremost, practice! Run rehearsal events and learn the system well, so that you don’t face glitches during the live event.
- Plan everything before the event starts.
- Provide adequate training and assign roles and responsibilities to people in each department.
- Know each person’s responsibilities for each step of the operation.
- Audio
- Audio is the most important aspect of a virtual event. Make sure the presenters have good microphones.
- It is important that you test in-room audio prior to the event and ensure that everything works fine and there are no unwanted noises.
- Etiquette
- Wear professional, comfortable clothing.
- Avoid busy patterns, which could translate poorly on video.
- Make sure your background is clean and appropriate.
- Lighting
- When lighting for webcam recording, the three-point lighting technique will help you. One key light is focused on the subject and two softer lights balance out the lighting is revered among professionals but isn’t necessary for quality lighting.
- Avoid placing your lighting directly above you, as this can cause some dark and distracting shadows that draw attention away from your face.
- Straight-on lighting is best, especially if you have a window with natural light on your side to fill out your shadows.
- These tools help you find the proper light balance and fill, and will ultimately help you look sharp over webcam:
- Ring lights are popular for vloggers and models for a naturally balanced light source
- Key lights are a good spotlight on a subject and pair well with side lighting from a window or alternate light source for a full balance
- Light diffusers help decrease lighting strength or can reflect light for better fill and balance
- Video
- The quality of the video does make a difference. Ensure that the video quality dynamically adjusts to bandwidth and network quality.
- Ensure your viewers get an uninterrupted playback without buffering or latency.
- Don’t forget to use three lights — a key light, a fill light, and a backlight — to illuminate your subject.
- Event Management Tools
- Organizing the details of all event activities is a crucial role in executing a flawless virtual event.
- Choose the right event management system to manage your events.
- For instance, Speaker Engage is a centralized, fully-integrated, and cloud-based platform that can meet all your event needs.
- Speaker Engage includes speaker, sponsor, resource, social media promotion, and agenda management that enable you to conduct successful virtual events easily!
Summing up
With the right approach, programming, and the right tools, hosting virtual events could be a walk in the park. As discussed earlier, hosting an event virtually is more than just sharing a link to a virtual meeting or a webinar. The platform should cater to all your event management needs like managing attendee registrations, payments, and live streams in one place. Teams Live and Speaker Engage, when used together, are two powerful tools that can help you conduct flawless virtual events. Happy organizing!
Keep an eye out for our e-book How To Host Virtual Events with Microsoft Teams Live & Get It Right. Sign up to receive a copy of this ebook in your inbox.
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by admin | Jul 22, 2020 | Featured
A Detailed Guide to Email Templates for Successful Virtual Event
As we try to cope with the current workings of the world, many of us are actively trying to bridge the gap. From upskilling individuals to engaging them or preparing platforms to extend access to more and more people, we are working towards a society that will come out more inclusive. Thanks to the internet’s broad reach, it is now possible to interact and share ideas with anyone anywhere.
One of the ways we ensure engagement, access, and inclusivity is by hosting an online/virtual event. Despite what you might have heard, hosting webinars is not as easy as it sounds. Although, we would argue that hosting webinars is a piece of cake compared to convincing people to attend them!
One of the many reasons people do not attend webinars is they forget. And one of the many ways we can do to remind them is by sending periodic emails reminding them why they should attend.
As event organizers, it is crucial to market a webinar/virtual event effectively. Let’s look at seven different emails that also work as email campaigning templates you should send to your participants.
1. Immediately after registration
We all like the comfort of confirmation. And what’s more comforting than an email once you’ve signed up for an event. Now, this email is essential. The person must have signed up for a listed event on a whim without reading much about the webinar itself. The first email you send out confirming their registration could play a key role in attending the webinar. The email must give your potential attendees context. Attach or link articles relating to the webinar topic to provide them with context before attending. Let them know what they can expect from the webinar, urging them to attend.
2. A day after registration
The second email must go out the day after the person has registered. This email works as a reminder, letting them know that they’re essential to the webinar. Request the registered to go through the links attached before they attend, providing further deeper context. At the email’s closing, please share a few takeaways they would be privy to once they hear the webinar. It could be soft skills, hard skills, or even a pdf document or an e-book. Share the webinar plan in this email or email campaign template, including the topic, list of speakers, and critical questions that would be discussed and answered in the course of the webinar. Also, add the link to the webinar. Not that it would be functional but, it’s good practice.
Ensure you plug in the link and the date and time of the webinar in the rest of the trailing emails.
3. Two days after registration
Although you had sent emails to all those registered before, they would need a reminder. Let them know how much you look forward to them attending and request them to be on time, which would help you run the rest of the webinar or online conference with no interruption.
4. The in-between emails
Depending on when they registered, you will have to space out your emails. Getting emails from the same source every day can seem too much, and your potential attendees could lose interest. After the first three emails, space out the emails to be sent out once in two or three days; this way, you can keep reminding them about the webinar and not seem too intrusive. It is advisable to have all the emails be interactive. Link articles or videos or place images within the email, ensuring that the emails you send out are of value to the registered. Share the profiles of the speakers, allowing the attendees to get to know them better. If you do have a social media campaign running on the side, you could plug them in, requesting them to participate.
5. Send on the day of the webinar
The day of the webinar calls for the most critical series of emails. The first email on the day of the webinar must go at least 5-6 hours before the webinar, or on the same day morning. In this email, give them another look at all that would be discussed in the webinar. Share the webinar plan and a list of priority questions that would be answered in the webinar course.
6. An hour before the webinar
This email would serve as a reminder notification, requesting the attendees to be ready. Mandatory information shared in this email must be the webinar’s topic and the itinerary of the event. Have the link to the webinar, with the time and place. Urge them to be on time to help you run the webinar with no distractions in between.
7. 10 minutes before the webinar
This is the last email in the series of emails you send out before the webinar. This email would primarily request them to join the webinar immediately to not miss out on attending the webinar. The email must be kept short and to the point. The purpose of this email is to share the link, not to share any information or engage them.
With that, we have a comprehensive list of all the emails that must be sent out to potential attendees once they register for the webinar. Download these ready-to-use email campaigning templates and configure them to suit your messaging.
Submit your email to download the email templates
The key is to provide value in your emails, promising them that the webinar would be as or more interactive or educational. Those who registered must be aware that they would be walking away from the webinar with abundant knowledge.
In conclusion, follow these tips to ensure that you host a successful webinar. Check out speakerengage.com to get access to ready-to-use email templates. Sign up for the 100-day free trial or contact us at support@speakerengage.com to schedule a demo.
