Busting MORE myths about virtual events

With more and more companies opting to race back to in-person events after two long years filled with masking mandates and travel restrictions, virtual event myths are continuing to rear their ugly heads as more organizations continue to wonder why they should care about virtual events. 

Again, virtual events cannot, and should not, completely replace your in-person events. No matter how many online event-tech influencers say virtual events are the new normal, there will always be a place for in-person events. 

With that being said, let’s bust some more myths about virtual events! 

Virtual events won’t last

Another version of this myth is that virtual events are a short-term fix. Virtual conferences have been around for longer than most think! As one of the earliest virtual platforms available, vConferenceOnline has been doing virtual and hybrid events since 2007, helping thousands of brands to expand their reach. 

Since 2020, people have revolutionized how they want to work and relax. There was a necessary surge in people working from home, which provided tons of flexibility for people to take care of family, focus on being more productive during their work hours, and allow more time outside of work due to the removal of commute times. 

This desire for flexibility continued into other areas of life, including increased streaming services. Gig economies flourished as people prioritized their time over grocery shopping or eating. 

Your events need to consider this, and virtual conferences provide that flexibility for your attendees. As long as people are looking for flexibility and options in how they consume content, virtual events will continue to flourish and help you provide top-quality content to your attendees. 

Virtual events will cannibalize your in-person events

Virtual extensions to events and stand-alone virtual events have been known to increase year-over-year in-person event attendance. Some clients of Commpro note that there is as much as a 10 to 30% increase in attendance as more attendees are exposed to the content your organization is producing! 

The Event Leadership Institute provides more evidence against this myth. They note that not only did 67% of hybrid event planners not see a decline in live attendees, but 88% of those same attendees said that attendance stayed level or increased for future events. 

Event organizers cannot ignore these statistics. Adding a digital component to your event strategy, either as a hybrid event or a wholly virtual event, allows your company to reach audiences well outside your typical in-person reach and spread your message to a global audience! 

Attendee behavior is the same as your in-person events

As events pivoted hard to virtual in 2020, many event planners kept the same ideas they had for their in-person events. Among these carried-over ideas was the impression that attendee behavior was the same virtually as it was in-person. 

This is very different from the truth. 

Your virtual content needs to be optimized for virtual attendees. This optimization includes shorter content bites, providing evergreen content, and providing more stretch and food breaks. But this content optimization is not the only thing that needs to change for virtual conferences. 

Your virtual conferences may have fewer attendees who attend it ‘live’ as the content often is provided on demand. Without encouragement to move their schedule around, your attendees will likely watch the content when they deem it necessary. You’ll need to incentivize them to attend live or plan for them to watch it on demand. 

0Virtual events are not secure

Virtual events are incredibly secure environments! Between secured logins and other features, they are far more secure than most people assume! 

The best platforms allow you to designate how many concurrent logins are allowed per account. Limiting the number of possible logins removes the ability for someone to ‘coat-tail’ on someone else’s account. This will remove ‘sharing’ registrations and let people know if their registration information has been compromised. 

On top of these secured logins, all access to event assets is encrypted on vConferenceOnline. Access controls are in place to prevent unauthorized session access and to view when using videos that we host. 

Finally, it’s important to note that you can respond to bad actors throughout the event. This includes banning from meeting rooms, removing posts in the chat, and removing their access to the virtual space itself. All of this is to say that virtual events are very secure and allow you some instantaneous actions should a bad actor attempt to sabotage your virtual event. 

Virtual events are more work or are too expensive

This is one of our favorite myths! In-person event organizers go above and beyond for their events. Between venue negotiations, food and beverage service, security, hotel room blocks, travel coordination, and more, in-person events have far more items that need to be coordinated and taken care of. 

Virtual events have fewer components to plan for, and the best platforms have a Fully Managed service you can take care of. That service will build your entire event for you, including training speakers and sponsors on how to get the most out of their experience. This allows you to bring on an entire team of virtual event platform experts to build your event for you while allowing you to focus on the other aspects of planning your event. 

We’ve also heard many event organizers think virtual events are too expensive. In response, we’ve looked at how people have used our platform over the past 15 years and their evolving needs. We’ve taken the time to see where we can lower costs for event organizers and are committed to doing this every month to help where we can. 

You can now get unlimited events on the vConferenceOnline platform for little more than many organizations pay for an internal communication tool like Slack. This includes all the features you are looking for in your virtual platform and the flexibility to use the tools you want when you want! Combine that with our specialization in providing Fully Managed services, and you are one step closer to hosting intuitive, easy-to-host, and profitable virtual events! 

Click below to schedule a demo, learn about our recently decreased pricing, and get started today!