Hi, and welcome to the event planners workshop newsletter for this week. Today, I wanted to encourage you to think about how you go about engaging and briefing the speakers for, specifically your virtual or online events. But I think a lot of this is also relevant to your in-person events as well. So I wanted to share with you some tips and a bit of a checklist to help you engage speakers effectively and offer them the opportunity to give their best performance.
Because that's what we want to do. We want to create an environment where the people who are presenting on your behalf on stage, engaging with your audience and giving them that outcome that they've paid for, you need to the kind of environment that gives them the opportunity to do their best work. So here's what I would encourage you to do.
So, first of all, I think you should give them a briefing call. You should call, if not individual speakers, try and get everybody together so you can get a common outlook for your event for everybody that's involved in your event. So organize a pre event check-in call with all the key players in your event, including your speakers and the agenda should look something like this.
So you should have introductions. So it's really handy if everybody knows who people are working with. Give everybody an overview of the event, including the purpose objectives and audience overview. So it's really important that they know why they're there, what you're hoping to get out of the event. And what's the kind of audience that they're working with. Give them a little bit of demographic.
You want to give them the expectations of each department or each stakeholder that is involved with the event. And you want to give them a bit of an AV run through as well. An audio visual runs through.
Discuss any technology requirements and preferences and help people understand how it's going to work, how the technology is going to work and how it best suits them and make sure you give them an opportunity to ask questions.
You want to discuss the room layout and advise what the audience will see. So this is particularly important for virtual or online events. The speaker needs to know what the audience is looking at. So if you get the opportunity I highly encourage you to give them the opportunity to be an audience member so they can see it from the audience's point of view.
You want to outline if any other participation methods will be engaged, such as chat rooms or social media, Twitter, Slido, that kind of thing. So they need to know whether any other engagement practices is happening on the sidelines that they need to pay attention to, or they may need to respond to later on.
Endeavor to get all of the stakeholders, including any other speakers on this call to map out all the questions and suggestions. It's always really helpful to have more heads in the room than just one. Discuss the program and the flow of the content. So you can walk them through getting your audience issues, walk your speakers, any other people who are participating in your event or working on your event, walk them through the event, give them the feel of what it is that you want to create.
So you want to discuss the program and the flow of the content and consider the varying energy levels of the audience. So remind speakers that they need to accommodate, particularly as they'll not be able to see the audience or feel the room. And this is important for obviously online and virtual events.
So sometimes people can create a presentation that is designed for an in-person event and think that they can just translate that into an online event. And that's not necessarily the case. Oftentimes those kinds of presentations can be either hard to digest or they could be a little bit boring. So you need to be able to discuss that program and articulate to your speakers, what it is that they're going to be working with.
Ask the speakers if they intend to offer any handouts or downloads from their website, endeavor to view these, if you can. And if possible you want these to be distributed from your website, as opposed to the speaker's website. You don't really want to be sending people off onto other websites away from your own.
You want to run through any pre-event promotion and opportunities to cross promote. If you have a look at most of the speakers LinkedIn's, you'll find that they're very well-connected. So it's always a good idea to give them a few posts for them to be able to share that they're going to be speaking at your event again, that is relevant for online and in-person.
Discuss any sponsor obligations and or deliverables. So they need to know if you've made any promises to any sponsors that (A), they are going to be mentioned. For example, if they're if they have an opportunity to do a speech if it is an online virtual event, have you promised to sponsor an ad in the middle of a presenter's presentation?
So you need to think about whether the speaker is going to be okay with this context because sometimes people may not agree with the various companies that come on board as sponsors. So that's a whole other conversation, but just be cautious that not everyone is going to love who you've got on board as sponsors. And it's always the best idea to let everybody know what's happening and what the expectation is.
You also need to advise any speakers, if there's any infomercials, if you've promised anybody, any infomercials in the middle. So if you're prerecording, for example think about it like a television show, if you're prerecording and the speaker has no idea that an infomercial, for example, possibly for a competitive product, maybe going to be advertised in the middle of their speaking slot or perhaps something that they don't necessarily agree with. So make sure you advise any speakers of any infomercials or sponsor messages that will be scrolling across the screen as well as they are presenting because again, they may not be able to see that.
And discuss any ad breaks or live crosses you intend to do throughout the event, really treat your speakers if you can, like rockstars. Imagine you're putting on the biggest band in the world. They would not accept ads in the middle of their show. They would not accept not being briefed on any promotion that was going to happen. That is, that is being leveraged off their performance. So make sure you treat speakers in the same way.
And lastly do a debriefing call. So it's a good idea to get everyone together after the event. If you're producing a multi-day or a very lengthy event, it's hugely beneficial to grab each speaker after their time slot and do a quick immediate debrief to continue to improve the current event. So I've got a little bit of a short list of questions you may consider asking.
So you might want to grab your speakers at the end of their slot and just ask them very quickly while it's fresh in their mind, things like,
Were are they able to connect with the audience?
On a scale of one to 10, 10 being the best, how well do they think that they performed (in inverted commas)?
Do they have any materials that need to be distributed because you need to get those materials out to people as soon as possible.
Did the technical equipment work sufficiently for them or did they have any problems?
Were they able to get assistance when they needed it?
Was there anything that you could have done to make their experience better?
Again, think of them like rockstars. It's really important to create an environment that gives them the opportunity to do their best work.
If there was a chat room, did you find it beneficial or a hindrance? If there was a Twitter or other social media interaction again was it beneficial or was it a hindrance?
If there was a facilitator, was there any feedback that they would like to provide in relation to the facilitation of the event?
And these are just a few examples of immediate questions that you could ask.
If you're doing a post event, debrief with all stakeholders, here's a few more questions that you can add.
Discuss any audience feedback that's relevant and or important to people to the event ongoing.
Provide any sponsor comment received again, if relevant or important. And if you've debriefed each speaker post presentation, summarize the overall view for the rest of the team. And if not ask each speaker to answer the suite of questions above and send them through to you.
Discuss the delivery platform, the pros and cons, and whether it's recommended to use that platform again. In an in-person environment, you might discuss the venue and talk about whether the venue was the right location for your event.
Discuss the various elements, such as chat rooms, Twitter, or other social media feedback mechanisms and the value of facilitators.
And of course, this is all in relation to the program, in relation to the speakers.
Provide any feedback to speakers on their presentation and or their hand out materials.
Discuss the flow of the program, the breaks and crosses and what worked and what didn't and discuss the organization and support of the event or conference and any feedback.
Now, remember with the above that while meeting the expectations of stakeholders, such as speakers, sponsors, and committees etcetera, is important, your highest value stakeholder is your audience member.
Remember my catch phrase, no audience, no event.
So all decisions should be focused on the benefit of your audience and the alignment with your purpose and objective.
So for more tips and information, keep following me. You can get this download on my website. I'll put a link at the bottom of the video. I hope you've enjoyed this week's newsletter and I'm going to check in with you at the end of the week and see how you're travelling with engaging with your speakers.
Have a great week happy eventing.
