Post-event opportunities

The first two posts in our blog series on conquering Zoom fatigue included tips for mastering your virtual meetings and how to turn participants from passive to active. Now that your virtual meeting is over and, using the tips and techniques provided, you conquered Zoom fatigue for attendees, right?

While your virtual meeting hopefully energized your participants, what happens once it’s over? For many, it is on to the next Zoom call and the one after that. While you are not responsible for their meeting experiences with others, you can magnify the positive experience of your meeting, build and strengthen your relationships, and become the bright spot in their day by leveraging your virtual meeting’s success to create post-event opportunities.

Much of your post-event opportunities will depend on actions taken during the meeting planning process. Ideally, you will have taken the steps to track attendance (particularly valuable for webinars, breakout sessions and large events). Are you seeing a drop or increase in participation? Are previous participants coming back for more? Are you expanding your reach by engaging new participants? Tracking attendance can help you identify opportunities to maximize what works and improve upon what doesn’t—ensuring that you deliver valuable content and an experience that participants will appreciate and share with others.

Tracking questions, comments and opinions collected during your virtual meeting provides critical insights into your audience’s unfiltered thoughts. This can be accomplished by activating the in-meeting chat feature and incorporating polling or a Q & A into your agenda. Learning what interests and excites participants, when they are most engaged and whether they found value in your content will guide your virtual meeting strategy moving forward. In addition, responding to their questions and comments and sharing polling results with the group once the meeting has concluded provide additional opportunities to engage with participants and let them know that you value their input.

Once you have established a winning formula for your virtual meetings, it’s time to create additional opportunities that, as part of your overall strategy, will strengthen your relationships, expand your reach and establish your organization as a valued resource. Consider creating a year-round community where people can connect with you, network and consume the most valuable content. This could include follow-up meetings with smaller groups and continued learning sessions. Another great option is to create an online central repository where all your content (including recordings of your virtual meetings) and additional resources can be accessed, and participants can network with one another.

While Zoom fatigue, in general, is not likely to disappear, creating a virtual experience that engages, educates and delivers value will help ensure that your audience will feel the excitement.