Your association might host some popular in-person events every year, but they can have their limitations. The cost of renting a venue, catering, and decorating can strain your budget. Plus, traveling to your event might pose challenges to members who live far away or have busy schedules.

Because of this, it’s important to design a balanced event calendar by incorporating a variety of virtual events throughout the year. Virtual events are cost-effective to plan and convenient for members to attend. This means that you can organize more of these events, charge less for tickets, and keep members engaged with your association year-round.

In this guide, we’ll explore some of the top virtual events that associations can plan, along with some tips for success.

1. Workshops

It’s a common misconception that virtual events are purely passive experiences for audience members. By hosting virtual workshops, your association can engage its members in direct interactions with industry experts and hands-on practice activities to develop new skills—all from the comfort of their own homes.

Keep these tips in mind to ensure that your virtual workshops run smoothly:

• Equip the tools you need. Prepare tools and materials as you would for an in-person workshop. For example, you might want an online whiteboard, breakout room capabilities, chat functionality, and polling features.
• Start with an icebreaker. Since attendees won’t be meeting face to face, focus on building a close-knit and comfortable environment early. Brainstorm an icebreaker activity or two to encourage participation from the get-go. If your workshop is about creating social media content calendars, for example, you could ask attendees to describe how their week has been using emojis or come up with catchy hashtag ideas for your event.
• Incorporate gamification. While workshops involve learning serious skills and best practices to support your members in their personal or professional development, this doesn’t mean they have to be all work and no play. Add short quizzes, timed challenges, digital badges, and leaderboards to infuse your virtual event with a sense of friendly competition. You could even up the ante by providing a small prize to challenge winners, such as a gift card or a piece of branded association merchandise.

After each workshop, send a short survey to attendees asking them to rate their satisfaction and share what they most enjoyed about the experience. Use their responses to adjust your future workshop planning to improve attendance and engagement.

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2. Career Fairs

Many people join associations to advance their professional goals. A virtual career fair can represent an exclusive and compelling opportunity for any member looking to take the next step in their career journey.

If your association wants to provide more value to its members and position itself as an industry leader, follow these basic steps to set up a virtual career fair:

• Choose an event hosting platform that comes with features for virtual booths, breakout rooms, and live chat.
• Plan your activities and offerings, such as introductory presentations, meet-and-greet sessions, and Q&As.
• Reach out to relevant employers in your association’s industry and invite them to set up a virtual booth.
• Promote the virtual job fair on your website, social media pages, and email newsletters, encouraging members to register and submit their resumes.

Following your virtual career fair, make it easy for attendees to take action by sharing session recordings and providing a list of additional, relevant job listings they can browse.

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3. Award Ceremonies

Your association likely has many talented members who are all contributing to your industry in their own ambitious ways. By organizing a virtual award ceremony, you can celebrate members for their accomplishments, boost their engagement, and establish a culture of success across your organization.

Follow these steps to make your virtual award ceremony just as engaging as an in-person one:

• Decide on award categories. Your ceremony can recognize specific achievements and member milestones. For example, you could present awards such as “Lifetime Achievement,” “Rising Star,” and “Member of the Year.”
• Design a detailed agenda. Come up with ways to add some entertainment to your award ceremony. Consider producing an opening sequence with snippets of member interviews and upbeat music.
• Determine how you’ll deliver awards. Encourage attendees to dress up to create a prestigious atmosphere for your virtual award ceremony. Enlist an energetic host to present the awards and plan ahead for how you’ll deliver them to members after the ceremony.

To make attending your virtual award ceremony even more appealing, consider sending an event kit with celebratory items such as gourmet chocolates, wine, and virtual video backgrounds.

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4. Webinars

Members are constantly looking to learn about the latest industry trends, best practices, and breakthroughs. Because of this, hosting educational virtual webinars is a surefire way to pique their interest and keep them engaged with your association. Plus, you can even record these events and offer them to members for later viewing.

Set your association’s next webinar up for success by:

• Surveying members in advance to understand which topics they’re most interested in learning about.
• Adopting a webinar platform that allows screen sharing, live chat, polls, and breakout rooms.
• Enlisting qualified experts or thought leaders to speak during the webinar.
• Encouraging speakers to use stories to make their content more relatable and applicable.

Don’t let the momentum stop once your webinar ends! Keep your members engaged by inviting them to complete post-webinar activities, such as sharing their top takeaways on social media or joining a follow-up Q&A session.

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5. Conferences

Compared to in-person conferences, virtual conferences allow your association to reach a wider audience, save on expenses, increase accessibility, and promote environmental sustainability. Modern technology has opened up so many ways to engage attendees during a multi-day virtual conference, so you’ll never run into a dull digital moment.

To prepare for a virtual conference, use these basic steps as a checklist to guide your efforts:

• Invest in a virtual event platform. The platform should be easy for both your event team and attendees to use. Look for features such as livestreaming, polling, breakout rooms, leaderboards, and virtual booths to support all of your engagement opportunities and ensure that everything runs without a hitch.

• Create an agenda. Fill your conference with activities such as a keynote presentation, panel discussions, live demonstrations, meet-and-greets, and roundtable discussions. Depending on the purpose of your conference, you could create multiple “tracks” so attendees can build their own schedule around sessions that fit their interests and niches.
• Secure sponsors. Nurture mutually beneficial relationships with sponsors by allowing them to host a virtual booth or participate in one of your panel discussions. Additionally, you can offer to feature sponsors in your online marketing materials, from social media posts to your event landing page.

To maximize attendance at your virtual conference, simplify the registration process. Consider providing early bird discounts or benefits to inspire members to take action and allow multiple payment methods for their convenience.

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6. Networking Sessions

Remember that your association is a community that can accomplish a lot together. Foster lasting connections between members by organizing virtual networking sessions throughout the year.

Provide ample opportunities for members to get to know one another with virtual ideas such as:

• Speed networking
• Happy hours
• Mentor meetups
• Escape rooms
• Watch parties
• Event breakout rooms

Give members the chance to connect outside of your events, too. Use your association software to maintain a searchable member directory with detailed profiles and online forums for members to interact on. Some solutions might even integrate with a mobile app that allows members to post on real-time activity feeds and engage with content shared by other members.

By planning virtual events, you can create an ongoing sense of excitement and community around your association. Recap your events in blog posts, send follow-up surveys, and track key event metrics to keep the momentum going and improve your strategies over time. Note the events that yield the highest attendance, engagement, and return on investment (ROI) to pinpoint which types to prioritize going forward.