How to Host A Virtual Networking Event Like a Pro

Our world was rapidly moving toward virtual long before the pandemic; we just got a crash course when March hit. But that’s not a bad thing when it comes to networking.

The possibilities are endless for building genuine connections and relationships online, and frankly, we’re excited about it. That’s why we want to dive into what it’s like to host online networking events.

Hosting virtual events is not that different from in-person meet-ups, though there are a few things you need to know. To find out, we interviewed Sunil Bhaskaran, the founder of Global Business Mastermind, expert Alignable member, and host of hundreds of online networking events for more than 120,000 professionals across the country.

Below, you’ll find his expert advice on how to run an online networking event broken into three sections:

1. Essential steps to prepare for a virtual event—everything from choosing a topic to finding attendees and understanding your audience.
2. What to do the day of your virtual networking event—setting up your software, splitting into groups, making it fair, and more.
3. How to follow up after your event—surveying your guests, sharing your success, reusing your content, and checking the data.

Plus we’ll tell you how to use Alignable to help make your events a success.

The Switch to Online Business Networking Events

There was a scramble to discover what technologies would work best, but there was also a strategic angle. Exactly how were we going to make our business survive?

But before we dig deep into Sunil’s advice, let’s talk briefly about this switch from in-person to online.

Prior to the pandemic, Sunil was hosting face-to-face events for as many as 300-500 professionals at a time. He was also successfully hosting intimate, educational meet-ups for just a couple dozen people.

Then, the lockdowns began, so it all moved online. And it was challenging.

“I enjoyed shaking hands,” remembers Sunil. And of course, that’s now a distant memory. But that doesn’t mean successful networking isn’t possible. You just have to rethink how it all works.

“It was certainly nerve-wracking,” explained Sunil. “There was a scramble to discover what online technologies would work best, but there was also a strategic angle…exactly how were we going to make our business survive?”

Quickly, Sunil and his team figured out a winning formula for online business networking events, and they began hosting popular online meet-ups for as many as a hundred people at once. It was a trial-and-error process, but now they’re confident that they’ve figured it out.

Here’s what you need to keep in mind.

How to Host a Virtual Networking Event: 5 Critical Steps to Follow Before Your Event

“Virtual meetings are easy, fun, efficient, and economical,” explains Ron Supancic from The Law Collaborative Los Angeles. “They can be set up in a matter of minutes, and you can talk to anyone anywhere without hours of driving & paying high parking fees.”

But you might be wondering, how do I host an online networking event? Sunil breaks it down into five easy steps.

Step 1: Decide on a Topic

If you schedule a networking event or webinar, make sure there is a purpose and you are offering something useful to your audience.

Scott Sanchez from Firebrand Media, LLC points out.

When choosing an event topic, there are two things you need to keep in mind:

• Make it emotionally compelling.
• Explain how the future will be different after attending your event.

People want to know what they’re going to get from attending your online business networking event. So build a clear reason for your audience to attend. And that reason needs to be intimate, Sunil suggests.

Don’t choose a generic topic about increasing profit or leads. Get specific about the business topics that are important to your audience. Focus on your relationships, pay attention to what they’re saying, and then absolutely build your event topic around what they want.

Examples include:

• Expand Your Business Networking in Silicon Valley
• Forging Ahead Online: Opportunities for Growth and Confidence

People are looking for event topics that “intrigue them and get them engaged…helping them fulfill their future and a future that’s more exciting for them,” explains Sunil.

Step 2: Determine if You’re Going to Charge

Most small business owners are used to paying a small fee for in-person networking. They understand they’re paying for the location, food, and the setup. However, an online networking event has a different feel.

Decide if you’re going to charge a small fee upfront or give it away for free and upsell later. Just remember, if you charge upfront, you’re going to narrow your funnel. If you don’t charge, you’ll bring in more people, but you’ll have to focus on selling other services/products later to make a profit, if that’s your goal.

Step 3: Get to Know Your Audience

Sunil explains:

To have a really good event, you want to understand your audience and then gear the design of your event to that audience.

For example, you wouldn’t design a Lamborghini for someone who wants a practical sedan. You need to be smart about what you create based on what your audience is interested in.

This means that you need to get data about your audience, including feedback about what they want. This ensures that the day of your event, the people who show up are actually excited about what you’re putting on.

“Networking is just building relationships,” says Brett Gallegos from Element 29 Mechanical. “Relationships require understanding, caring, and a level of common goals. That’s it. Once folks operate like this, it becomes less of a transactional encounter and true relationships can be established.” 

Step 4: Send Out Compelling Invitations

“The invitation itself has to also be compelling,” explains Sunil. When your potential attendees open up the email or head to the landing page about your event, they need to be compelled enough to actually register for the event.

Make your invitation fun, real, and immediate. It should be personable and invite individuals by name while also promoting your brand and the meeting topic. The key is to make sure your invitees understand the value of your invite. You can do this by mentioning:

• Key speakers or guests
• Skills they’ll learn
• The type of networking opportunities they’ll have
• Swag they’ll receive
• How to sign up
  

Step 5: Persistently Find and Reach Out to Potential Attendees

People aren’t just going to find and attend your event without any work on your part. If you just post about your event once and expect people to sign up, you’re going to get crickets. Don’t give up on your audience and put the ball in their court.

Instead, go to them. Reach out on platforms such as Alignable, Meetup, LinkedIn, and Twitter to find potential attendees who would be interested in your event. 

On Alignable, for example, you can post an event and then sponsor it in your local newsletter so communities all around you know what’s coming up.

Then, demonstrate to your audience that you are genuine and you’re going to stick around—continually offering great events—and they’ll come.

To successfully reach out and find attendees, there are a few things you should do:

• Optimize your Alignable and LinkedIn profiles to be compelling, so when potential attendees do their research, they become even more interested in who you are.
• Join up with a local program, such as Alignable’s Business Leader Program, to gain access to an exclusive group of people interested exactly in what you offer.
• Promote your event across all platforms as much as you want. If you have great traction on Facebook or Instagram, promote there. If LinkedIn is your jam, use that.
• Just make sure to choose platforms where you get a good return on your investment. For example, if you don’t have any followers on Twitter, don’t waste ad money promoting your event there.

How to Host a Virtual Networking Event: What to Do the Day of Your Event 

You’ve done everything right to prep for your event, and you’ve got dozens of attendees ready for the big day! Now what?

Embrace The Brady Bunch

During an in-person event, you can only interact with and see so many people at once. Virtual networking allows you to expand your viewpoint to a far larger audience all at once.

Most popular online networking event platforms have a “Brady Bunch” visual option. This puts everyone’s face into its own square on the screen, so you can see every attendee at once and connect with your eyes and a smile.

“I found that it actually made the networking event more interesting because everyone could see the same view,” explains Sunil. The Brady Bunch screen makes it easier to connect, empathize, and share while networking, which is invaluable.

Split Large Groups Into Bite-Sized Rooms

Split people into rooms of five each, where they can talk amongst themselves and talk about their businesses.

You don’t set up a 100-person networking event, throw everyone to the wolves, and expect good results. You set up tables and cozy seating areas where people can divide themselves into small groups. The same goes for online networking.

Just because you have 100 attendees doesn’t mean you have to keep everyone in the same unmanageable group. “Split people into rooms of five people each, where they can talk amongst themselves and talk about their businesses,” recommends Sunil.

Platforms such as Zoom offer a one-button feature where you can randomly assign attendees to groups automatically. “It’s very easy. It’s very fast,” says Sunil.

Plan for Spontaneity

Conversations at networking events should always be a two-way street.

Just because you have a topic doesn’t mean you shouldn’t allow for anything off-script. 

In Sunil’s online events, he likes to ensure there are also opportunities for free-flowing conversations. He and his team will give guidelines, but then they’ll allow attendees to take a few minutes to talk about themselves and the topics they want. This makes the entire event more compelling.

But don’t worry about preparing attendees for spontaneity. “It works more effectively to let people know right before they go into the room” that they are going to get to chat, Sunil explains. That way, it feels more genuine and unscripted.

And remember, “Conversations at networking events should always be a two-way street,” says John Whaley from Prattville Living. “Remember to always include who, what ,why, when, where, or how.”

Make it Accessible for Everyone

Extroverts enjoy talking more. Introverts find it easier to fade into the background. If you don’t set up your virtual networking event for everyone, some people will control the entire conversation.

Zulmara Maria from Roots and Wings suggests, “Don't do all the talking. Follow a 50/50 rule, and talk about 50% of the time and the other 50%, have others do the talking. It is all about making connections.”

It’s for that reason that Sunil discourages informal chit-chat by pleading the fairness card. “People respond very well to fairness,” Sunil explains. “They want to give each other time.”

To ensure fairness, give every attendee a specific amount of time to talk about himself or herself—they have two minutes each. When their time is up, the conversation moves on, and everyone has an equal opportunity.

Related: An Introvert’s Guide to Building a Referral Network

Keep Chat Going on the Side

One of the greatest benefits of a virtual networking event is that you have access to technology and opportunities you don’t have in person. For example, you can keep a written chat on the side of the live video for attendees to share links, business cards, and make connections in real time.

“Use the chatbox to not only include your contact information but to have a private conversation with anyone you wish to schedule a one-on-one with,” says Sheree L. White from Business Services 4 U LLC. And “don't forget to save the chat!”

“I've got a renewed respect for [chat] because, as people were connecting…the chat was going crazy,” remembers Sunil. “People were intentionally trying to connect with other people they heard about, they were asking questions, they were passing jokes. It was all bonding.”

Moderate and Manage

While there’s a fair amount of trust that should be given during a networking event, as the host, it’s your job to figure out what’s working and what’s not. 

To make it easier, allocate a moderator ahead of time. Or, if you’re hosting a lot of popular events, set up a management team who can keep track of the groups, make sure things are going well, answer questions, mitigate arguments, and more.

Most of the time, people will self-manage themselves, but by stepping up moderation, you can ensure it all goes off without a hitch. Just be sure to train for moderation before the event day, so you know what to do and how to do it.

How to Host a Virtual Networking Event: Following Up

Online professional networking events are feedback loops, or at least they should be. After every event, reach out to your audience to get their feedback. 

Don’t be afraid to ask them what they liked and what they didn’t. The more information you get from your attendees, the better you can make future events.

To follow-up after an event:

• Share a post-event survey with attendees to get their feedback and recommendations for the future.
• Send out a post-event email with important information about the event, including the chat transcript, a recording of the event, links to resources, and more.
• Write a follow-up blog about how it went, what attendees learned, and tips for people who may have missed out.
• Post about your event on social media to keep the excitement going. You can share images, short videos, and quotes from the virtual networking event to enhance the conversation. 

The key is to keep the relationships and conversations from the event going. You can ride that momentum for weeks after if you put together a strategic plan for using the content from it.

Was Your Virtual Networking Event a Success?

Last but not least, how do you know if your virtual networking event was a success? Do a debrief with your team (if you have one) and talk about how things went, what you can improve on, and what your analytics look like.

Here are some critical pieces of data to consider:

• # of registrations
• Email open and click-through rate
• Post-event survey results
• # of leads
• Purchasing interest
• Event ratings
• Website traffic
• Social media engagement and reach

Then, from all of these KPIs, it’s a good idea to look at the costs and benefits of the event based on your goals. For example:

• If your goal was to increase product/services sales, how much interest did you get during and post-event and how much did you earn in revenue?
• If your goal was to drive awareness, how much did your social media and website traffic increase?
• If your goal was to generate leads, how many attendees signed up for your email list or downloaded your free resource guide?

By comparing your results with your ultimate event goal, you can determine if it was successful or not and then make improvements for the future.

What Does Hosting a Successful Online Networking Event Mean for You?

Hosting a virtual networking event can be a powerful way to meet people, generate referrals, drum up business, and get advice and ideas from experts in your field. From happy hours to virtual conferences, these events can create helpful buzz about your products, services, and experiences.

If you’re up for hosting, remember to use Alignable to help you establish your expertise and get the word out. 

Still have questions? All good—reach out to our members. With over 5.5 million on the platform, they’re bound to have good tips to make your event a smashing success.

Have you hosted or will you host a virtual networking event this year? Do you have any creative virtual networking event ideas? Share in the comments!

For more business networking tips, check out these other posts:

• How to Make the Most of Online Networking in Today’s World
• What’s Your Best Online Networking Tip?
• Business Networking Group Gurus Reveal Their 26 Best Networking Tips Now
• 9 Business Networking Tips to Meet New People From Successful Business Owners
• Top 5 Benefits of Online Business Networking
• 9 Virtual Event Ideas to Hit Your Business Goals