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Hosting Live (Virtual!) Events: Lessons from Planning the WordPress.com Growth Summit

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Hosting Live (Virtual!) Events: Lessons from Planning the WordPress.com Growth Summit
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Back in January, my team at WordPress.com was busy planning another year of exciting in-person events — community meetups, conference keynotes, booths, and in-person demos — at large exhibit halls and hotels around the world.

Then the world changed overnight, and because of a global pandemic, our Events team — just like many of you running your own businesses — had to rethink everything about how we connect with people. 

So we went back to work. We’ve learned so much in just five months, and it culminates in the upcoming WordPress.com Growth Summit — our first-ever multi-day virtual conference. It’s going to be a jam-packed program full of expert advice from business leaders and entrepreneurs. We’ll also have breakout sessions with our own WordPress experts, the Automattic Happiness Engineers, taking you through everything you need to know about building a powerful, fast website that works great for SEO, eCommerce, and growing your business. 

In the lead-up to the Summit, we wanted to share everything we’ve learned so far about running virtual events, from YouTube to webinars to Facebook Live and ticket sales. There are dozens of great solutions for staying connected to and supporting your audience — here’s what’s been working for us: 

Live webinars 

In April, we launched a series of daily webinars, 30-minute live demos and Q&As direct from our Happiness Engineers, five days a week. These webinars walk people through the basics of getting started with WordPress.com. We also launched a few topical webinars — deeper dives into specific topics: eCommerce 101, growing an audience, using the WordPress app, and podcasting, to name a few.

We chose Zoom to host these because it’s a popular platform that allows for key webinar elements like pre-registration/signups, screen sharing, and Q&A. We pulled these together quickly, so going with a familiar solution was key for us and our audience. 

To expand our reach, we also streamed to our Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube channels. This was a simple integration that Zoom offers already, and we saw our viewership grow exponentially. 

Pre-recorded vs. live instruction 

At virtual events, one question always comes up: pre-recorded or live? We prefer a combination! Live is great when possible; it gives attendees an opportunity to interact with speakers, speakers can personalize the content based on questions being asked, and attendees can interact with one another, forming connections with like-minded content creators and entrepreneurs. 

Live content also has challenges: internet connections can cut out, computers can shut down unexpectedly, and there are more opportunities for interruption (does anyone else’s dog bark the minute you get on a live video?). It also requires all participants to be online at the same time, which can be logistically challenging.

Our advice: Test, test, test! If a speaker isn’t comfortable presenting live, there is the option to do a combination — a pre-recorded session with a live Q&A in the chat. We’ve found it to work really well, and it gives attendees the same access to the presenter.

The Growth Summit 

We helped folks to get online quickly with our daily webinars and dove into deeper topics each month, and now we want to help you grow your site. Enter The Official WordPress.com Growth Summit, happening next week, August 11-13.

We gathered frequently asked questions over the past few months, listened to your requests for live sessions across more time zones, and found inspiration from users that we felt needed to be shared widely.  

The Growth Summit takes a deeper dive into topics and offers hands-on WordPress training for anyone looking to get online. You’ll have the opportunity to ask questions live, connect with speakers, visit our virtual Happiness Bar for 1:1 support, and connect with other attendees during the networking breaks. 

Some key highlights from the agenda: 

  • Using the block editor
  • Customizing your site
  • Growing your audience
  • Improving your content ranking (SEO)
  • Creating a marketing plan 
  • Expanding from blogging to podcasting 
  • Making money with your site
  • And so much more… 

We wanted a platform for this event that would act as an immersive event experience. There are many great platforms for this, including Accelevents and Hopin. We’ll be experimenting with many of them in the coming months (Remember: test!). A few key features we looked for: 

  • Ease of self-production
  • Ability for simultaneous sessions
  • Overall user experience
  • Flow of the event — central location for agenda, speaker bios, networking, and more
  • Networking features
  • Audience engagement — polling, live chat, and more
  • Analytics
  • Registration within the platform
  • Accessibility
  • Customization
  • Speaker (virtual) green rooms

The best part? This event is being offered twice a day so that we cover all time zones. And if you can’t join us live, attendees will have access to all content from all time zones, after the event.

Register for the WordPress.com Growth Summit Today!

The WordPress.com Blog

Pioneering virtual stoma care clinic

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Pioneering virtual stoma care clinic

It’s no secret that we’re passionate in our aim to improve the amount of support that’s available to those within the Inflammatory Bowel Disease community.

With this in mind in March 2016 we had an idea!  ‘Let’s see if we can host a ‘virtual stoma care clinic’ we thought to ourselves.
So with that in mind we set about trying to enlist the help of a stoma care nurse.

We pitched our idea to our friends over at Securicare Medical who have their own team of medically trained stoma care nurses and needless to say they were just as excited as we were!
We soon started to plan how we would make our ‘virtual stoma care clinic’ which could effectively be a 1-1 nurse-led web chat a reality and get this pioneering idea off the ground!GetYourBellyOut stoma clinic
The pilot, which was available exclusively to #GetYourBellyOut campaign supporters required participants to fill in a short form over on the Securicare website. They were asked for a brief outline of what their questions or concerns were and encouraged to submit any relevant photos (for example if someone was having trouble with skin irritation) before their consultation.
The reason for completing these forms upfront was to allow the trained stoma care nurses extra time to call upon their years of experience and wealth of knowledge to track down the best possible solutions.
 

Those who agreed to take part were given one of six allotted appointment times, between the hours of 5pm – 9pm where they would receive a call with a trained stoma care nurse by using web based technology. Each person involved in this scheme was allowed up to 20 minutes and all questions that were raised during the discussions were followed up afterwards.

Our online stoma care clinic went really well and from the feedback that we received, all parties involved in this first of it’s kind initiative thought that it was a great success! This forward thinking approach enabled us to provided a private, safe and confidential environment in which our supporters could discuss their concerns, all from the comfort of their own homes.

In this fast paced, modern society we feel it’s important to make the most of these ever expanding advances in technology in order to provide the best care possible. The hope going forward is that these nurse-led web chats (be these ostomy or IBD related) will help in a number of ways. For example, they will be able to save patients having to take time off work or education as instead of sitting in clinical waiting areas, they can tap into these ‘virtual clinics’ from a location that’s most convenient for them.

These 1-1 nurse-led web chats offer a much welcomed alternative for those who live in remote parts of the UK, that would otherwise have to spent hours travelling to and from their nearest hospital.  This new set up would not only save time but also money. The aim is to ensure that these illnesses don’t have a negative impact upon someone’s daily life, especially when experiencing a period of ‘good health’.

We look forward to seeing how this idea evolves in the future and hope that this style of clinic becomes a reality for many of us. 

 

getyourbellyout

Free Promoting Classes: Am I Allowed To Learn Virtual?

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Nothing beats having financial security on autopilot. This is the first trait you has to succeed in internet marketing. Entire articles can be, and have been, written on individual subjects mentioned in this post.
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