Speaker 1: Hey everybody, my name is Marcus Murphy and I'm the CEO of The 5% and also your friendly host here for most of this event with Hoppin and it is my pleasure and my honor to be able to talk to you about hybrid and specifically not just about hybrid but actually what it takes to engage your audience. But before we get into that, we need to talk about the elephant in the room. We need to talk about the fact that the majority of companies on this planet have actually tried to make the transition to virtual and failed miserably, okay? And they're doing it because obviously we can't have physical events. We can't have physical events. I want them too. I already hear you in your seat at home, you're sitting there going like, I'm ready to come back and awkwardly be around strangers and learn and I got it, I want it too. But there is a way back. That's the future. That's the stuff we get to talk about today. How do we get back to that? And what does getting back to that look like? What is the new normal? Well, today we're going to talk about hybrid because being that everyone does it wrong, let me tell you what they first do. They have poor communication or lack of communication in general. This is why they fail. They also have a lack of attendance because a lot of people aren't going to pay for a ticket to come to an event that they could sit in their underwear at home and watch, right? There's a lot of that. But the biggest thing, the biggest killer of virtual events that has happened since the beginning of the pandemic till now has been an unengaged audience and that has to stop now. The solution to that so that you don't have a similar fate is 1000% going to be this hybrid model that we're about to talk about. So I'm going to save your life. Uncle Marcus is going to help. This is what we're going to do. Five ways, five quick ways to engage your hybrid audience. Five. That's it. Just five things. And here's the deal. I will never give you advice that isn't actionable. These five things you can implement right now if you're thinking about getting back into the event game. If your company's trying to figure out a use case to be able to put that money back into those things that you traditionally used for customer acquisition, for revenue in your business, all of those things can happen again, but you have to know the road back. So here's what the first thing you have to do. Number one in building an engaged hybrid audience is content. Look, there's no secret that content is what makes or breaks. Like this stuff is pretty. This LED screen, all this stuff out here that we've already been talking about, but if your content isn't engaging, if your content isn't actionable, right, we have enough content. We have content coming out of our ears, but what we don't have, content has literally never been the solution. The solution is implementation. So when you're starting to think about content for your hybrid event, to work back to a physical event, you should constantly be thinking about how is this actionable? How can people take what I'm doing right now and implement it? Because not only is that effective for a physical audience, but it's also for the virtual one, because both of those attendees are going to need content that they can use right now. Otherwise, it's just noise, and we already have enough of that. We have a lot of noise, okay? Step two of content is it needs to be step-by-step, right? And here's the other thing that we miss. We miss that we have two audiences. Your content has to not only engage your physical audience in a hybrid environment, it also has to engage the people at home. You have to acknowledge them from stage. When you're going through your content, when you're teaching, when your speakers are on stage, they need to have energy that transcends a lens, not just a physical audience full of all these people who are not paying attention, looking at their phones. This is going to be about people past the lens, right? So don't forget that. And the last thing I think that people miss is they need to record it, okay? This feels like I'm being very remedial, but I'll tell you that recording it makes it go further. If you're doing a hybrid event, there are a lot of people that are going to miss it in the virtual audience as well as miss it in the physical. And a lot of people are going to want to go back and watch it over and over again. So please don't miss the biggest opportunity you have, which is to take that recording and at least get it back out so that you're in the hearts and the minds of everyone who has attended or feels like they got FOMO because they missed it, all right? So that's number one, content. Number two is experience. I think we can all agree that experience at a physical event is amazing, right? You're in it, you get to network, you get to have one too many crappy daiquiris, and you get to get the confidence up to make new friends. This is key. This is amazing. That's what makes it great. You get the lights and the show and the music, like that experience is what people come back. They will pay again and again to come back to an experiential piece. It's also ties them into something. They get to feel that they're a part of it, and that's big. But do not neglect the fact that your experience does not stop with your physical audience. And it's actually also not the same experience that you should be giving your online audience. The online audience should have a parallel experience. They should have things that are specific to them. And if you understand that there are two experiences, then there needs to be two agendas. One agenda for your physical event, and one agenda for your online audience. If you have these two agendas and understand that this is exactly what you need in order to kind of pull off experiences where people feel good in the virtual environment as well as the physical, then you're ahead of the game because nobody's doing that right now. The last thing I'm going to say about experience is that you need to have somebody who is going to help moderate. Your online audience rarely has a voice. They rarely have a voice. Many of them are sitting at home, and they're watching. They're consuming. And as a consumer at home, you are only literally just a one-way street. But if you sit there and plop down a moderator. So what I mean by that, let me give you the practical example. I'm over here, and I'm speaking. I'm interacting with the physical audience. I put a moderator over here on a podium, and they sit there, and they're very attractive and very engaging, but they're sitting in front of a computer, and they're taking questions from the online audience, right? So if things come up, if you have somebody over here who has a question, as a speaker, you can go, okay, great, you've got a question over here, perfect. That's really wonderful. Excuse me, moderator, whoever you are, what's our online audience thinking? Okay, online audience, tell me what you think about what I just said. If you have questions, make sure you're talking to our moderator. And the moderator and the speaker or the host have this really great engagement, and it gives the online environment a voice. So if you actually want your... If you want to see the future, which, by the way, just a real quick pause, I think hybrid is going to be the new normal, but I don't think we're going to call it that. I think we're actually going to see that events are always going to have an online presence now. What we learned in the pandemic was that we were actually being less inclusive to a global worldwide audience who actually want the same information. So if we understand that now forever, forever in the future, it's no longer physical event in live recordings, it's physical event slash online merging, whatever we want to call that, and that's into perpetuity. That's always going to happen. So number one was content. Number two is experience. Number three is picking speakers. Picking speakers, the only reason why I come to that is because I think you want to pick speakers who are camera ready, all right? They have experience being on camera. In fact, some of the best speakers in this environment have been people that have been at-home course creators, people that are practitioners who are sharing what's working now and being able to communicate, because sometimes these people who are really good at this are not good when there's 30,000 people in an arena. It is really rare to have a speaker who is great in those environments come into a TV environment where they're talking to the camera like we are and being exceptionally good at it. So if you're going to have a speaker, either one, find speakers like that, course creators, people that have been in front of camera for a long time, or two, find people that you can coach up. Take these great speakers and put them through a program to make sure that they're ready for this type of environment, that they understand that there has to be a lot of energy and that they also have to communicate to a two-sided audience, right? That's really, really important. There's other things you can do, too. I think these are great and often missed opportunities for any kind of event, pre-recorded, pre-interview. Get every single speaker you have and record interviews ahead of the main event, and then send those interviews out to your virtual and physical audience so that they kind of get this behind-the-scenes part. And then also with your speakers, what you need to do is have things that are exclusive to your online audience that your physical audience actually isn't going to get, meaning this. We're up here on stage, I'm speaking, we're doing stuff with the speaker, and then I always leave and instead of going out in the audience, most big events go back to the green room. And back in your green room, you should have another set, have two chairs and an interviewer that speaker so that the online audience has kind of an exclusive fireside chat experience so they don't feel like they're just voyeurs to this great physical event that other people are having. So if you get those types of opportunities for people, they're going to feel really good. The second one is splinter your content. And what I mean by that is have virtual breakouts that are happening that are not happening in a physical environment. So what I mean by that is your attendees on the virtual side and the physical side can have one main stage experience, it's all the same. Big time speakers, main stage interviews, they can have this same experience. Otherwise what about a breakout that's more in like a green room setting or a studio from anywhere in the world, from any speaker, and they can sit there and pick their journey, right? They want to go over to this other breakout room virtually, they can do that because they're virtual, they're not in a physical environment, which frees them up and gives them so much opportunity, which I think we often overlook. That's really good. So that's number one, two, and three. Content, which is often okay and not that great. Experience, which making sure that there's two types of that experience. Number three is picking those speakers, which we often overlook the course creators, and they make really incredible speakers for virtual hybrid events. And then number four is hire a host. Hire an MC. I have literally hosted some of the biggest events in the world, both physical and virtual, and one thing that I'll tell you is that when you put, when you find that right person, when you find the person that can do this, that can speak to the virtual audience, that can keep everything going, that can engage the audience, that can bring things out of the audience, that a thousand percent can come and make sure that not only are things running off stage well for the online audience, but the on time and delivery and the content is top notch. Like, I think we don't have enough. And sometimes, I'll tell you, the best hosts, the best hosts in the world are not actually people who want to be famous. Like most of the time, it's a red flag, by the way, if you find a host that's just sitting around wanting to be on stage. Actually, the host is supposed to make it that the other people are elevated, that the other speakers, the other people, the people that need to be notable within that that have the best information are elevated and that everything runs smoothly, that's the benefit. And then here's the deal. When you're hiring a host, when you're looking for a host, there are a lot of people out there that put themselves as host. I personally don't have like a website you can go hire me as a host. I just have made sure that I've been putting myself out there enough, and you can look for people that are topically proficient. You can look for practitioners. If your event's about hybrid events, then look for the most engaging, charismatic person within an organization that also really embodies that. That's why I was asked to do a lot of this is the 5% is literally an event company that works on this exclusively. So I'm not a professional host, but I can come in and make sure that these things are going well and that every single piece on the agenda, both engaging-wise on the hybrid side and on the physical side are hit. So hire an emcee. Number five, community. Number five, community. The biggest missed opportunity is inviting people into a space that is both physical and both virtual. What I mean by that is a private community allows you to take and filter everyone into one space. There's a really great company. There's companies called Circle.so. There's obviously Facebook groups. There's a lot of little things that we can do where we can actually have a private space that's exclusive for us that we can invite people into to continue the dialogue. That's the point. The community is forged here. People are excited. The real impact happens when you can take those same people and put them into a private community where they can continue the conversation. And I think what's really interesting is you also have to give them tools. You have to give them tools so that they can connect to virtual folks as well as people that they're meeting at these events. So right here, probably over on my right somewhere, there's going to be a QR code that's going to pop up. Now, what is really interesting about this QR code, which I think a lot of people overlook, is that this QR code is, one, circa 2009. QR codes aren't, like, I don't know. They're not new. But what this one does, if you go ahead and pull your phone out, so everybody watching at home right now, go ahead and pull your mobile phone out, open the camera app on your phone, and take a picture of the screen right now. I'll wait. Oh, yeah. I'll wait. Oh, I know you're fumbling around with your phone. Go ahead. Yep. So when you take a picture of this, what happens? Yeah. It goes right to my LinkedIn page. It goes to my LinkedIn page, and you can immediately connect with me. We need to give our attendees, both virtual and physical, especially in a hybrid environment, more ways that they can actually go and connect with one another immediately. So whether that's platform or whether that's something like a QR code that you can quickly snap a picture of that can be shared through screens like you're doing right now, then it immediately allows people to connect, and it can, again, the whole point of it is, how do I continue the conversation past this event? That's where the value really comes in. Okay. So let's recap really quick. Number one, content. Content is key. It's always going to be key. We have too much of it. It's not the problem. The problem is implementation. So look for content that's actionable and practitioner-led from people that can say, hey, do these five steps. Take what I'm doing right now and implement it. What's the one big thing that you learned right now that you can go implement into your business so that it's not just a bunch of inspiration that dissipates and evaporates five minutes from when they're done watching the event, which is really great. Experience. There are two. There's the physical experience, and then there is the online experience, and those things can be different. The worst thing you can do is have this voyeur experience where people just watch the physical event happen at home, and yes, there's a benefit to that. I can just watch it for 95 bucks, or I can watch it from the comfort of my own home. The only bad part is that engagement is the killer. If there's a lack of engagement or a lack of something that makes them feel like they're still having a special experience, even though they're not missing out on the physical, then they are 100% more inclined to want to do it again and again, and also go further, especially if it's a customer acquisition play. Last one. Three is picking speakers. Make sure that they are camera ready. Not beautiful. Camera ready, meaning course creators, people that have been in front of a lens, and if they haven't, then it would serve you well to create something. Gosh, I wish companies like yours or like Hoppin or like anybody would create courses to help speakers engage their audience better in a virtual environment. That would be huge. That would also be a really good top of funnel play because there are literally hundreds of thousands of speakers out there or people that are trying to get on stages who probably don't know how to do this, and that would be a really big opportunity for somebody. Fourth is hiring a host or an emcee, somebody who can actually keep the party going, but also make sure that the engaged audience is mutual, both physical and both virtual, and finally, again, number five is community. Make sure you give these people a place to continue the conversation. That is probably the most key pieces of it, which is really great. Five things, real quick, something you can implement to make sure that your hybrid audience is engaged and that you are set up for success in your next event. Thank you so much. Again, my name is Marcus Murphy from the 5%, and before we go, really quick, because I know you're at home standing up in a massive ovation, but calm down. I've got an announcement to make before you leave. First thing, just some real quick housekeeping stuff, is that we want to make sure that we will be sharing this recording, so if you're sitting there going, oh my gosh, I wonder what's happening in the other breakout room or that panel that I missed, we are going to be sharing the recording after the event, so you have it for friends and colleagues or anything that you feel like you missed out on. The next thing is speed networking is now open, so be sure to head over there and continue these one-on-one conversations that I'm talking about and meet with these great people who are a part of the event, and the last thing is go check out the lounge, which I think is cool, a virtual lounge. I think we have needed that for a long time, and learn more, explore more, and just meet with these experts, the people that are here talking on the stage and giving it all they've got. With that being said, thank you so much for your attention. Thank you for attending this breakout session, and if you need anything, please feel free to reach out to me directly. Thanks so much. Bye-bye.