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virtual events in nashville

R Checklist for Creating Top Virtual Events in Nashville

virtual events in nashville

It’s pretty much inevitable at this point that if you’re planning to host an event anytime soon, you gotta go virtual. But it’s not as easy as it sounds. Unless you have R checklist for creating top virtual events in Nashville, of course!

A Virtual History Lesson

We get it; nothing truly replaces the experience of meeting face-to-face with prospects, clients, and colleagues, but since COVID-19 began virtual events have been as much of a necessity as our daily coffee fix. In fact, virtual events have been around for longer than you may think for that very reason. The first webcam was actually created in 1993, by University of Cambridge computer scientists who were too ‘busy’ to physically check to see when the coffee, located in another lab, was ready. So, they created a webcam to livestream its progress. Priorities, right!?!

Virtual Events Today

In all seriousness, today’s virtual events can range from small groups to thousands of attendees, and the most common types of events include:

  • Question and answer sessions
  • Tutorials and/or classes
  • Training
  • Tours
  • Interviews
  • Performances
  • Conferences
  • Networking events

R Top Virtual Events Checklist

Anyone who’s ever planned an event knows how much goes into it. Success doesn’t come easily with virtual events either, but that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t look seamless! Here’s how:

Get a Game Plan – And start early! Think about: 

  • What you want to achieve
  • Who your audience will be
  • The experience you want to offer
  • What content would be relevant to them, whether you want a live or on-demand event or both
  • If you’ll require registration
  • If you want to partner with advertisers and/or sponsors, as well as how you define success and how you will track those metrics. 

And don’t forget to create an event budget.

Work Out the Right Time – From working out time zones to ensuring you’re not competing with other similar events to doing some research on when your audience is typically online; choosing the right time and date is much more important (and much more involved) than you may initially think.

Pick the Right Platform – This really depends are what type of event your hosting. For live-tweeting events, you might use Reddit or Slack (don’t forget the hashtag!). Webinar platforms include Zoom, as well as Livestorm and YouTube Livestream. Social livestreams include Instagram Live, Facebook Live and LinkedIn Live. For conferences there’s 6connex, HeySummit and Run the World.

Promote, Promote, Promote – There’s so much competing for your audience’s time, including other virtual events. So, make sure potential attendees know the details and WHY they should attend. Then promote far and wide using email, social media, and on sites like Eventbrite. What’s more, ramp up your efforts starting 2-3 weeks out as many won’t commit until then. And don’t forget to enlist speakers as ambassadors for the event in addition to creating an event hashtag and a dedicated landing page.

Test Things Out – Rehearsals are super important because it’s far too easy for attendees to bail if your virtual event is a pain. Test internet connections, prepare backups of presentations, and make sure your speakers are comfortable with the platform. Depending on the size of the event, you might even have some tech support available for attendees should they run into trouble.

Create Opportunities to Engage – Of course we’ve never done this ourselves, but we’ve all ‘heard’ of multitasking or social media surfing during a virtual event. Gasp! The easiest way to avoid people tuning out is to keep them engaged by incorporating a poll or chat tool (make sure to have a moderator) and/or encourage live-tweeting. Don’t forget to ask for feedback at the end of the event so you can improve for next time too!

Virtual Events That Got It Right

With so many virtual events out there right now, there are plenty of hits and misses. But, here are some of R favorite successful events:

  • Skift’s Online Summit - Travel's Path Forward – The first in their series of travel summits, the event had multiple speakers and guests had the opportunity to ask questions. Recordings of the series can be found here. 
  • Lululemon has been hosting a monthly online book club with live discussions on Instagram that feature the authors. Each book club pick focuses on a health and wellness topic and the discussions are moderated by one of their global ambassadors.
  • Garth Brooks and Trisha Yearwood hosted a series of free livestream concerts on Facebook Live with the hashtag #GarthRequestLive where they played requests that fans put in the comments. We simply had to include a Nashville success story right?
  • Silverado Vineyards came up with the concept of a virtual wine taste test to unveil a new product. They sent wines to their best customers and invited them to a virtual tasting while their experts discussed the wines.
  • Washington Performing Arts Gala – Their gala was scheduled for March and instead of canceling it they turned it into a virtual livestream experience in only 3 days! And even created a webinar to document how it went!

Top Virtual Events in Nashville Coming Up

For R help in planning your virtual events in Nashville or beyond, click HERE to schedule a FREE Discovery Call today!

virtual events in nashville

by R Public Relations Firm

tips to help you reopen

R is for R(e)-opening! 6 Tips to Help You Reopen Seamlessly

Raise your hand if you are a business owner who recently had your entire world turned upside-down? For us, we’ve been in the trenches with R clients as they’ve shuttered their doors, launched take-out menus, and now as many look to Re-open businesses, which in some cases, have been around for more than 20 years. Wow, things can change with the blink of an eye, can’t they? First, we want to say, whether you’re a client, a friend, or new to the RPR blog, we are here with you. Seriously, this is a time to band together and to be flexible, forgiving, and open to the new world we live in—a touchless, mask-wearing world. We see you and your pretty eyes in those masks, and we R here to help! Below, we’ve pulled together six tips to help you reopen and thrive in this ever-changing world. 

Make a plan. For many of you, the new rules, regulations, and stages of reopening are hard to keep up with—they change daily, and just as you seem to catch your groove something new pops up. Deciding when to open, re-open, who to bring on board, and what to do with your furloughed staff can be mind-boggling, let alone thinking about your marketing messages during times like these. First things first, take a deep breath and sit down. Let’s write a plan—a new plan—here’s what we need to include:

  1. Dates and guidelines for your city, what you are going to do, and when you want to do it. Start with a projected date of opening at (25% 50% 100%) capacity and re-hiring (XXX) employees to get things up and going. Call your staff even if they are furloughed, most probably want to come back ASAP. They most likely miss you—and their jobs—too. 
  2. Once you have a general outline, set up a Zoom call with your crew, review the plan you have and let them know, yes, things are changing so please be patient and flexible, and that you are, too!
  3. Share your plan with your staff. This may involve retraining them on new systems for cleaning, for customer service, for everything (it will be like you just opened!). We know it's frustrating, but take the retraining seriously as the last thing you want is a customer to video your staff NOT meeting new guidelines (if you need help in the HR department, let us know—we have resources to guide you).

Make a Plan B. If we can learn anything from the past few months, it’s that we all need a Plan B. There are a lot of what-ifs in the world of business right now, so be PROACTIVE vs. reactive, meaning prepare for things to continue to operate under a “new normal” and/or potentially even revert to stay-at-home orders, but this time you will be ready to make your business marketable!

Prepare for things to be touchless. Many places plan on keeping curbside shopping, free shipping, new website features for online ordering, and more from the past few months. We can say most of our lives are now MORE THAN EVER online, so get those online shops and websites up to snuff. (Psst: we can help here, too.)

Think outside of the box. Now is the time to offer up something new—to your menus, to your websites, to your business. We are seeing some make masks, some make new kinds of menu items (cue in family-style take-out meals), and some make new kinds of lemonade from these lemons. Perhaps this is the time your business thrives in a way it never has before, because, really, why not?

Take this time as a lesson on diversifying your offerings, adding merch, launching new product packaging, making your site shoppable … whatever it takes! Let us know if you need more suggestions or want help executing—we’re here to help!

And, as always, be patient and be kind. Your audience, clients, and customers are all in a state of unknown, and are adjusting, too! Have your social messaging be bright, informative, and positive. Remember your words have POWER, so use them accordingly!

by R Public Relations Firm

public relations checklist

A Public Relations Checklist + Trends For 2020

public relations checklist

So the year of 2019 is about to go by and here we are R-eflecting on all the fun openings, book launches, new businesses we supported, and clients and media we related to. PR at it’s finest but what have we learned from this year that we will bring into next? Here is our ultimate PR checklist—we are always happy to set-up a free consultation if you have more needs, wants or R-equests!

R words of advice

R words of advice for 2020 as far as public relations goes is:

  1. Stop sending press releases for things that are not immediate release or going to earn attention as “news.” There is a time and a place for all communication but press releases—unless it is breaking news—are a thing of the past. Customized-meets-personalized pitching is where things are headed, which means short, sweet, and to the point.
  2. Start investing in video—things are moving towards fewer written words, not more. I started blogging in 2010 and began doing vlogs shortly thereafter, as well as short videos that convey a message. YouTube is still going strong as an avenue to share and post videos + iPhones have made it super easy too!
  3. Speaking of short and sweet, keep your communications to media appropriate and short and sweet—not mass distributed. No one likes a mass email, especially someone who gets 100s of emails a day. This is one of the perks to hiring a publicist—we have ways to get the message to contacts without being pesky.
  4. Start posting in your social media stories NOW. General posts are moving towards a thing of the past, so have your social team post those stories and make them personal!
  5. Know what is a trend and what is an end! Avocado toast was so five years ago—things move particularly fast in the food and fashion worlds, so ask your PR team to help advise before making a product launch or new menu.

public relations checklist
6. Invest in EVENT-focused outreach. Start sharing your brand with a party or collaboration. Being a solo-standing brand is becoming a thing of the past.

7. Do use professional photos in all situations. No more dark photos of parking lots—have your marketing/pr team help you put your best photo-foot forward.

8. Do sign up and/or post on Linkedin NOW. Trends revive and Linkedin is one of them, especially for B-to-B businesses.

9. Do sign up and/or start posting on Tik Tok NOW. This video streaming platform will be taking over Instagram in 2020, just you watch and see!

10. As far as social media goes, know your platform when sharing on digital media. As we say to clients, each social media channel is its own neighborhood, and not all work the same way—think art district (Instagram), up and coming (Tik Tok), hipster (Snapchat), old historic (Linkedin/Twitter), mom ‘n’ pop (Facebook). A good PR team will help you navigate this so you can maximize your efforts in all places or just focus on one neighborhood doing really well!


Onwards towards a new year and a R-fresh of your brand!

Emily + RPR

***Schedule a free discovery meeting with us today at http://www.rprfirm.com/schedule/

by R Public Relations Firm