How to host an online event: approaching partners 😉
I have posted several blogs about managing offline and online events. I was talking about the process of arranging logistics and accommodations. I have also shared how difficult it was to move everything from offline to online. That was really challenging but we gained tons of opportunities during this pandemic. This time, I will share some tips for you who want to run an online event with local or international partners to get some exposure for your project/movement/campaign/program.
Hi!
It’s Maya again from do-business and be-event team. As you may have guessed, I will continue my series of working at su-re.co part 15.
As I mentioned above, I will share the step-by-step and what to prepare for managing the online event 😉 starting with how we approach the partners.
HOW TO APPROACH PARTNERS
1. Make sure you know ‘why’ you want to hold the online event and have your company/organization profile ready.
2. Make a list of company/organization/community you want to collaborate with. The list consists of the name of the potential partners, responsible person name, contact number, social media, and website link. While you are listing the NGOs/community, please have a look at the program and do some research on their projects. It’s good to have a collaboration with partners who have the same interest or vision/mission. For example we approached an NGO that is running a project on environmental issues or climate change. OYA! If you also plan to get more exposure from this collaboration, tap into the community from these partners. So, when you want to create a follow-up event or even create the new one, you can promote it to their communities.
3. Send them a proposed collaboration message through email/phone message/WhatsApp/Instagram DM or any other social media platforms and briefly explain your company program/activity and interest to have a collaboration with them. Please also mention on the message if it’s possible to have an introduction meeting with the potential partner. As we experienced from hundreds of meetings, usually we find other collaboration pathways beyond hosting online events, such as projects collaboration for do-business, do-engineering, or even think-research.
4. Wait until they respond and set up the meeting schedule with the team (your team and potential partners).
5. Because we proposed the meeting, we should prepare the meeting link and share it with the partner and team. In su-re.co, we also update it to our official calendar, in case someone else is interested to support and join the meeting. It’s also to prevent the time delay as a reminder.
INTRODUCTION MEETING
1. Please prepare your company/community profile and template of MoM. You can also have a look the sample template and how su-re.co makes the minutes of the meeting below ⬇️
2. For the meeting flow, we usually opened the meeting with a small introduction from all team members, su-re.co - company’s introduction, partner’s introduction (what it is and the program/activity), and discussion which part that we can have a collaboration.
3. In this case, we are talking about the online event preparation. As from our experiences, we usually ask the partner what kind of event we want e.g. a two-hour webinar, an hour talkshow, an FGD (focus group discussion), a workshop, or even a virtual tour to our assisted farmers. The next discussion, you can have a look at the list as follows ⬇️
4. If there are things that are not decided yet, you can point it as ‘TBD’ (to be discussed) and please have a note on the call to action session on the minutes of meeting. The aim of call to action is to follow up the next action that both us and partner should prepare. You can follow the guidance from our call to action sample with one of our partner ⬇️
5. Don’t forget to ask your team members who join the meeting to check the content of the minutes. After everything is checked, we usually create a WhatsApp group or other platforms e.g. Slack to share the minutes, prepare the event, or update on information about the collaboration.
6. Greet everyone on the collaboration group, share the minutes, and don’t forget to remind everyone with the call to action part 😉
That's all for now! This initial step is very important as first impressions are difficult to forget. I hope you can host your first online event from these steps and open doors to collaborations!
Stay tuned for my next blog about the preparation.
See you next week!