How to Host a Successful Virtual Roundtable Discussion

Hosting events is one of the most effective ways to organically market your business or advocacies. Since the pandemic happened, a whole new world of events has opened up. There is now no limit to your creativity when it comes to planning and hosting your events.

Today, events are not only limited to a face-to-face format but have opened up new formats like hybrid and virtual. With the constant change in event planning trends and market demands, event organizers are challenged to keep on adapting to keep delivering a positive attendee event experience- whether it’s face to face, hybrid, or virtual.

In this blog post, we have created a guide on everything you need to know about one of the latest virtual event trends – the virtual roundtable discussion.

What is a Virtual Roundtable Discussion?

A virtual roundtable discussion is a type of online discussion that brings together a group of individuals to exchange ideas and opinions on a specific topic. Typically, the discussion is moderated by a facilitator who sets the agenda and ensures that each participant has an opportunity to speak.

Virtual roundtables can take many forms, including video conferences, webinars, or group chats. They are a popular way for individuals to connect with others who share their interests or work in similar fields, without the need for physical travel or in-person meetings. Virtual roundtables offer a unique opportunity for participants to engage in a dynamic, collaborative conversation that can lead to new insights and perspectives on a particular issue. Participants can enter a roundtable discussion with particular issues in their field and other participants who have gone through similar experiences can pitch in and help give fresh perspectives on the issue.

An example of a virtual roundtable discussion can be on a topic on Attendee Engagement in Event Marketing. This will be conducted with event organizers as target participants for the discussion. It can be facilitated by a thought leader from the event industry to help stir the conversation with relevant talking points. How it usually goes is that the facilitator will have a certain number of questions to ask as a starting point for discussion for the participants.

The number of participants per roundtable discussion varies but to have an in-depth and conversational discussion, it is advisable to have at least 8 to 15 participants. Having too many or too few participants may affect the quality of the roundtable discussion.

Purpose of a Virtual Roundtable Discussion

The purpose of a virtual roundtable discussion is to facilitate a collaborative exchange of ideas and perspectives among a group of individuals who have a shared interest in a particular topic.

They can be particularly useful for brainstorming, problem-solving, or exploring complex issues that require input from multiple perspectives. By bringing together experts, stakeholders, or interested parties from different locations and backgrounds, virtual roundtables can help to break down geographic, cultural, or organizational barriers that may otherwise limit the scope and impact of a discussion.

Some companies even offer regular monthly discussions like a mastermind where guests can bring a problem to the discussion and leave it with solutions from the discussion.

Different industries can use a virtual roundtable discussion for their business. Here are some examples:

Business – can be used to discuss industry trends, share best practices, and explore new ideas or technologies.
Healthcare – can be used to discuss emerging treatments or protocols, share research findings, or explore challenges facing healthcare providers.
Education – can be used to discuss new teaching methods, share resources, or explore ways to improve student outcomes.
Technology – can be used to discuss new innovations or products, share best practices for software development, and explore the latest trends in tech.
Finance – can be used to discuss market trends, share insights on investment opportunities, and explore new financial products or services.
Government – can be used to engage stakeholders on policy issues, solicit input on proposed regulations, and build consensus on legislative priorities.
Non-profit – can be used to engage donors and volunteers, share success stories, and explore new fundraising strategies.
Media – can be used to discuss emerging trends in journalism, share best practices for content creation, and explore ways to engage audiences across multiple platforms.
Retail – can be used to discuss consumer trends, share insights on customer behavior, and explore new marketing strategies.
Sports – can be used to discuss player development, explore new coaching strategies, and share insights on the latest trends in sports technology.

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The Impact of Virtual Roundtable Discussion on Your Business

Having a virtual roundtable discussion among your community or stakeholders establishes a good first experience that can lead to a lasting relationship. It’s a good value-adding marketing activity that helps participants connect with one another and get ideas and solutions that are relevant to them. Connections are hard to build these days so if your virtual event is done well, your attendees will surely remember you and your event for a long time.

The different impacts of a virtual roundtable discussion are the following:

Ideal for increased collaboration and knowledge sharing: This can help break down silos, promote cross-functional communication, and foster a culture of continuous learning.
Improved decision-making: By bringing together experts and stakeholders from different areas of the business, virtual roundtables can help to generate new ideas, identify potential risks or opportunities, and inform more informed decision-making.
Increased efficiency and productivity: Virtual roundtables can help to streamline communication, reduce the need for in-person meetings, and increase productivity by allowing participants to connect from their own devices.
Improved customer outcomes: By soliciting input from customers or stakeholders in virtual roundtables, businesses can better understand their needs and preferences, and develop products or services that are better aligned with customer expectations. This can lead to improved customer satisfaction and loyalty.

Virtual Roundtable Program Best Practices

If it’s your first time hosting a virtual roundtable event, use these as a guide on best practices you can implement in your planning.

1. Choose a relevant virtual roundtable topic for your audience

The success of your virtual roundtable discussions depend on how attractive your topic is to your target audience. Everyone wants to learn something new and network with peers in their industry. So if your virtual event is not gaining attention, maybe it’s time to check if your topic is resonating with your audience.

Some tips for choosing a relevant topic for your virtual roundtable discussions:

Understand your audience: Before selecting a topic for your virtual roundtable, it’s important to understand your audience and their interests. Consider their demographics, job roles, industry, and any specific challenges they may be facing.
Conduct research: Conducting research on industry trends, emerging technologies, or new best practices can help you identify relevant topics that will resonate with your audience. Look for topics that are timely, relevant, and likely to generate interest and engagement. If there is a trending topic now, you can think of ways to connect it to your business. tre
Solicit input: Ask your audience for input on topics they would like to discuss. This can be gathered through surveys, social media, focus groups, or other forms of feedback. This will not only help you identify relevant topics but also increase audience engagement by making them feel heard and valued.
Consider your goals: Think about what you want to achieve with your virtual roundtable discussion. Do you want to generate new ideas, share best practices, or explore a specific challenge or opportunity? Identifying your goals can help you select a topic that is relevant and aligned with your objectives.
Be creative: Don’t be afraid to think outside the box when selecting a topic for your virtual roundtable. Consider themes that are not directly related to your industry but may still be relevant to your audience. For example, if your audience is largely composed of business leaders, you might consider a roundtable on leadership skills or team-building strategies.

Feel free to get some topic ideas and inspiration for your next virtual roundtable meeting here:

Virtual Roundtable Topic Ideas

Current events and news: Discuss current events or news that are relevant to your industry or organization. This can help to keep everyone informed and engaged with the broader world outside of the organization.
Challenges and opportunities: Discuss challenges or opportunities that your organization or your industry is facing, and brainstorm potential solutions or strategies to address them. For example, the impact of AI on your marketing strategies.
Best practices: Share best practices and success stories from different departments or teams within your organization. This can help to promote collaboration and learning across the organization.
Professional development: Discuss professional development opportunities, such as training programs, mentoring, or coaching, and how they can help employees grow and develop their skills.
Future planning: Discuss long-term goals, vision, and strategies for the future of your organization. This can help to align everyone on the same page and ensure that everyone is working towards the same objectives.
Diversity, equity, and inclusion: Discuss topics related to diversity, equity, and inclusion, such as unconscious bias, inclusive leadership, and creating a culture of belonging. This can help to create a more inclusive and welcoming work environment.

2. Identify who to invite for your virtual event

Depending on the goal of your roundtable discussion, you can start listing down your target guests for the discussion. Ideally, you would want to invite thought leaders in the industry who will be able to contribute positively to the discussion. Afterall, the quality of the roundtable discussion will be dependent on the quality of conversation your participants and facilitator can contribute.

Event organizers can personally send an invitation via social media channels like LinkedIn, Twitter, Email, etc. Having confirmed industry leaders can be a good way to market your event in advance too. You can market the virtual roundtable event by talking about the credible industry leader who will attend the event and the different issues they have solved in their career. This can entice potential guests to be in the same room as the industry leader and learn from them first hand.

Don’t forget to mention the reasons why participants should not miss the virtual event in your event invitation emails.

3. Choose the right online tools to host your virtual roundtable discussions

The right tools to conduct your roundtable discussion is critical to the success of your event. The usual video web conferencing tools available are Zoom and Google Meet. Zoom is limited to a 40-minute uninterrupted call while Google Meet can be used for free with no time constraints.

Take advantage of Zoom features such as screen sharing, breakout rooms, and polls to facilitate the discussion and engage participants. For example, you can use breakout rooms to facilitate smaller group discussions or use polls to gather feedback on specific topics.

For event registration, choose an event ticketing platform and site with no commission fees. Event Smart allows you to customize your event website with themes, fonts, media, and relevant information that your attendees would appreciate. This is ideal too if you plan to have regular or recurring virtual roundtable discussions.

4. Make your virtual events engaging

Organize a virtual event that your attendees would want to talk about after. Since it’s a virtual event, there is a greater challenge to make it more engaging for your attendees. Try these ideas to spark connection:

Facilitate an icebreaker activity – Get your guests to loosen up and start talking. Take advantage of your theme or topic and pattern your questions related to it. Event organizers or facilitators should be able to get this started to set the mood right.
Personalized introductions or welcome activity to make them feel welcomed – having access to the list of attendees will be an advantage because event organizers can do a bit of research to get to know the background of the attendees. An activity related to their background or field of interest can be conducted. This can impress your participants knowing that the organizers took the time to research and get to know their participants.
Gamification – Add gamification elements like challenges, leaderboards, and prizes to your virtual event to increase engagement and excitement.
Virtual Swag Bags – Show appreciation for their time and presence by gifting them with unique and useful items as a giveaway. In marketing, there is a power of reciprocation wherein they would feel more likely to give favors after receiving something from another.

Sample Virtual Roundtable Discussion Format

The first step to start planning for your virtual event is by creating your event program. Here’s a sample virtual roundtable discussion format you can use:

Introduction: Begin the discussion by introducing yourself and the topic of the discussion. Welcome all the participants and thank them for joining.
Icebreaker: Start with a fun icebreaker question to help everyone get to know each other. For example, “What’s the most interesting thing you’ve learned in the past month?”
Opening statement: Invite each participant to make a brief opening statement on the topic. Limit the time for each statement to 2-3 minutes.
Discussion: Open the floor to discussion. Encourage participants to ask questions, offer their opinions, and share their experiences related to the topic. It’s important to ensure that everyone has a chance to speak and that the conversation stays respectful and constructive.
Follow-up questions: Ask follow-up questions to encourage participants to elaborate on their opinions and experiences. For example, “Can you tell us more about how that worked in your organization?”
Closing statements: Allow each participant to make a brief closing statement on the topic. This is a good opportunity to summarize their key points and offer any final thoughts.

How to Promote Your Virtual Roundtable Event

Promoting your virtual roundtable event is crucial to the success of your event. Before going full blast on your promos, start by clearly identifying the unique selling proposition your virtual roundtable has to offer and why attendees would be missing out if they don’t register.

Once this is clear, you can now use these steps as a guide:

1. Create your own virtual event webpage or poster

This contains your event date, time, confirmed attendees (if available), facilitators, online web hosting platform and event registration details.

Make a good first impression by creating your own event webpage made possible by Event Smart. You can enjoy all the features like unlimited ticket selling and customize your event page to make it SEO friendly all for a simple flat rate.

2. Share to your network

Promote your event on the different social networking sites. You can create an event on Facebook or LinkedIn and invite specific attendees from your friends list or network.

Social media is a powerful tool that you can use to spread the word about your virtual roundtable event because of its different features like the option to notify your invites, run paid media to target specific demographics, age groups, interests, and more. You can also make the algorithm work for you by posting engaging and relevant content.

3. Partner with industry leaders on your chosen topic

Once you’ve picked an industry topic, it’s time to reach out to potential credible industry leaders for that topic. For example, if you’re in the health industry, you can invite doctors with the specialization of your topic to attend.

There are different groups and communities on social media you can explore and tap too for your event.

Why Host a Virtual Roundtable Discussion?

In conclusion, hosting a virtual roundtable discussion can be a good strategy for your business because it helps build knowledge sharing and solid connection among your community. If executed well, a virtual roundtable discussion can solve many different problems by simply collaborating with peers or colleagues. Aside from this, It’s simple and cost efficient because everything can be done conveniently online.

Create a Virtual Roundtable Event with Event Smart

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