Digital Scholarship Centre

Your first step in creating your online event is to establish your goals and objectives. What is your event's purpose?

• Are you planning to charge a fee to make a profit? Are you hosting a free event?
• Is your online event going to be a fully live event, pre-recorded with a live broadcast, or a combination? How many people will attend? Or watch your live stream? This will help you determine your delivery method or platform.
• Looking at your goals and potential audience, choose an event theme.
• If your event is part of a bigger movement, your date might be pre-determined. If you are more flexible, select a few possible dates.
• If relevant, put together a rough budget. Look at what previous events cost and make a few educated guesses.
• Online events can also host vendors or sponsors. Identify any vendors or sponsors you would like to feature at your event.
• Compile a list of your ideal speakers. If you don't know who to ask, look at similar events and their speakers. Reach out to your speakers.
• Should you need to, use the information to compile an event proposal.

Start your planning at least 6 months in advance. This will give you time to find enough speakers should anyone cancel.

Three months before the event will see you planning the finer details.

• Finalise your speakers. Book them, get biographical information and photos, and finalise your line-up for the event.
• Build your website/relevant platform for the programme, author information, registration and promotion of your event. Remember to check with UFS Marketing and Branding that your website/relevant platform adheres to branding.
• Choose your registration technology. Think about offering the convenience of registering for the live event, or registering for recordings only. This way you will have registration and attendance information, even for viewers of the recordings after the event.

In the three months leading up to your event, begin to promote your event. 

• Always check UFS branding guidelines for any marketing material. If you are making use of graphic designers for your marketing material, make sure they are approved providers of the UFS. Usually, these graphic designers are already aware of the guidelines and how to use them. If not, find the guidelines here. And remember to always send any poster, invitation or any other design to branding@ufs.ac.za for approval before printing or distributing.
• UFS digital marketing platforms you can use to promote your event:
  • Digest
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • YouTube
  • UFS calendars
• Utilise the digital marketing tools at your disposal. Think about creating a promotional video, or write blog posts. You can even contact colleagues to write guest posts on their blogs to help promote your event.
• If your budget is tight, you can always use the poster template linked below to create your marketing poster. Since your marketing is digital, you don't have all the graphics considerations you would have with creating a poster for printing. Remember to send it to UFS Branding for approval before distribution.
• If you are going to create your own promotional material, make sure that you use graphics with the correct licenses. If you search for images in Google, change your search settings in the advanced search options by selecting Creative Commons in the usage rights limiter. Or you can use stock photos from sites like Pexels or Unsplash. Always check the license. Even if you are free to use it without attribution, it is always nice to attribute.
• Plan your hashtags for your digital promotion. Choose relevant hashtags to use on social media platforms and your other marketing material. This is a way for your potential attendees/viewers to follow your event.
• Write teasers for your event.
  • Use one or two sentences.
  • Arouse curiosity.
  • Ask questions - tap what you know about your potential audience.
  • State the benefit of your event to your potential audience.
  • Most importantly, get to the point. We are all bombarded with messages everyday, so be succinct.

By creating your promotional material well in advance, there will be less of a scramble leading up to your event. It will give you more time to concentrate on the content. Of course, only distribute your marketing material once you have confirmed your dates! Clearly indicate when sessions or speakers still need to be confirmed to avoid disappointment.

Whether you are going to broadcast pre-recorded presentations, or present live, make sure everyone has the same schedule. With pre-recorded sessions you can still hold live Q&A's after the recording, with the presenter.

If you have sponsors or vendors in your event, make sure they know when their products/services will be featured. For example, if you are going to run a feature during comfort breaks or lunch, the sponsor/vendor might want to be available online to interact with your audience.

Tips for PowerPoint presentations:

• Visit UFS Marketing and Branding on the staff intranet for templates ready to use.
• Avoid sentences. A slide should capture and reinforce your main ideas, not contain your complete thoughts. If your audience is reading during your presentation, chances are they are not listening to you, and your message loses its effectiveness. Use keywords to convey your message and avoid sentences unless your are quoting.
• Also, don't cram too many details on one slide. Keep it simple, including colours. Remember the UFS branding guidelines when using colours.
• Using sans serif fonts usually works best. Since the UFS uses Arial text in its brand, you are sorted. This is also a common font that you will find on most computers. If you are presenting from someone else's computer, your presentation will look the same as it did on your own.
• Don't overstyle your text. Our eyes are naturally drawn to things that stand out, so use emphasis sparingly. Also, limit transitions and animations that can distract from your message.
• Images help support your message. Use high-quality images and make them relatable to your message and audience. You can compress images in PowerPoint to help control your file size (go to File > Compress Pictures in your application) and edit, resize and add effects when selecting the Picture Format tab from the top menu ribbon.

If you don't have an easy capturing tool to make a recording of your presentation, you can use Teams Meetings to set up and record your presentation. The recording will take a moment to download to the chat of your meeting. From there you can download and edit your presentation.

Tips for interviews:

• Make sure you have the right equipment/application to record your interview. You can set up a meeting in MS Teams (or another online meeting platform) and record your interview using the app's functionality. If you are interviewing in person, test your recording equipment before the interview to make sure everything works.
• Prepare for the interview. Learn more about the person you are going to interview.
• Make sure the interviewee is aware that you are recording the interview.
• Depending on the interviewee's preference, you can send ahead suggested questions. This could lead to them sending you back answers via email, losing the more candid answers you might get from a face-to-face interview. But it can help them prepare and make them less nervous.
• Start with introductory questions that focus on the person, e.g. what is your role in the department?
• Really (really!) listen to what the interviewee is saying. In this way you can have a conversation and dig deeper into the topic than just covering the basic questions. By doing this, you will get even more relevant content to share. And avoid asking a question from your list that they actually already answered.
• Don't be afraid to ask what you don't know. You are interviewing the person to gain information, and again, have a conversation.
• Remember to record!

Editing your presentation:

• There are various tools available to edit your audio or video interview. At the Digital Scholarship Centre (DSC) tools are available to assist you. But there are also free tools available online, such as Audacity for audio editing, or OpenShot or LightWorks for video editing.
• Start with editing out all the disturbances in your file, e.g. coughs, mmm's and aaah's, and mistakes.
• Now you can start editing the content. Decide what you want to include in the final presentation and edit out the rest.
• Always keep the original file. Create a copy to edit and save it under a different file name.
• Remember, you can always use short cuts from your presentations to help advertise your event if you pre-record your event content (a video/audio teaser).

There is a variety of online tools you can use to host your event. A popular platform is Zoom. For this guide, we will concentrate on MS Teams, since this is the platform supported by the UFS. But we've added some information on other platforms too, like Zoom, Facebook Live and Twitter Live.

Using MS Teams for a live event:

• To start using Teams, log in to https://office.com using your UFS credentials. Here you will find all the Microsoft apps available for you to use. Click on Teams.
• You can use Teams online or download the app.
• To schedule a live event, go to the calendar (in the left-hand menu) and select the drop-down menu that says New Meeting. Now select Live Event.

• Once you've entered the title, date and information about the event, click on Next and you will find a link you can share with your audience. You will not be forwarding this event or inviting people via this event entry. You will only share the link provided.

Tips for managing your live event:

• Use the Teams Live Events options to line up your presentations. See the how-to video below. 
• During your live event, keep your audience informed. Let them know who is speaking and what is going to happen next. For example, if you are going to change from one feed/screen to the next, mention it to them so they know what to expect. 
• Assign team roles for a live event. Have members responsible to manage the broadcasting and line-up in Teams, as well as the Q&A (select this option when you set up the live event). If you are using live feedback tools (like PollEverywhere and Mentimeter), have a team member monitor that too.
• Make sure you have someone to help you deal with technical difficulties and assisting attendees if they struggle with access. You can provide them with a URL where they can go for support.

Remember to record! Teams Live Events has the option that makes recording available for attendees. Untick this option if you would prefer them not too.

• MS Teams does not have a Live Chat option in live events, but you can activate the Q&A option when you set up the event. You can use this functionality for interaction with attendees. Other platforms may have live chat as well as Q&A functionality.
• You can create feedback forms to send to attendees after your event. Google Forms and SurveyMonkey are popular platforms. Always check what platform the UFS recommends, such as Evasys, for specific purposes.
• MS Teams Live Events also records your attendee engagement report, if the option is selected during setup.