Conference Objects

Planning interactive online events to engage employees, clients, donors, and community members: Lessons from an award-winning online event series

Cox Awanohara, Mary-Lea; Dachos, Natasha; Marquart, Matthea S.

Online events can engage employees and community members, boost the impact of programs and services, and drive content marketing efforts that support client and donor recruitment and retention. However, webinar quality can vary widely, with many webinars losing audience members quickly due to lack of engagement, particularly because holding the events online means that attendees have a wide variety of built-in competitors for their attention, such as email, social media, work, and entertainment. Thus, disruptive leaders interested in achieving the benefits of online events while avoiding the pitfalls may need to jolt the status quo in order to revamp their organizations’ existing online events or launch innovative new events that meet their goals. This poster shares some tools and strategies that can help with this process. The poster draws on Columbia University School of Social Work’s experience creating an award-winning series of online events. Our online events are highly interactive and create community amongst the hundreds of audience members. In the audience, prospective students ask questions and receive answers from alumni and admissions officers; current students around the country chat with each other and with their instructors; alumni from around the world network around specific issues. Speakers have included current students, faculty, and alumni. The range of event topics have highlighted the School’s expertise and included topics such as “Challenges Facing Psychotherapists in the New Political Climate,” “Veterans and Homelessness,” and “How Legalizing Marijuana Affects Adolescents.” This poster shares the planning process driving our successful online events, the technology and strategies used to engage participants, and how we’ve addressed challenges that have come up during the live events.

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More About This Work

Academic Units
Social Work
Published Here
July 12, 2018

Notes

Citation: Cox Awanohara, M., Dachos, N., and Marquart, M. (2018, June 15). Planning interactive online events to engage employees, clients, donors, and community members: Lessons from an award-winning online event series. Poster presented at the Network for Social Work Managers Conference, San Diego, CA.