Meeting for Backstage: Present virtual sessions, captivate your audience

Meeting for Backstage: Present virtual sessions, captivate your audience


Virtual events have seen immense growth in the last few months—almost 1000% according to one study—and most event organizers and marketers believe they'll remain popular even in the future. This decision to retain virtual events is completely understandable as they come with amazing benefits. They're cost-effective, scalable, and, most importantly, versatile. Of course, this versatility is chiefly dependent on the technology used to host events. The more versatile and fluid the event technology used, the better the event experience.
 
At Backstage, we believe flexibility is the key to a better user experience. That's why, even though we have our own webcast service, Backstage OnAir, we wanted to give you more choices. You already have the option to add webcast links in Backstage and direct attendees to other third-party webcast services for remote sessions, but a native integration is always better, right? So that's what we did—we integrated with Zoho Meeting, the first of our many integrations for virtual events.



Let's take a look at how Zoho Meeting's web-conferencing and engagement tools can help you host amazing virtual experiences.
 

Broadcast virtual sessions, video conference with attendees


Reach a wider audience by webcasting sessions with Zoho Meeting. Whether keynotes, workshops, or panels—execute your virtual sessions as flawlessly as you would your in-person ones. Some of the features available in Zoho Meeting include screen-sharing (to show presentations) and screen-recording (to save and download your session for offline use). Also, you don't have to go to Zoho Meeting to start or manage sessions. You can do it directly from Backstage.



After you integrate your Backstage portal with your Zoho Meeting organization in the Integrations tab of your portal's Settings page and make it your default webcast service, go to the Present sessions tab in the event's Conduct dashboard to present it. All sessions will be listed in a dynamic timeline here. To learn more about a session or start presenting it, click that session. The sessions details along with the Start session button will appear to the right of the timeline.
 
On clicking the button, you will be taken to Zoho Meeting where you can video conference with attendees and conduct sessions. One more thing—only members who are part of the Zoho Meeting organization linked to the Backstage portal can present sessions, so make sure you have the necessary permissions.
 

Engage your audience, host interactive gatherings


The single most important goal of any event is to maximize engagement and create meaningful connections. Most event organizers find this to be a challenge with virtual events as they don't come with the advantage of face-to-face interactions. This means, without good content and robust engagement tools, your virtual event can quite easily become impersonal (and boring)



Zoho Meeting comes with quite a few engagement tools like polls, real-time chat, and Q & A features to allow speakers and panelists to interact with attendees throughout the event. Also, to make things easier, we've included an option for you to create your polls beforehand in Backstage. When a session begins, these polls will be listed in Zoho Meeting and you can run them at any point during the session.
 
Once the session is over, the poll results will be saved in Backstage. To manage polls, go to the Sessions tab in the Manage dashboard. Another benefit of virtual events, in general, and Zoho Meeting, in particular, is that you can know how many attendees are present at the session at any given moment.
 
The Zoho Meeting integration is only available for members subscribed to our Enterprise and Ultimate plans and for events that use the Enterprise and Ultimate add-ons.
 
Present virtual sessions with Zoho Meeting and keep your attendees glued to their screens. Let us know what you think in the comments below. For product-related questions or suggestions, write to us at support@zohobackstage.com.

Happy organizing!


    Access your files securely from anywhere

        Zoho Developer Community




                                  Zoho Desk Resources

                                  • Desk Community Learning Series


                                  • Digest


                                  • Functions


                                  • Meetups


                                  • Kbase


                                  • Resources


                                  • Glossary


                                  • Desk Marketplace


                                  • MVP Corner


                                  • Word of the Day



                                      Zoho Marketing Automation
                                              • Sticky Posts

                                              • Important notice: Changes in sender domains

                                                Hello Backstage users, This is a heads-up about a major change with sender domains in Zoho Backstage. In response to Google's new guidelines for email senders, Backstage won't be able to send emails with the sender domain "gmail.com" or "googlemail.com".
                                              • Announcing Backstage OnAir, our in-house virtual events solution

                                                These past months have seen a huge rise in the number of virtual events with some of the biggest events of the year going online. Though there's little possibility for virtual events to completely replace in-person ones, COVID-19 has shown how flexible
                                              • Introducing the mobile app for event organizers

                                                It doesn't matter if you're planning your first trade show or an annual executive retreat—organizing an event requires your undivided attention. This is especially true on event day, when things can quickly get out of hand. So how can you stay on top of everything happening at your event? Introducing the Zoho Backstage for Event Organizers mobile app, for Android and iOS—designed to improve and simplify your event management. Getting things started on time, checking in attendees on event day, following
                                              • Announcing Zoho Backstage: Your complete event management software

                                                With just a few months till the event, you're still racking your brain. Did you advertise to the right audience? Is your event website design appealing? How will you keep attendees engaged and interested during sessions? It doesn't matter if you're organizing


                                              Manage your brands on social media



                                                    Zoho TeamInbox Resources

                                                      Zoho DataPrep Resources



                                                        Zoho CRM Plus Resources

                                                          Zoho Books Resources


                                                            Zoho Subscriptions Resources

                                                              Zoho Projects Resources


                                                                Zoho Sprints Resources


                                                                  Qntrl Resources


                                                                    Zoho Creator Resources



                                                                        Zoho Campaigns Resources


                                                                          Zoho CRM Resources

                                                                          • CRM Community Learning Series

                                                                            CRM Community Learning Series


                                                                          • Kaizen

                                                                            Kaizen

                                                                          • Functions

                                                                            Functions

                                                                          • Meetups

                                                                            Meetups

                                                                          • Kbase

                                                                            Kbase

                                                                          • Resources

                                                                            Resources

                                                                          • Digest

                                                                            Digest

                                                                          • CRM Marketplace

                                                                            CRM Marketplace

                                                                          • MVP Corner

                                                                            MVP Corner





                                                                              Design. Discuss. Deliver.

                                                                              Create visually engaging stories with Zoho Show.

                                                                              Get Started Now