How to Build Community-Centric Virtual Events, According to Moz’s CMO

As you probably know by this point, 2020 has brought a lot of disruption and change.

For example, consider the fact that I am writing this post from my living room, which has slowly turned into my full-time office (as well as a workout studio, a movie theater, and a popular post-work happy hour spot).

Coupled with a personal change in routine, the pandemic has profoundly changed the way companies do almost every aspect of business.

And a big change? Conferences.

In the first few months of 2020, many companies faced a similar problem: Shall we host ours Event or conference completely onlineand if so, will it deliver the same value to participants?

Moz was no different, but while many companies were rescheduling a smaller event online, Moz was dealing with an entirely different beast: MozCon, a 15 year SEO and digital marketing conference with thousands of attendees from all over the world.

Here I spoke to Christina Mautz, CMO and sales directors at Moz to learn how business leaders can still create impactful events virtually – and how executives can foster a sense of collaboration and community even when completely remote.

Best practices for moving your event online

1. When you move to online, imagine your event in full – don’t just copy and paste your personal schedule.

The entry into virtual events is new territory for many companies. While some companies believe they have experience from hosting webinars, events are a whole different beast.

Moz has 15 years of experience creating world class events. The move from personal to virtual, however, required “hands on deck” as our goal was to create an experience that our participants love and expect from us.

We decided to switch to virtual just before our governor banned major events, which only left us two and a half months to reschedule and reschedule the event. Panning was a tough decision, but it had to be made for the safety of our company, the community, and our attendees.

Fortunately, MozCon is a valued and well-known event for our community. So we managed to meet our target for the number of tickets we had to sell to break even (we are not running the event for a profit), despite the fact that the timeline has been cut short.

The goal of MozCon Virtual was to provide attendees with the same great content experience and overall value that they would get from the usual live format. This required shortening the event (as our typical three day conference just wouldn’t go online) and a new strategy for design and retention.

2. Pre-record meetings to improve accessibility and create a dynamic agenda to keep attendees busy.

Since our main goal was to ensure superior content, we focused very much on this Confirmation and / or conviction of our existing (expert) speakers to participate. This included the decision to pre-record all sessions with enough time to allow full subtitling and improve accessibility for all attendees.

We decided to make the video recordings available not only during the event but immediately afterwards in order to increase the participation of our many international participants in different time zones – this was a great success for the participants who came to us from 49 different countries came. We have also sought support from our partners Seamless events to ensure our speakers have high-touch support to record your session with high quality A / V tools like the following:

• Logitech C920 HD Pro webcam
• Neewer Backdrop Support System
• Neewer gray photography backgrounds
• UBeesize 8 inch selfie ring light with tripod stand
• Z ZAFFIRO USB lavalier clip-on microphone
• Vilcome 4-in-1 USB C hub adapter

After all, we knew that getting involved in online events is often difficult – even when the content is incredible. For this reason, we purposely designed a dynamic agenda of sessions that we can display along with a variety of “feathered birds” breakout sessions to allow for actual live interactions with attendees.

We have selected a virtual event platform from among the many available This enabled live breakout sessions as well as live chat with the speaker and other attendees while viewing each previously recorded session.

Challenges in Virtual Hosting MozCon

1. Our first challenge was to make sure our marketing team can continue to “work on the event” – and to encourage digital collaboration.

Creating and running a personal conference takes an incredible team. However, don’t assume that virtual events are easier or less labor intensive. The challenges are different and can cause the experience participants walk away with to stall or break. It was crucial to our success to ensure that our marketing team still has the space to plan and “process” the event with the support of our long-term partner. Proper planning.

We also spent a lot of time thinking about the different challenges we would face. For example, how do you encourage collaboration using screens to make people feel like they’re in a breakout room? For us, this meant creating an environment that felt authentic and community-oriented.

We achieved this by giving our speakers the ability to connect through chat during the sessions and by creating Birds of a Feather sessions where we can speak freely and network. These meetings included topics such as:

• Ask a CMO
• Ask an SEO
• B2b2c marketing
• Evergreen backlinks
• Separation of SEO and content marketing
• Current trends in the agency world

2. Our second challenge was to create a safe, inviting virtual environment.

Similar to what we had expected for MozCon in the past few years, our mission to create a safe environment remained in the foreground. For us, this means more than just ensuring physical security. We believe in full inclusiveness which extends to our responsibility to ensure that all speakers, sponsors and attendees can participate in a welcoming, nurturing and safe environment.

We will not tolerate disregard or harassment in any form from speakers or conference participants. Therefore, moderators were stationed in each virtual room to moderate the chat and solve problems quickly. Of course, the participants remained respectful and cooperative, but it was important that people knew that they were welcome as part of our community and that they would have support if a problem arises.

So … did it work?

For those planning virtual events, I encourage executives to be realistic about expectations and goals. At Moz, our event shouldn’t bring any profit.

With careful preparation, however, we were able to break even and Double our usual number of participants.

This was partly due to the fact that the price was lowered and more people could be accommodated virtually than in person. This was a huge win.

Here are some recommendations:

• Record meetings like we did here In this way, efforts can be continuously increased and new people can be reached
• Use a combination of live and recorded sessions so speakers (and your own sales and customer success teams) have the opportunity to interact with attendees throughout the event
• If only live sessions are available, make sure a moderator is present to answer questions
• Make sure sponsors are a good fit with your attendees and provide them with a unique area within your virtual event – either a “hub” on your platform or a specific area on your agenda
• Prioritize a strong social media engagement plan – before, during, and after the event. It gives attendees, speakers, and even sponsors the opportunity to build excitement beforehand, share experiences while learning, and then continue the conversation – on platforms that also give your brand great visibility

How to promote the community digitally

1. Use recorded video so speakers have the time to answer questions and engage with attendees in the moment.

Moz has a robust community of marketers and search engine optimization professionals who are eager to get involved. So we decided to use recorded video to give our speakers the freedom to interact while the video is running and answer participants’ questions as they occur. Our attendees loved the opportunity to interact directly with the speakers, as opposed to the typical personal experience of waiting in the long line near the stage to just say hello.

While this approach may seem surprising, it fostered collaboration, provided high quality resources, and meant that our guests were engaged rather than “watching” for hours.