4 Reasons Zoom is Not Right for Your Virtual Event

In December of 2019 Zoom reports having approximately 10 million daily active participants on it's platform. Now due to the coronavirus quarantine that we all face, Zoom in this blog reports over 200 million daily active participants (both paid and unpaid for both statistics).

Zoom is great for brainstorm meetings, team meetings, virtual happy-hours with friends, and some company meetings. Their platform is easy to use, clean and simple. It streams well and I have never personally experienced it crash or even a single problem.

Even with all of it's simplicity and features, Zoom is not right for your virtual event. Paid or unpaid.

It might be tempting to use because you are familiar with it and the company even advertise Zoom webinars, however, steer clear especially if you are hosting a paid virtual event.

Here's three reasons why Zoom is NOT the right platform for your virtual event.

1. Your audience is already on Zoom for other meetings.

If you host your virtual event on Zoom - then it feels just like another Zoom call. The last thing that people want to do at the end of a busy day or when they pay for a ticket to your event, is get a Zoom link.

Hosting a virtual event on Zoom is like paying for a concert ticket to see your favorite musician and receiving the venue notice that the concert is taking place in your company conference room.

Your venue for your virtual event should FEEL different.

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2. Zoom's chat function isn't the best for a virtual event

Imagine attending an in-person conference with no slides, no networking, no talking to other people.

Zoom hides their chat function unless you purposely open it.

Part of the reason people attend events is to socialize around other people who believe in the purpose of the event like they do. We tailgate with other football fans and cheer alongside them for our favorite team high-fiving strangers (well we did before Coronavirus hit). We smile and nod and say "amen" and "yes" to statements that our favorite motivational speaker does while looking around at who else is nodding their head.

The chat function is key to your virtual event.

Zoom's chat function will be under-utilized for your virtual event.

3. Zoom doesn't give you poll options

Polls are one of the biggest ways to engage with an audience of hundreds and thousands while hosting your virtual event.

It allows you to have fun with them, ask them questions and get their answers.

Polls are the virtual way of asking people to raise their hand or stand up if this statement relates to them.

Polling is a simple function that, yes can be replaced with a polling software embedded into a keynote slide on your mac and then hitting screen share, but that requires the end user to text in or go to a website. You want it to be easy for them to access and use, otherwise engagement drops like crazy.

4. Zoom has user limits

When hosting a virtual event, you don't want to worry about "selling out". It's the internet, this thing needs to be able to scale. Don't limit yourself by the number of users.

Like I wrote above, Zoom is an amazing platform for everyday business. It has great features for team meetings, client meetings, conference calls and is easy to use.

When you host a virtual event though, you aren't trying to conduct everyday business.

For virtual events, it can be used to bring in guest speakers behind you with a TV monitor mounted, but shouldn't be your main platform for your attendees.

Make your virtual event feel different with a different platform.

It takes more work to find the right platform, test, figure out, sign up for, and set up.

But you'll be glad you did and your attendees will be glad you did.

No virtual events platform is perfect, but there are some that are designed to BE virtual event platforms, not just one like Zoom that people are using as virtual event platforms.

If you're interested in what a virtual event could look like, let our team know at [email protected], email me at [email protected] or DM me here on LinkedIn. We've been testing Vimeo and regularly using EasyWebinar and we'd love to give you a virtual demo.

Footnote: This article is my opinion and in no way reflects the opinion or views of Elevate Experiences, LLC.

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