During times of crisis, communicating with your staff, partners and customers is more important than ever. While meeting in person is not possible at this current time due to the coronavirus outbreak across the globe, there is plenty of technology out there to help you keep in touch.

Dale Parmenter, CEO at drpG, hosted a live virtual session on corporate broadcasting and virtual events to over 800 people on Friday morning, to show what can be done and share best-practice tips.

In an accompanying blog, Parmenter referenced a recent Deloitte report about crisis management: “Employees expect to be communicated with 3 x as regularly, minimum. Over half of employees expect daily communications and updates alongside business as usual activities. 77% of employees say sending an email (in times of crisis) does not constitute good leadership or good communication. So, where does that leave us? Well the reality is we’re not trying to reinvent wheel, we’re not introducing a new product or service, we’re in fact turning to possibly the most consumed type of content on planet earth at the moment to deal with our issues, broadcast and digital.”

The broadcast, set in drpG’s studio in the Midlands with presenters from London and overseas taking part, stressed the importance of quality content and production values, as well as adding personalisation and interactive features where possible.

Callum Gill, head of insight and innovation at drpG said: “Nothing has changed in terms of audience expectation. Just because this current situation is going on, audiences still have an expectation of a certain standard and quality of content.”

Check out these top tips from drpG below or read Dale Parmenter’s full blog and watch a recording of the broadcast here

Top tips for hosting a live broadcast or virtual event:

• It’s vital we should be able to see the presenter and whoever is presenting needs to be in a presentation mode.
• Images should be interesting, relevant and not stay on the screen for too long,
• audience participation is a great way of maintaining engagement, request comments, questions or even images.
• Timing is critical; always leave the audience wanting more (not bored). You would never see a TV chat show run for longer than 1 hour.
• You need to control audience gaze, use a multi device strategy including screen breaks, content delivered on smartphones and tablets, and interactive breakouts that move you away from the screen.