What You Need to Know About Hosting Your Virtual Summit Videos
Are you wondering how fancy and professional-looking your virtual summit presentations need to be?
You might have seen online events with hosts who pull out all the stops with perfect music, animated bumpers, special effects, and more. It can make you question whether your videos are good enough.
Don't get me wrong, we don't want poor quality, and putting some extra effort in can be fun if you have the time and budget, but it's certainly not a requirement in most cases.
So if you were worried, go ahead and breathe a sigh of relief.
This week, we're covering more on this along with other things you should know about your summit videos, including...
- What types of videos go into a typical summit
- What tech to use for recording
- Where to host your videos
Some of the links used in this post are affiliate links.
Virtual Summit Videos
Today, we'll focus on your summit presentation videos, but there are a lot of other videos that go into a virtual summit.
Some examples of other places you may incorporate video into your event include...
- Registration page
- Thank you page
- Kickoff and closing calls
- Live calls
- Community welcome
- Some hosts go live before and/or after presentations each day
If you’re an introvert and feeling overwhelmed by this, check out the episode about managing live videos as an introvert.
Now let’s focus on the presentation videos.
How fancy do my presentation videos need to be?
First is a question that comes up a lot in the Summit Host Hangout Facebook group: “How fancy do my presentation videos need to be? What kind of special effects do I need to have?”
You've probably been to events where their presentations have cool intros and outro bumpers, text overlays, background music, fancy editing, sponsor promotions, and more.
But I’m happy to tell you that you don't need any of that (unless, of course, sponsors are paying you to be featured in your videos). In one summit I've hosted, we did a super quick animated intro and outro with our logo, but that's it.
Would it look nice and cohesive if all the videos followed the same format, had the same slides, the fancy intro, and outro, or your branded logo everywhere? Of course. But does it add any real value to the summit? I don’t think so.
If you do want something like that done, Fiverr is a resource several members of the Summit Host Hangout Facebook group have used.
If you need to promote a sponsor, generally the easiest thing to do is to record your promo video and add it to the beginning of each presentation. I personally use Camtasia for stuff like that, but another option is QuickTime.
Recording Your Presentations
Let's move on to recording your presentations, whether that means interviews, pre-recorded presentations, or a mixture of the two.
Interviews
I've always used Zoom for interviews, simply because it's easy to use and I’m familiar with it. However, their video quality isn’t the greatest.
StreamYard was by far the most recommended option in the Summit Host Hangout Facebook group. I use StreamYardfor Facebook lives and the quality is always great.
StreamYard is nice and easy to use for summits. You set it up on your end, send your guest a link, and they can click to join you on the call. With this, they can be either live or pre-recorded.
If you want to get creative, you can do something unique and fun like Jordan Aspen did with VideoAsk. She had her speakers answer questions, and then she pieced together all the best answers for each question to create a presentation.
If you’re doing interviews, be sure to check out our keys to engaging virtual summit interviews, too!
Guest Presentations
Let’s switch gears and talk about when your guests record their own presentations.
If they ask you what you recommend recording with, my recommendations are:
However, if your guests are asking you what to use to record, you might want to take that as a hint that they might be a better fit for an interview.
Tip: 15-minute presentations with actionable content are better for attendees than the 30-60 minute presentations that most of us are used to.
Where to Host Videos
The last thing I want to cover is where to put your videos once you record them and how to get them on your website.
If your website platform allows it, upload them there. You don't need anything extra!
For example:
- If you use Kajabi, upload your videos using their video module.
- If you use Teachable, Teachery, or anything like that, you can upload your videos right inside there.
- Do not upload videos to WordPress. It’ll bog down your server, slow your website and waste a bunch of space.
- If you’re on a budget, use YouTube.
Vimeo
I personally use Vimeo. You need their business plan for a summit, but you have a whole bunch of settings you can use.
The settings of note that I use include:
- Privacy Settings – Set it so only people with the link can watch.
- Embed anywhere – In the past, I entered my website URL as the only place embedding is allowed, but people outside the US had trouble watching.
- Commenting – Turn off commenting, downloading, and adding to collections.
- Customize branding - Add your summit's brand colors.
- Add a call-to-action - Add a custom call-to-action at the end for attendees to upgrade to your all-access pass.
Keep It Simple
You don't need anything fancy for recording. Keep your video process nice and simple so you can focus on other pieces of your event.
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