Events Communities
It's been a buzzword in events over the last few years, and it’s easy to see why, but building a year round event community seems like it's been a challenge for many to solve.
Whilst many events have Facebook or LinkedIn groups, when you look at these in comparison to martech firms like Jasper, there is very little interaction.
How can event organizers improve online communities
There are a few things that event organizers can do to help improve online community engagement and increase the success of their events. For a start, they could think about using different platforms like Slack or Discord, which facilitate conversation and interaction in a more natural way and aren't exclusive to those not on other social media platforms.
Wait, that seems like the intro to any "how to build a community" playbook you'll ever read...
So, what about looking outside of events?
There are a few platforms I’ve been trying and playing with lately and, once I've got past the initial sign-up, most, if not all of them, send me an invite to “join their community”.
I always read those emails as I’m always wanting to see how others are doing it and to see what we can learn about how we do it in events and if there is a way to drive more interaction or...yep, buzzword of 2022... create engagement in events communities.
Learning from Martech
The message on the emails from these martech firms are clear; by NOT joining, you will miss out on not just the great content they are sharing, but exclusive offers or discounts, important event updates, plans for the future and so on. Most of them include a few bullet points such as this:
Product News - be the first to know about new product updates or releases
Roadmap Input - your input can help us shape the features that you want
Beta Testing - try things out before they get rolled out to the entire market
Bug Reports - a sort of shortcut to getting things fixed quickly - sometimes faster than normal support.
They're fairly standard and nothing that can't be shared in an email of course, but, what you're also getting by joining these communities is access to a network of "people like me". People who potentially share the same issues, and thirst for learning, passion or curiosity as I do.
Within these communities, you'll often see helpful "how-to's" from the general public on ways they've used the software to do something cool. This isn't brand-fed activation (though of course sometimes it could be!) but passionate people wanting to share.
Problem solving in communities
When I've become stuck in a feature of the tech, or I can't quite use the platform how I was hoping to, I've often used the search function in one of these Facebook groups with the keywords I can relate to and more often than not, will find a post with someone that has had a similar problem and the community has helped them overcome the issue. So it's been incredibly helpful.
It's effectively an enhanced knowledge base for the community that the product is serving and the community owner (the product or brand) hasn't had to lift much of a finger here, apart from encouraging me to join.
Events Communities
In event communities (whilst not always the case!) it is more common to see the following:
ticket code / offer discounts
latest speaker announcements
latest sponsor announcements
sponsor discounts
That's cool, and sometimes those discounts are well and truly needed and getting an announcement on a relevant speaker is helpful, but it often seems that it's a one-way conversation. Can we change this?
The benefits of participation go far beyond simply receiving discount codes. By participating in event communities, one could also learn form others who have attended the same event or work in the same industry. You could learn where the best "after-hours" networking will be, and recommendations for places to visit or stay whilst you're in town, for example.
But taking this a step further, you, the event organizer or event planner, could learn what topics are most interesting to your community (polls). You could also learn about the biggest pain points for attendees and find ways to help solve them by monitoring questions asked or conversations that happen throughout the group year-round (aaarghh I said it... 365).
You could even find your next event influencer by seeing who's supporting others in the community with helpful advice and tips and invite them to becoming a VIP.
None of this is new
I'll say it again, none of this is new.
You probably already know most of it. You're already delivering events that bring communities together all over the world, but event organizers are struggling with the "365" element of their events beyond building out newsletters and we have a lot to learn from martech firms.
"But we're an event not a tech product?" you might be saying?
Sometimes we need to step back, look at how others are doing it and see if we can be helping future event participants by building these open house types of event communities with two-way discussion, knowledge sharing and continuous learning to build better engagement.
So, next time you're attending an inter iinter-industryndustry conference, look outside - maybe attend another event or conference - find out who they're doing it.