Make Your Events More Engaging with These 5 Content Tips

If you're in the business of putting on events, then you know that engagement is key. No matter how big or small your event is if you can't keep your attendees engaged, then you're not going to achieve your desired results.

Luckily, you can do a few things to ensure your audience is always engaged. In this blog post, we'll share 5 event content tips that will keep your attendees interested.

What is events content?

Events content refers to the type of information, visuals, and activities that you present pre, at, or post-event to engage and entertain your audience.

This sort of content can range from podcasts, webinars, blogs, or live streams on social media and everything in-between.

It can take on so many different guises, which is where event marketers are some of the best in the business (in our humble opinion) being able to multitask in creating content while boosting ticket sales and creating an engaging atmosphere around the entire event.

How do you write event content?

The simplest place to start is to understand who will be attending your event and what their interests are. This way, you can tailor your content accordingly and ensure that it speaks to them. Simple right?

Simple, but often overlooked. For example, you could be writing at very different levels if one event is attracting C-suite executives, and the other is targeting recent graduates.

Additionally, you'll want to consider what platforms your audience is most active on and distribute your content accordingly. If they're mostly on LinkedIn, it might not be worth creating lots of TikTok posts for example.

Now that we've covered the basics, here are our top 5 event content tips:

Diversify your content

Offer a range of activities, information, and visuals for your audience to engage with. This can include live Q&As with industry experts, interactive workshops, or even virtual reality experiences. Mixing it up will capture the interest of a wider range of attendees and keep them engaged throughout the event.

Personalise Your Content

One way to make sure your target audience stays engaged at your event is by personalising the content for them. Now we know you can't put everyone's name on a webinar or slide, but you could brief speakers on the style of attendee you're attracting and what interests them, to ensure you have relevant content throughout your event program.

Build interesting website content

Look at almost any event website today and you'll see approximately one or two sentences with information about the speakers or their sessions at your event.

Sure, sometimes a big name is all you need for everyone in your industry to know and want to watch them, but if you build out more speaker content on your website, really going to town on what people may learn from the session, word of mouth will quickly spread and more people will want to attend. A blog post or a series of articles may help boost your SEO and attract and engage your target audience too.

Plus, the session's attendees will already have a good idea of what they'll be learning and can come prepared with their questions or ideas to share at the event itself.

Keep it fresh, try new ideas

Instead of sticking to the traditional formats, try experimenting with new types of content or delivery methods. This can help keep your audience engaged and make the event more memorable. It could be "walking interviews" where you're not just sitting at a desk behind a camera on another online Zoom video.

Or, it could be livening up presentations about data by using kinetic sand to help explain your event's intelligence, and yes before you ask, I have done that at Event Tech Live before and the audience loved it.

Develop and share original research to be shared with attendees and used by speakers

Content marketing requires original compelling research. Create original research (you have an audience already if this isn't your first outing) that you can find trends, or even common pain points, in your industry and share these findings with attendees (or with your speakers to ensure they use current and relevant data in their presentations or sessions).

This not only sets you apart from other events, but it can also provide valuable insights for speakers to use in their presentations.

Have a look at our 2022 Guide to Monetising Event Content if you want to look for ideas or inspiration to create more content with less. And, if you need help creating or managing content for your event, we offer services to help with that too. Contact us at Waves Connects to find out more.

There you go - 5 event content ideas that will help ensure your audience is continually engaged. Just remember to keep it relevant, visual, concise, and (if appropriate) light-hearted and you'll be well on your way to delivering an engaging content strategy.

Now that you've created all of this wonderful event content to boost your event brand, how do you reach your audience in new ways?

Send a clever piece of snail mail

When digital has become the primary mode of communication, mail might surprise you and your pre-event marketing strategy. We've previously shared ideas on what else you can do to attract an audience such as "why you need to host a virtual event" but sending a piece of snail mail to promote your event, could just be the ticket (Excuse the pun) to drive your audience to interact.

Just bear in mind that you need to ensure your mailing is made from sustainable or recycled sources, you used environmentally friendly inks, it is recyclable and above all, it has great content - something worth sharing.

Create 20 pieces of content

No really. You can. One article, for example, has the opportunity to be turned into at the very least 20 other pieces of content that can help get you found and your audience engaged. An audiogram, video discussion, several TikTok or Instagram videos, a series of a tweet's a couple of emails - you can see where I'm going with this.

Boost your SEO, boost your reach and utilise all of that juicy content you've got available to you by adapting it for all social platforms.

How do you create and share all of this content?

There are hundreds of tools available that can help make your content generation that little bit easier.

Infographics and presentations can be easily created on Canva to follow your brand styles too. Written content can be enhanced with tools like Jasper AI. Images are found for free on platforms such as Unsplash.com. Milk.video helps save valuable time with transcriptions or use a product like Descript to transcribe your videos to words.

We'll dive into all of the platforms we use to help generate more quality content for you in our next blog, but our point here is that there are endless opportunities to create content, just think outside the box and remember, quality over quantity.

So go on, get creating and see how you can engage your audience even more through your event content strategies.

If you need a hand or have questions, please don't hesitate to reach out to us at Waves Connects. We're always happy to help. Happy creating!