How to Get the Most Impact

4 Ways to Build Communities at a Virtual Event

These days, there is a plethora of virtual events targeted at even the most niche communities. So how do you organize an attractive conference that prompts your audience to show up? It turns out your pre-planning efforts will make or break an event.

Here are 4 ways to foster engagement and connection within your community event. Let’s get started:

1. Clarify your needs and craft the ideal event for your audience

   Before going head-first into the event organization, take a step back and review what you are hoping to accomplish by hosting this event. Consider the following:

• What makes your community special? Do you assist a niche market in solving their problems? Are you a safe space for members to have open dialogue or are you brand-new to your space? By identifying your audience and why attendees join your community, you’ll be better able to understand their needs and wants for this event.
• What size event should you host? If you have an established community of 100 people, it may not make sense to plan to host 1,000 attendees at a virtual event without data from a third party to validate these numbers are feasible. On the other hand, if you are covering a wide range of topics that have a large appeal, it is worth considering going larger in your planning to ensure you have adequate resources to support these attendees.
• How exclusive should your event be? If your group is an exclusive community, it might not make sense to open the doors to the public for this event. On the other hand, an open source community would allow anyone who is interested to attend the event. However, if this is your case, you may still want to assume a prior level of understanding about the topic and draw the line for who can attend the event.
• How much will you charge for the event? Interestingly, making your event free may not guarantee a higher volume of participants. On the contrary, asking attendees to pay a reasonable fee will convey value to your event in people’s minds and will make them more likely to attend the conference. It will also weed out possible trolls.
• How do you define success? How will you know if the event was successful? What data points will you use to evaluate what worked, what could be improved, and what you should not repeat during the next event? Once you have identified your KPIs, be sure to set up something as simple as an Excel sheet to track your progress. The earlier in the planning process you can start gathering data points, the better off you will be.

2. Engage your community during the planning phase

   Once you have established what you hope to achieve with the event, it is time to start interacting with and engaging your constituents. Your community is as unique as the market it serves, so capitalize on making this virtual event stand out from the crowd. Ideas to engage include:

• Polling your community through Slack/Email/Newsletters or your regular form of communication. If they can provide input on what they’d like to hear, they are more inclined to attend the event.
• Request talk submissions from community members. This is a prime opportunity to highlight the knowledge and talent within the group.
• Select the best talks to fit your community. Ask yourself these questions: Does this talk fall within the audience’s skillset? How will this topic benefit the community at large? Will there be ways to engage into this talk?

3. Leverage the community’s extroverts

• Get allies. Being an active and engaged member of a community is not everyone’s cup of tea, but many love it. Whether they volunteer to be your emcee, are vocal with questions, or are a returning speaker, those extroverts must be identified and asked to participate in your virtual event. Think of these folks as cheerleaders and leverage their outgoing personalities to hype up your event beforehand and keep the conversations going during the presentations. In many events, once the conversation gets kicked off by a cheerleader, the rest of the community will begin to feel comfortable enough to interact and engage.
• Get the conversation started early. With your cheerleaders identified, it’s best to prepare your Slack or Discord channel early. Start having conversations in public channels: Are you looking for a speaker? A sponsor? Do you have a discount code to share? Look at these communication avenues as an extension of your current marketing efforts of reminders, news blasts, email invites, etc. Preparing the channels beforehand sets the event up for a much higher level of engagement before the event, during, and post-event.
• Ask them to connect people. There are other options for the event’s cheerleaders to help with engagement than just text or chat capabilities. LoudSwarm’s Face2Face feature is a great way to engage with presenters or panelists during the event, and they can assist in kicking off the conversations, asking questions to the speaker, or even help the organizers direct other attendees to the resources.
• Make them ambassadors of fun. Post-session engagement is just as important as live event interactions - that’s where evening social events can come into play. Depending on your audience, you could consider getting a Mario Kart tournament together, a virtual board-game, cocktail hour, or a speed-networking session. Leverage the cheerleaders to help relieve some of your burden by allowing them to spearhead these event, or be the designated emcee. These outgoing personalities are the key to making connections between the community and the content you are promoting at the event.

4. Use viral marketing techniques to promote your event

• Use other events to promote your event. If you’re taking the time to put together an engaging and exciting community event, it’s critical that you leverage your established community relationships and events to spread event awareness. Utilizing other, more frequent events such as Meetups or a recurring lunch are an easy (and casual) way to remind folks about the event.
• Don’t snub local channels. Local event calendars are most often another low-budget way to share information about your big event. A few quick paragraphs and a link to the event is a great start to spread information about the event to the community at large. And it doesn’t have to be just a calendar of events! Consider finding industry-specific newsletters, podcasts, or even streaming channels that offer event promotion as a way to reach a broader audience than just your regulars.
• Bring on the discount codes. As your event gains traction, and your budget allows it, a discount for active members can be a nice incentive to register and attend. This can also draw awareness to the community driving the event, and you might gain a few new members in the process. If a discount to members doesn’t make sense for your event, a simple ask to share the event amongst co-workers and other communities can still have a large impact. In these situations, it’s best to control the message others are sending out about the event. A quick media package with sample tweets, email templates and an event logo can go a long way.

Creating a community event is not just about the concept: the event needs to prompt your community members to attend and engage. Pre-planning, gathering cheerleaders and focusing on engagement are key takeaways to make your event stand out from the sea of virtual events.

Could LoudSwarm be a good fit for your upcoming virtual events? Simply drop us a note and/or schedule a demo of LoudSwarm’s features and white-glove service.