How can you create a connected conference community?

1 Define your audience

Before you start planning your conference, you need to have a clear idea of who your target audience is and what they expect from your event. This will help you tailor your content, format, design, and communication to their needs, preferences, and goals. You can use surveys, interviews, social media, or analytics to gather insights about your audience and create personas or segments that represent them. By defining your audience, you can also identify the key topics, themes, and challenges that interest them and that your conference can address.

2 Choose the right platform

The platform you choose for your conference can have a significant impact on how you create and manage your community. Depending on your budget, goals, and audience, you can opt for a physical, hybrid, or virtual conference platform, or a combination of them. Each platform has its own advantages and disadvantages, so you need to weigh them carefully and consider how they affect the user experience, accessibility, interactivity, and scalability of your event. You also need to ensure that your platform is reliable, secure, and easy to use for all the stakeholders involved.

3 Create engaging content

The content of your conference is the core element that attracts and retains your community. You need to create content that is relevant, valuable, informative, and entertaining for your audience, and that showcases your expertise, vision, and brand. You can use different formats and media to deliver your content, such as keynote speeches, panel discussions, workshops, podcasts, videos, blogs, or ebooks. You can also invite speakers, influencers, or experts who can share their insights, stories, or perspectives with your community and enhance your credibility and reputation.

4 Encourage interaction

Interaction is the key to creating a connected conference community. You need to provide opportunities and incentives for your attendees to interact with each other, with the speakers, with the sponsors, and with the organizers. You can use various tools and strategies to facilitate interaction, such as live chats, polls, quizzes, Q&A sessions, breakout rooms, gamification, social media, or networking apps. By encouraging interaction, you can increase the engagement, satisfaction, and loyalty of your community, as well as collect feedback and data that can help you improve your event.

5 Build relationships

Creating a connected conference community is not a one-time effort. You need to build and nurture relationships with your community before, during, and after your event. You can use email marketing, social media marketing, content marketing, or webinars to communicate with your community and keep them informed, interested, and excited about your event. You can also use these channels to share valuable resources, tips, or offers that can help them achieve their goals or solve their problems. By building relationships, you can also create a sense of belonging, trust, and loyalty among your community members.

6 Measure your impact

The last step to creating a connected conference community is to measure your impact and evaluate your performance. You need to define your objectives and key performance indicators (KPIs) for your event and track them using analytics, surveys, or feedback forms. You can use metrics such as attendance, retention, satisfaction, engagement, conversion, or revenue to measure your impact and determine your return on investment (ROI). By measuring your impact, you can also identify your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats, and use them to improve your future events.

7 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?