From URL to IRL: The power of In Real Life experiences

10, 20 or 30 years ago we'd never imagine that the world is at the state that we see right now.

Despite all the technological rapid evolvement, humans are meeting more than ever.

Especially in the business industry.

According to Event Manager Blog event statistics, more than 1.5 billion people attended business to business events, and more than $1.07 trillion were spent in creating these event experiences all over the globe.

In fact, this massive growth in a new trend made possible that "In-person events are the most effective form of content marketing for B2B marketers."

Does it sound like *BS*?

Just take a look at one of the most prolific business profiles on Social Media, like Gary Vee or David Meltzer, and you'll see that 40 to 60% of their content is curated from:

In Real Life (IRL) experiences

There are many benefits in terms of content creation why attending In Real Life experiences, make a great platform for you to curate content, so let's highlight some of them:

Community

You can build community, meet new people, give an in-person product or brand experience of what you are selling and collect in real-time feedback.

With so much noise on Social Media, the foundation to keep up-to-date and on the trend is by being constantly on the ground doing fieldwork, scouting and discovering new trends.

To grow from 0 to 1, 1 to 10, 10 to 100, and 100 to 1000 is by being present in key In Real Life experiences, that allow you to engage with your early adopters, build a loyal community, and do rapid messaging, product, and marketing tests with them.

Don’t be afraid of being honest, and sharing your weaknesses.

Everytime that you feel, without a light… Just remember that your spirit, insires the world!

Mention or make other people on your story relevant

@David Meltzer is another great, exceptional example of using In Real Life experiences, as a platform to grow his brand.

Not only by doing the same premises that @Gary does, but also to give the highlight to other people on his story.

Recently Dave, launched his book Game-Time Decision Making that became the #1 daily release on Amazon.com, and as a first-person observer of his strategy, Dave made multiple meetups, and smaller In Real Life experiences to engage with his community and talk about the book and (something that I want to include in this convo) purpose.

Yes, the third angle that makes In Real Life experiences a must-have for your brand growth, is by fueling:

Purpose

Are you ready for what you'll read now?

Dave and Gary always make their purpose statements in Real Life experiences, and events, to solidify their community and audience.

Not only to create these actionable tactics of engagement, but also to truly get the feedback from their audience if their purpose, vision, and mission is being communicated in the right way.

Dave often says that he wants to make 1 billion people happy, and Gary says that Entrepreneurship is the right approach to live a happy life.

But what if you are a brand or big institution?

In Real Life experiences, became more than ever the way to grow your purpose.

In 2016, on Airbnb’s open LA event, one woman stepped on stage to complain against Airbnb’s co-founder Bryan Chesky by protesting against Airbnb presence in Palestine.

The protester was calling for Airbnb to get out of Jewish settlements in Palestine, and during the fireside chat between Brian Chesky and Ashton Kutcher, Airbnb’s investor and Hollywood actor, Ashton took action on defending Airbnb and Brian Chesky’s intentions with Airbnb mission by instantaneously pushing the purpose of the company in the world:

"We can get to know each other intimately and understand our collective narrative is a narrative for everyone, and that we all can belong in a world together without borders.”

Kutcher finished his speech welcoming Gold to sit with him and converse more.

This proves what we were just reading above, that the level of engagement, attention and rapid response to something that could have become much bigger, was only possible in a Real-Life experience.

As seen on the tweet above, the attendees also got to experience how Airbnb conveys solutions and how does the approaching in situations where the brand is creating some negative impact in a determined region of the world.

On this note, the next perspective that we'll take into consideration is that In Real Life Experiences, allows you to:

Do Things That Don't Scale

Back to the Past, I was always impressed with how my uncles expanded their gardening business to making 6 to 7 figures a year, with 0 marketing dollars.

I was like: "How the hell they got their 100 customers and all the sudden, are making this amount of money? If they got these customers, I'd be able now to scale it with my technology/product perspective, but what stokes me is the traction they got!"

The secret here is doing things that don't scale.

Meeting people, your customers in person, going to networking events from your niche industry, talking to potential partners, is hard!

When you are trying to grow your brand, usually you become heavily busy, with sales, product, team, financial efforts, and the last thing you probably want to do is going to a networking event, but the ROI of truly connecting with people and create a word-of-mouth effect to boost the growth for your brand or business is unmatchable.

The world's leading accelerator founder Paul Graham, talks about it on the video mentioned above, sharing advice on Doing Things That Don't Scale.

Content

If you want to create a content machine, engage with your customers, partners, vendors or fans, and show that you are always connected with your audience on social media, In Real Life experiences are the go-to option.

The startup that I co-founded Youcanevent.com, brings a game-changing new behavior in the marketplace experience.

Youcanevent is the place where In Real Life experiences start, by solving the pain of finding, negotiating and booking any kind of event service in less than minutes.

The cool perk of our marketplace, is that when you order catering, hire a photographer, or rent a venue, we offer (for free) an event assistant that not only helps you onsite during the event to manage speakers, coordinate attendees, and monitor service quality, but also films video footages and takes pictures of the event that later are offered to the customer, to share with their community of attendees.

Instead of having the hard work of adding someone on your team, or getting a volunteer, we make it easy for our customers because of the fast-growing trend of curating content from In Real Life experiences (if you are interested in being part of the Youcanevent community and discover events near you by seeing exceptional content from these events sign-up today).

Here are some videos from our community:

To conclude this article, I’d like to share with you one of the initiatives that we often propel within our community that might give you ideas for your own In Real Life experiences.

At Youcanevent, we want to connect the world through Celebration with In Real Life, and event experiences, and we recently launched a song that we composed, wrote, and played for our community of more than 5,000 members.

The World Celebration song is a raw, humble, and unique way that we have to engage during our In Real Life experiences, and brings clarity for our mission statement.

If you are curious to listen, feel free to click here, and share with the ones you love.

I truly hope that you enjoyed reading this article!

See you next time,

Life is a celebration,

Antonio

PS: If you liked the article please, please give a thumbs up, comment and share with your friends. If you want me to cover other topics in the future, please message or e-mail me, and I’d be more than happy to discuss your ideas or suggestions.