What's the saying from that Shakespeare guy, "All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players..." Well, all the world is now Eventbrite, and we're all merely attenders. They seem to have taken over the low-scale, event registration business. So if they are blogging about events, we should probably pay attention.
One from last week that caught my eye was, How to Use Content to Retain Attendees and Drive Registrations. So let's go through their list and SIPA-tize it some.
1. Professional Event Photography. "Hire a professional photographer or appoint an aspiring photographer from your event staff to capture the zeitgeist of your event... [Then] post a gallery on social media and invite attendees to check them out in your thank you email... Our research shows Google's image search to be the second most popular website attendees bounce to after visiting an event listing."
Our colleagues at SIIA, Connectiv, just put on their Neal Awards event last Friday in New York, and the pictures have received 164 views just in the last couple days. Think of other ways to slice and dice pictures—if there are people who are speaking for you, an "action" photo is usually better than a headshot. And if you need general engagement shots, these photos will do nicely.
2. Highlight Reel of Past Events. "Create a video that highlights key moments from your past event. Make sure to show the energy on stage, in the crowd, and behind the scenes." Access Intelligence's Event Marketer does this with their Experiential Marketing Summit taking place next month. Their video is fast-moving and high-energy and makes you want to attend. "The world's biggest brands are your instructors," they say. The copy is below the large video.
3. Video Testimonials. "It's no secret: people look to others' actions and opinions to inform their decisions. Studies show that 70% of consumers look at product reviews before making a purchase, and product reviews are 12x more trusted than product descriptions from manufacturers."
Education Week probably does this better than anyone with their Leaders to Learn From, which includes stirring videos that help promote their big event. After introducing the winners, they write, "Meet the honorees at the annual Leaders To Learn From event in Washington." Talk about video driving an event. They also have a session titled, Follow the Leaders where you can join the "Leaders To Learn From honorees of your choice for a chance to pick their brains; each will be ready to talk about his or her area of expertise."
4. Recorded Presentations and Panels. "One of the most common forms of conference content is video of presentations or panels. Consider releasing these videos one by one at a steady cadence to remind your attendees of the valuable insight they got at your event—and show non-attendees what they missed." This type of content has a tendency to fade into the mist. Don't let it.
5. Repackaged Presentation Content. "Your presentations don't just have to live on as videos." My thoughts exactly. "Package your presentations in a variety of formats to get more out of them—and give your attendees more options. Turn them into infographics, blog posts or use their audio for podcasts that people can listen to at the gym."
I was just speaking with a member who said that summaries are often much easier—and faster—to consume for her than videos. Transcription services can be cheap. So instead of "Come to our event," you are offering valuable content that came from the previous actual event, a good selling point. EventBrite shows an information graphic that leads to an on-demand webinar.
6. Upcoming Speaker and Presenter Bios. "You can also use content to build anticipation around the speakers and presenters at your upcoming event. Announcing your agenda and speaker lineup is a great chance to engage your audience, but a grid of headshots and notable brands can only drum up so much excitement."
Hopefully we did that this week with our Q&A with Nikesh Desai of InvestingChannel, one of the keynote speakers at the SIPA 2017 Annual Conference, June 5-7, in Washington, D.C. Read the Q&A here.
"The biggest thing that publishers need to do more of is to understand their audience and customer," Desai said. "I feel strongly that you do that not by general demographic overlay and old school print marketing tactics, but by gathering [data] to figure out, 'who is my audience, who is my customer?' Then you can develop different revenue streams and products."
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Nevena Jovanovic.
Ronn Levine began his career as a reporter for The Washington Post and has won numerous writing and publications awards since. Most recently, he spent 12 years at the Newspaper Association of America covering a variety of topics before joining SIPA in 2009 and SIIA in 2013 as editorial director…