Building a Bridge Across the Valley of Engagement

Every season has its peaks and valleys. What you have to try to do is eliminate the Grand Canyon.
  - Andy Van Slyke 

I recently attended the first-ever user conference for eTouches and heard a fabulous presentation by Suzanne Carawan on social media and events. As this is obviously my topic du jour, I wanted to share her story and explore it in a series of posts.

This first post explores the possibilities beyond the normal social media plan of Before, During, and After an event.

An event, if used properly, is a vehicle in a comprehensive marketing plan of touchpoints with a customer or potential customer or like-minded group of individuals. The annual conference can be viewed as the Pinnacle of Engagement for most companies, as it brings together in one place a dedicated base of fans eager to learn, share, and engage with your company, product or topic. But if the annual event is the Pinnacle of Engagement, the rest of the year can be called the Valley of Engagement. What we must explore are the strategies and tactics behind building a bridge across the Valley of Engagement from Pinnacle to Pinnacle to keep your tribe active throughout the year.

Most people view social media and event engagement activities as the Trifecta Approach: “before, during, and after.” But in order to build a lasting community base, consider thinking of the plan as the Leveling of Mountains Approach - a continuous circle year over year.

The Trifecta Approach might look like this:

Before the event:

•       Event registration site and hypersite

•       E-mail blasts for audience acquisition

•       Sales enablement to drive attendance

During the event:

•       Icebreakers based on social media contests/inquiries/discussions

•       Live twitter stream

•       Meet the speakers, authors, keynotes

•       Mobile app for session updates and wayfinding

After the event:

•       Post-event survey

•       Blogs

•       Photo Galleries

•       Archived content

Now consider the Bridge Across the Mountains approach:

Climbing the mountain of engagement:

•       Grassroots conversations begin online about the coming event

•       Event registration site and hypersite

•       E-mail blasts for audience acquisition

•       Sales enablement to drive attendance

•       Event groups or advisory boards on content

•       Industry roundtables to focus the conversation on specific audience sets

•       Contests (social/viral/user-generated-content competitions)

•       Pre-event attendee directories, and allowing attendees to pre-set meetings with others before the event even begins

•       Content teaser videos, vlogs, discussions and blogs

•       Creation of pre-event communities to drive connection before attendees get onsite

•       Polls, surveys, and conversations about event features that drive attendees to share and talk to each other virtually

•       Allow attendees to build a profile, upload a photo, and use that information onsite by printing the photos on the badges, along with things like Twitter names and QR codes that connect attendees to a vCard or address book

•       Create Birds of a Feather sessions out of the community members and offer engaged attendees special access to VIP receptions or other perks

The Pinnacle of Engagement

•       Ample signage for Birds of a Feather meetup locations

•       Physical space for meetups, working groups, birds of a feather conversations

•       Special VIP parties, cocktails, rewards

•       Live twitter stream

•       Scribes per industry, topic, etc

•       Meet the speakers, authors, keynotes

•       Mobile app that encourages continued engagement at the event through QR codes, acquisition of points for engaging with content (like attending breakout sessions, or downloading white papers, or checking in at a booth or activity)

•       Live streaming keynotes

Building a bridge across the valley to make the next climb even shorter:

•       Archived content

•       Webinars to deep-dive on content sessions

•       Blogs to wrap up the event

•       Guest blogs from the speaker pool and attendee pool

•       Photo Galleries

•       Video Testimonials

•       Monthly topic discussions and calls born out of the Birds of a Feather sessions

•        “Meet the Attendee”: First Timer’s View, etc

•       Ongoing community to share perspectives on content and crowdsource topics for upcoming events

•       Package event content in an “on the road” format for sales teams to leverage with top accounts – includes videos, collateral, recorded webinars

It requires year-long dedication to keep the engagement, and very few companies have dedicated the resources to make this possible, but in order to truly provide value to customers, the journey must begin with a single step.