Cultivating Community: The Future of Event Marketing and Engagement
In this episode of the podcast, we discuss the rise of event platforms focusing on creating community as their next big feature. We explore the impact of the pandemic on the event world, leading to an increase in virtual platforms and the concept of 365-day events.
We also discuss the importance of building a community first before creating an event and the difference between serving a community and focusing solely on sales or ego.
We delve into the potential challenges and benefits of a year-round virtual platform experience for communities, discussing the importance of having a solid strategy in place to support creating content libraries, hosting monthly gatherings, and engaging with community members.
Highlights
0:07:34 - Events for a community vs. Communities for an event
0:13:36 - Fulfilling actual community needs
0:19:54 - The Relationship of Events and Marketing
0:33:39 - Creating a Virtual Event
0:36:44 - Community is not an event trend
Events for a community vs. Communities for an event
I: “And that's the whole reason why big companies have community manager roles, community management teams, there's even a trend toward community design as, like, a bigger, broader, more impactful thing that does this on a regular basis. And so to think that we as event organizers and producers can do something like that, in addition to organizing an annual conference, that's a lot.”
N: “And I think part of the problem is it's kind of flipping the formula backwards. because it's trying to turn the event into a community versus creating an event for a community. the event is part of that community, not the other way around. And that's why it just doesn't make sense to me. Because an event is not a community. that's not a thing. Events should serve a community but it's not a community in and of itself.”
Fulfilling actual community needs
“And, yeah. That's not a community. That's an audience. Those are leads. It's a very different relationship. That's a very different strategy than actually serving a community's needs. If your core question is, how do I get them to buy x? That's the wrong question. What you want to ask is, how can I fulfill their needs? What are their needs? What do they care about? How can we create an environment, design an experience, and provide and facilitate where they can come and actually have their needs met. And that's that's the key. If you aren't, if you aren't starting with that, then you're gonna sell yourself short. And even with the trade show, a trade show that meets people's needs. Right? I think that's not their community, but it's an audience and they meet their needs.”
The Relationship of Events and Marketing
“And so you can certainly use an annual conference, especially if you're a product based organization, to sell your product but it's not a direct method. It's ancillary. You are there to strengthen your relationships with your customers and to strengthen relationships with potential customers, not to directly sell to them. And I think that that's the key distinction there.”
Creating a Virtual Event
“You make the events work for the community. You don't try to shove a community in an event that you've already made or this thing that you’ve already decided is what they want. And now you're trying to convince people to go in. It all comes back to that. Are you doing something that people actually care about or actually need at the end of the day?”
Community is not an event trend
“But that doesn't mean that community is a trend. It's always been there. It's always been important. It will always continue to be so let's not let the marketing decks and the feature announcements try and persuade us that this is a new thing when it's not. And let's not try to make community just a line on a checklist. That's not what it is at all. “
Transcript
This transcript was automatically generated by Podium.page using AI and has been edited for clarity.
0:00:09
N: Hi, everyone, and welcome to a Kickass Conferences Talk Show. I'm Nessa Jimenez, the Operations Manager for Kickass Conferences.
I: And I am Isaac Watson, executive producer of Kickass Conferences.
N: And this is the podcast where we sit down and talk about everything, conferences and events. So this week, our topic is the recent declaration of community as a marketing tool for conferences. Or as I've seen in a few articles, community being the big event trend of twenty twenty one. And we both reacted, like, ‘Excuse me? What's happening?’ So I thought it would be interesting for us to talk about it on the podcast.
0:00:59
N: I think it makes sense for us to start with where is this coming from, why and why now? So I think that there's kind of two two components to what's happening in the event discussion these days. I think one of them is from the software side, so a lot of event platforms are leaning into this idea of creating community as the next feature. As the next big thing. And I think that a lot of producers and organizers are realizing that, again, because I think this is why we raised our eyebrows when we saw this, but they're realizing the community is really important when it comes to events, and so they're focusing on it. And that makes me just kinda go, “We know about already’. Like, those are in person events. This is how the community is critical. We know this. This is not new. Yeah. And everything that's been coming out recently has been with this tone of ‘we just discovered this, This is a totally new idea’, and I think that's why it's so bizarre. Because community has existed, since humans have existed. So for there to be this big declaration– and then to call it a trend. Because trends come and go. That is super bizarre.
I: Yes. I agree one hundred percent.
0:02:37
I: I think speaking of software, I think the reason that software tools are going in this direction is because it's a natural progression from a reaction to what was done over the last year as the pandemic hit the event world really, really hard. In person events were out. And so everybody screamed and everybody was trying to figure out how to make this work virtually. And so you have all of these, dozens and dozens and dozens of event platforms popping up. And they all start from this minimum viable product thing. you need a live stream and you need a live chat. And then they iterate on that with new versions, they add new features, then it's sponsor booth pages and it's this, that or the other. And so I think as they continue to evolve their platforms and evolve their feature set and continue to keep producers interested, they're leaning on this idea of a community as being the next big thing.
0:03:47
I: And I think that there are two reasons for that. One is the hit as vaccinations continue to roll out and in person events are starting to come back. All of these companies are starting to panic. Like, where's our audience? Where’s our customers? We need to keep our customers. We need to keep us running. And so that's why a lot of people talk about hybrids and that's fine.
0:04:14
I: But I think the other element is this notion of the event, the community around the event being something that an organizer or a producer should be designing an experience around three hundred and sixty five days a year. And it gets back to the idea of membership or of being part of a group that is actively engaged, not just for an annual conference, but they're coming back for more. They're coming back to using the platform. They're doing this one and the other. And so I think those two things, the ‘Wait. Don't leave us.’ and the ‘we can do more than just an annual thing or a quarterly thing’ keeps these software companies pushing forward on it?
0:05:10
N: And the pandemic absolutely created this solution of so many platforms that are trying to be THE platform. Right? Getting ALL the audience. And of course, this concept of three sixty five events. The event that never ends has also become this big selling point for these apps because, of course, they don't sell subscriptions for one event for a couple of days. That's not how it works. There is a subscription model. The least I've seen is they'll do a year. So they're already selling you the year. They're just trying to make the year seem more palatable. Right? Because if I know my event is for three days, why am I paying you for a year of the service? And that's where this need to create this, ‘stay with us and make the event never end’ comes from.
I: And you know what? That's going to make the resigning of the contract next year even easier. If you can demonstrate values to your clients throughout the course of a year, and they're gonna be less likely to go seek another solution when the time comes to do the next one.
0:06:27
I: I think though that this three sixty five experience thing is also something that's not new. Right. I have seen this with community based live events. In the past, I've worked with clients, I've worked on teams who have this idea that, we push and we push and we push and we create this really awesome experience in this very condensed amount of time. And that's part of why conferences work. Energy. It's the impact. It's in the halls. In the auditorium moment that keeps people coming back for more. Well, what if we can extend that? And so you know, we've worked with people who have wanted to keep a Slack group going. Let's do monthly events. Let's have local meetups that are organized out of the conference that keep people engaged and connected to each other.
0:07:30
I: But it's really hard to do well. Every time it's come up with the people that I've worked with over the years, it's always fallen flat or never reached the potential that it has because as event organizers, we work on a cyclical basis. and that kind of roller coaster of pedal to the metal, right up to the to Showtime, and then it drops off and you sleep for a week and you recover and then you start into the planning of next year. that isn't conducive to ongoing community management. And that's the whole reason why big companies have community manager roles, community management teams, there's even a trend toward community design as, like, a bigger, broader, more impactful thing. That does this on a regular basis. And so to think that we as event organizers and producers can do something like that. In addition to organizing an annual conference, that's a lot.
N: And I think part of the problem is it's kind of flipping the formula backwards. because it's trying to turn the event into a community versus creating an event for a community. the event is part of that community, not the other way around. And that's why it just doesn't make sense to me because an event is not a community. that's not a thing. Events should serve a community but it's not a community in and of itself.
0:09:16
I: A lot of people may think of this as a classic chicken and egg scenario. Which one comes first? Can one lead to the other? But the truth is that except in rare circumstances, you have to build that community first. We've worked with first-time conference organizers. We've worked with long-time conference organizers and everyone in between. That community piece has to exist in order for the conference to work well. That's the groundwork that you have to lay in advance.
0:09:52
N: And, we’ve had potential clients who really wanted to have an event, but they didn't have that community foundation first. And so all it does is it becomes either an ego or a sales project, essentially. And it's not as successful. Because it's either ego, it's about the person hosting and not the attendees. Or it's just another product that you have to sell and you have to convince and you have to create a need for it and that requires so much energy.
0:10:30
N: It's like, if the need doesn't exist in the community, then you're gonna be spending a lot of time trying to answer, why does this matter? Why do we want this?
I: Exactly. It's the question that you are always so great at asking which is, why should someone care about this? Why does This matter? You can't just– this is not a field of dream scenario. You cannot build it and they will come. You have to build them and then give them something to come to.
N: And I was trying to think, can I imagine a scenario where creating the event first would make sense? And the only thing I could come back to is maybe I'm designing an event that is not necessarily my community, but there's a community that I know needs it. So even that involves community.
I: The community has to be there, even if you weren't the one who built it. Work to cultivate it. You have to have that existing thing.
0:11:40
N: I think that , like I said, there are a few rare instances where it can work.
I: And to me, those are those areas where you have either a highly relevant topic for a cause or a purpose that has incredible critical mass. That's the kind of stuff where it's a lot easier to create something that people will immediately click with and say, oh, yes, I'm going to that, regardless of what community is there. But if you think that you have that, you're probably kidding yourself because chances are you don't. It's very rare for something like that to work and to work well. There has to be an underlying community building effort that supports the event.
0:12:40
N: And this messaging of community as an event trend the people that are being marketed this idea are definitely not those types of people that you're talking about. Like the types of people I would say that are being marketed in this idea are, they're really big companies. It's a really big trade show. It's really big, just basically sales events. That's the perception that I get that they're trying to market this idea of making your sales event a community all year round.
I: And, yeah. That's not a community. That's an audience. Those are leads. It's a very different relationship. That's a very different strategy than actually serving a community's needs.
0:13:36
I: If your core question is, how do I get them to buy x? That's the wrong question. What you want to ask is, how can I fulfill their needs? What are their needs? What do they care about? How can we create an environment, design an experience, and provide and facilitate where they can come and actually have their needs met. And that's that's the key. If you aren't, if you aren't starting with that, then you're gonna sell yourself short. And even with the trade show, a trade show that meets people's needs. Right? I think that's not their community, but it's an audience and they meet their needs.
0:14:35
N: But I just can't wrap my head around this idea of, like, why do these people want to hang out on a platform throughout the year. Let's talk about that.
I: So let's just say that we want to consider a three sixty five virtual platform experience for the community that we're bringing into our annual conference. Okay.
0:15:01
I?: What are we going to offer? Well, the easy low hanging fruit is the content library. You've got all the replay videos. You've got maybe a live chat for them to come into. I mean, depending on tech stack aside, maybe you just have a Slack channel for everybody and then keep chatting and it's organic and whatnot. K. Cool.
0:15:23
I: What else? Are you gonna host monthly gatherings? Are you going to showcase community members? Are you going to communicate with them? Are you gonna be sending out regular messaging that builds upon what they heard and saw at the conference? Or are you going to ask them to help solve a problem? Like, all of those extra things beyond the low hanging fruit is work.
0:15:59
I: And if you don't have a strategy in place to help support that work, it's just gonna either fall flat because you're gonna realize that you don't have the time or the audience doesn't care. They're not invested in it. Or it's gonna come through as disingenuous like you're just trying to string them along because maybe you wanna sell something to them or you're just trying to keep them engaged so that they're aware of you or some other thing. So It's the never ending sales funnel of ‘ I wanna sell you the idea of my platform so that on the platform, I can sell you the idea of coming to my monthly events’. And then getting you on the email list. It's like it's constant.
0:16:49
N: I because just because something is free, and we definitely know this. Just because it's free, plenty of people can sign up. let's say you are gonna do monthly events, Most people don't show up. But you're still putting in this work of creating these events, of creating these resources, of creating these content libraries. Right? And that's why there's literally people that exist to do that specific job of community management. I know I haven't but you've been following on Twitter people that work in this.
I: I've actually been really interested in community management as a role within larger organizations.
0:17:34
I: And so I've signed up for a couple newsletters and there are a couple people I know from past lives doing other things that have found their ways into community management. And so it's been really interesting to me to see some of the parallels in what they do with how we cultivate community through events. And so these conversations are really fascinating to me and I don't have any grand epiphanies to share, But I think that there are there are some great parallels, and I think that there is a lot that community managers and designers have to contribute to event organizers that could help us in the long run. And so I'm really keen on continuing to pay attention to what I'm doing and seeing how their own roles and responsibilities have evolved over the years. As well as having conversations with them to compare notes. Because they don't do the same thing that we do, but I definitely see how we could have a relationship.
0:18:52
I: And a lot of community managers are actively doing events on a smaller scale. Some of them are on a bigger scale. But gathering people together around a specific thing is not a new concept. Communities have wanted to do this for a long time. And so it's a natural thing for a community to want to do that. You know, from an annual conference standpoint, which is largely the space in which we work, it's a bit more work to put something like that together for a community than it is to do a monthly meetup, a quarterly workshop, or things like that. There's still a strategy required for both. And I think that's something that's part of the reason why I'm so interested in seeing what the community management space is doing to help build and cultivate those communities beyond just audience development.
0:19:54
N: And so now we talked a little bit about where this is coming from. But a part of that sales pitch of events as community or as the trend of community, is this idea of the event being sort of a checkbox on the marketing list. Right? So let's talk about that relationship of events and marketing because we're not necessarily against it, but there's some nuance that gets lost.
0:20:33
I: This might not be quite where you're going with this, but I wanna touch on it, and then if we need to reroute it. But we talk about sales being highly transparent. So nobody wants to go to a conference to be sold to. Product launches may be exciting, but ultimately people are not there for the product launch. They're there for the other people in the room. They're there for maybe the secondary or tertiary content that's actually more community oriented.
0:21:13
I: That's not to say that commerce shouldn't happen in an event. Of course, by all means. You and I talk a lot about fandom communities. Yes. Right? Yes. And, you know, whether that's the Star Trek convention or Comic Con or you know, people galvanizing around a TV show or video games or whatever that is. These are really strong communities that are formed around an object of some sort. And there's tons of commerce happening around that. Absolutely. But it's largely community based commerce. It's fan art. It's collectibles. It's merchandise, comic books, you know, getting autographs, photo ops, all these things. Like, that's a very different kind of thing than getting up on stage and saying, we're announcing this thing, come and buy it. That's not the same kind of commerce that those communities look for.
0:22:23
I: And so you can certainly use an annual conference, especially if you're a product based organization to sell your product but it's not a direct method. It's ancillary. You are there to strengthen your relationships with your customers and to strengthen relationships with potential customers not to directly sell to them. And I think that that's the key distinction there.
N: Because, ultimately, you need to give the audience something and not just make it an ask to buy this thing that we made. What are they getting? What, you're bringing them here to ask for money? Nobody wants to go to an event like that. Say you make software or something. And you do have a product release to announce or whatever, and that's there's a place for that.
I: But what the community is gonna want more than just one of the new features is how do we use it? If you can help teach them to do that through workshops, through sessions, through demos, things like that, you're gonna have a stronger connection with your audience that will build their affinity to your product. That's going to support your sales over the long run. But this is not a net new leads or finding new enterprise clients kind of a situation. It's about education. It's about training. It's about developing relationships, not just getting them into an ask and offer situation.
0:24:10
N: And the events serve the needs. As you were talking, I immediately thought of E3. And E3 is like this big conference, but what they are smart about is, there's one part of the E3 that's very much for the fan boys and girls, and they just wanna see the demos of the games, and they wanna play the games in person and they wanna be there and hear the announcements. That's fantastic. But there's this whole other level of E3 where you have media interviewing with the devs, the game devs, or or like the companies behind these games. And so their needs is they wanna talk to the media, they wanna discuss the game in a different way than you would with the fan. It's more of an industry type of conversation that they're having.
0:24:58
N: And so what they're really good at is meeting the needs of both those sides of that community. And everybody goes home happy because the fanboys, they saw the new game, the new console, the new thing. And then the media, they get the interviews and all the things that they need. It's an event that's created to meet needs. For a community that already exists.
0:25:34
I: And I think that is important to recognize when your audience has clear segments because those priorities are gonna be different. I mean, the same goes for your event sponsors. You know, they're gonna have their own priorities and needs. They are more concerned about sales or about recruiting or about thought leadership or things like that. So you need to be able to cater to those to some respect based on the context of the audience you're serving, but you can't just pitch to everyone.
N: And a pitch is not a community. Again, a pitch is not a community and events are not a community.
0:26:15
I: Product is not a community. There can be a community behind a product like a Framer. That's a great example. Like Yeah. So we've worked with farmers at their conference called Loupe. And what we've loved about working with them is that they had this Avid user base around their design tools that had already built itself up. Even with very little effort on their part, I think that speaks to some of the success of their event. Who were teaching themselves how to use it, who were teaching each other, who were mentoring, who were tweaking and hacking and pushing the software to its limits in a way that helps the company grow their product. As it was in its infancy, I wouldn't say it's infancy, but, you know, in its kind of Early years.
0:27:21
I: But I think that the key around that is that this was a community that had already created itself, and then they look to bring that community into a collective in person experience. And that was a conference that was not focused on their product announcements. Actually, explicitly said we're not doing a keynote on stage. Because that's not what this is about. This is a conference about design and prototyping. Big picture because that's what our community cares about. And we're also going to offer workshops so that they can learn the tools, again, developing those relationships, not selling to them.And it worked. It was great. It was great. It was a lot of fun too. And people left really happy and really they felt seen. They felt appreciated as a community. And I think they also left with a very positive feeling about the product even though the product was not something that we spent hours talking about or looking at.
0:28:37
I: I have another example of a great conference that has done a really great work around community building. Just a couple weeks ago, I attended confab, which is a content strategy conference run by brain traffic. Brain traffic is a content strategy consultancy or an agency. And they've run this event for, like, ten years, eleven years. And this is a second year online, I am fairly new to the content strategy world a little over my head on it all. But I was like, you know what? I'm gonna give this a shot because we do some content strategy with our clients. Content is very closely connected to design in UI UX, and there are a lot of circles that we work in. It was important to me to kind of understand that world. So I dive into it, and beyond the livestream and the kind of the content at the end of the show, which was fantastic. They had this huge content library. Great. That's a great thing. People love that. They'll come back for it the topics they're interested in.
0:30:01
I: But what was interesting to me is that they had set up a Slack group for the conference. It was a dedicated Slack group. Not just one channel. And they took it upon themselves to pay for a regular Slack planned for all of the attendees. It's, like, seven hundred and fifty people. That's a big sale. Oh. So they did it I mean, hey. Good for them. They did it for a month, and they put the power of the Slack management in the attendees' hands.
0:30:34
I: And I got in there and I was like, this is a little weird. I'm a little skeptical of this. I'm skeptical of most things. I was gonna sit back and see what happens here. And it was fascinating to me to see what happened. They had some predefined channels so you have a live broadcast channel and that was just blowing up during the mainstream and that people use it as a live chat. It was hilarious and fun and great. They had a hallway chatter channel where people could have side conversations that were a little off topic or whatever. And then you start seeing individual attendees in this community creating their own channels as they feel needs pop up. There was an LGBTQ community. There was a design systems channel. There was a design lead or content leadership channel. Like, basically, as people self identified and connected with each other and these topics started coming up around the industry, they would create their own channels and it worked really, really well.
0:31:46
I: Now, that Slack channel shrinks back down to a free plan after a month. And there's still people chatting there. I signed in just the other day and there's a little chatter here and there. That kind of organic continuous community is good. That is likely going to ebb as time goes on, as people turn their focus elsewhere.
0:32:14
I: But I think what they've done really well is they were able to cultivate that community. They've got a great audience of returning attendees, a lot of newbies as well. That is centered around this industry broadly without marketing anything explicitly. So, you know, brain traffic does consulting. They're an agency. They do content strategy. Were they selling their stuff? No, they weren't. This is not about that. This is about content strategy as an industry.
0:32:43
I: And when you galvanize a community around that, it works really really well, but you don't need to carry that through to a three sixty five experience. And I think that's part of what makes it work really well. And the keyword organic. Because thinking about Slack, there wasn't anyone from the company or from the events making the Slack channels and going like, hey, guys. Come on. join us in this chat which is so disingenuous and dorky. It was just an organic thing that the people saw and made and the people created it and they were allowed to do that. But it came from the community. And I don't think people appreciate how powerful that is. but also how complicated that can be to create that organic energy in a community. I think, to their team's credit, they cultivated a conducive environment where they trusted their attendees, and I'll give them the freedom to to pursue their interests and fulfill their needs within the context of the event. And I think that's part of why that worked really well.
0:34:03
I: I was really, really impressed with it. And especially for an all virtual conference. I felt that the level of activity and conversation I was seeing in that Slack group was almost as if, and I hate to draw replicable parallels to the in person event world, but it was almost as if I had taken all the hallway chatter and the bar conversations in the late night chats and things like that at an in person event and mashed them into a single place. That was really, really fantastic to see that they can do that.
N: And the platform didn't matter. It wasn't the fact that it was on Slack that made that happen. obviously, for sales reasons, the platforms that wanna sell subscriptions.
0:34:57
N: They want you to think that you just need the right tool and it'll happen. like, no. That community used that tool to do what they wanted to do, which was connect to each other. you've gotta find the right tool for the community's needs, not cram a community into the tool.
I: Exactly. I knew that's what you're gonna say. I had a feeling. You know, you're on the same wavelength there.
0:35:40
N: You make the events work for the community. You don't try to shove a community in an event that you've already made or this thing that you decided Like, this is what they want. And now you're trying to convince people to go in. It all comes back to that. Like, Are you doing something that people actually care about or actually need at the end of the day? Okay. So now we're super close to the end of the episode. Do we have any final thoughts about this idea of community as an event trend? What parting words can we share?
I: I think if it's a trend, then somewhere along the way we forgot how important it was. And that's a shame. If that's true, that's a shame. Yeah.
0:36:44
I: Community has always been integral to successful events, whether they're in person, whether they're virtual and virtual events have been around for a long time. They've had their heyday over the last twelve months. But I think that if anything, the software platforms out there go back to my two things. They're trying to keep their customers and provide value to them, and they're leaning into the community to do it. And that's not bad. It's just a little disingenuous because the community has always been there.
0:37:19
Yeah. And I think that the organizers understand how a lot of people have been saying, well, it's so easy to do a virtual event. No, it's actually not. Maybe logistically, that's not even true either. But for those people who thought it was easy, they've realized how damn hard it is to actually do successfully. And that's underscoring the importance of community even in a virtual event setting.
0:37:54
I: But that doesn't mean that community is a trend. It's always been there. It's always been important. It will always continue to be so let's not let the marketing decks and the feature announcements try and persuade us that this is a new thing when it's not. And let's not try to make community just a line on a checklist. That's not what it is at all.
N: Alright. Awesome. Well, thank you so much, Isaac. I thought this was a great conversation. So thank you everybody for listening and watching. You can find us at kickassconf.com. And if you found this conversation interesting and helpful, I invite you to share it with others. So thank you everyone, and we'll see you next time. Take care. Bye bye.