Discover the secrets of community building in marketing events with industry experts Joel and Meisha. Learn practical strategies to nurture relationships, create engaging spaces for attendees, and generate shareable moments. Whether you're aiming for the cozy vibe of Content Marketing World or the excitement of new connections, this conversation is your guide to turning events into vibrant hubs of business and camaraderie.
After the keynotes end, the conversation continues. Join us for insights on leveraging digital platforms, creating personalized experiences, and using LinkedIn to maintain relationships. Tune in, follow us on LinkedIn, and let's build communities together!
Key Messages:
Community-building at events is like a reunion, creating a sense of belonging and encouraging attendees to return year after year.
In-person events benefit from dedicated spaces and activities for community members, fostering engagement and connection.
Collaboration with other companies in similar spaces can enhance community events, providing attendees with a broader network and more value.
Virtual events can build community through dedicated app spaces, direct messaging, and creating shareable moments like virtual meetups.
Easy-to-implement strategies like prompting attendees to connect on LinkedIn can further relationships and extend the event's impact beyond its duration.
Meisha Bochicchio
Meisha is a first-gen college grad and burgeoning marketer based in Boston. By day, Meisha is the Digital Content Marketing Program Manager at VMware, driving digital content strategies for VMware Explore. When she’s not busy behind the screen, she enjoys chasing down Boston’s best plate of pasta, spending time with her husband and pets, and enjoying all that New England has to offer. Meisha recently graduated with an M.S. in Integrated Marketing Communications from West Virginia University, though she’ll always be a Clemson Tiger at heart.
Joel Primack has been in the Community space for ~5 years, serving and supporting communities of different types of personas and geographies. He's spent time at Sales Assembly, Lattice, and with multiple Community Consulting clients in a variety of spaces. Beyond his work experience, he hosts a podcast, The Community-Led Growth Show, as well as guest speaks, writes, & partnered with Common Room on a 5-city tour in the Fall of 2023.
It's almost like a reunion, right Like I feel that way whenever I go to content marketing world. It's like a big reunion with the people I see there every year.
Speaker 2:
Hello everybody, welcome back to Tiny Marketing. I am Sarah-Anne Well-Block and today we are digging into part two of creating community around your events with Joel and Misha, and we're digging into the middle parts, the how to build community during the event. This is where the friendships happen. This is where you have an opportunity to build a relationship with people that you can take through to you know, new business inquiries to new partnerships. There's so many opportunities when it comes to that community piece during the event. So we're going to dig into exactly how to get more engagement during your events. Enjoy, let's dig into the middle part the community during the event. How do we get more engagement and help people build relationships with each other during either an in-person or virtual event?
Speaker 1:
I will speak from the in-person perspective just because I happen to be on an event team. We do work on a larger event, conference, so some of this might not translate to some of the smaller events, but you can certainly take your own spin on it. But one thing that we do support is at our event, our event also. I know inbound does it, content Marketing Institute does it two of my favorite events. They have dedicated spaces for their communities at the event. So they have, you know, whether it's a dedicated physical space, they might have dedicated events outside of the primary event. You know, a little happy hour is a dinner, that kind of thing.
Speaker 1:
But just creating space and having a presence there just for the community members, I think it's great to be able to bring people together at your event. Kind of. It's almost like a reunion right. Like I feel that way whenever I go to Content Marketing World. It's like a big reunion with the people I see there every year. But it also again kind of creates that awareness and can help you grow your community and let people know like, oh, if I come to Inbound every year or you know whatever event it is like, I'll have this whole community that I can then reunite with every year and kind of keep in touch with throughout the year. So those are some examples of just again kind of bigger scale thinking. You could certainly replicate that, I think, if you do have smaller in-person events, again creating that sense of community and giving folks kind of a reason to engage throughout the year.
Speaker 2:
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Speaker 1:
Well, we'll see they moved it to the West Coast. I'm like that's really far.
Speaker 2:
They did Wait. Where are they going to have it next year? I'm in San Diego next year. I didn't know that. I know they just moved it to DC. I thought they were keeping it there.
Speaker 1:
I think there were reasons why they moved it, which I understand, but I think, from what I've heard they're trying to do, they're going to oscillate now West Coast one year, east Coast one year. So we'll see. But I was very excited for the move to DC because I'm like, oh, I did take the train from Boston.
Speaker 2:
DC is so cute.
Speaker 1:
But I mean, San Diego is warm, it is warm, and they moved it to now. It's the end of October, I think, so the timing's a little different too.
Speaker 2:
I mean that's a good time to be in San Diego.
Speaker 3:
Yeah.
Speaker 1:
They've sold me. Maybe I will see you in San Diego later this year.
Speaker 2:
What were you going to say?
Speaker 3:
Joel, no, I don't remember.
Speaker 2:
It was all about how to create community during the event. It was probably about a cloud.
Speaker 3:
No, or star, or mount Dreamforce, I guess kind of clouds. Okay, I'm done.
Speaker 1:
Clouds dream.
Speaker 3:
Dreamforce also does that too, and I would say, in terms of during it, something that I'm a big fan of, which I love in kind of like B2C spaces and I'm waiting for more B2B to catch up to this especially like doing and creating spaces, or doing like things that are super, like shareable, like do you have like a step and repeat where it's a really cool thing, like there is this happy hour from inbound. Like a few years ago I swear they had like a bunch of partners. They bought out this entire brewery.
Speaker 1:
Oh, I know what you're talking about. I thought I was there.
Speaker 3:
Yes, and my entire LinkedIn feed, like that night and the next day, was just pictures on pictures, on pictures on pictures, sitting in front of the same step and repeat, and one day, like one of them, I got so okay, I'm like, who was on this?
Speaker 3:
Like sponsor? I actually zoomed in and read every single logo because I was just so curious of seeing it that many times Like, do something like that, or like have a really cool like selfie station or like one of those things where you like put your heads in like the things and like yeah, I don't know, I was just saying like, like, do things that are also like shareable, because then, like it extends the life outside of just even your community, but more like broadly, like it's great content for your company to engage with. It's great content that, assuming you get permission, you can use this like social proof for like next year on the landing page for the event. You can do it for a billion or one number of things, but that would be like. My big plug is like do things to also extend it and take it out of just like the physical especially, or digital too, and into like other channels.
Speaker 1:
I think that's actually a really good example, joel, because that specific event it was, I'm just gonna say, like six to eight B2B tech companies that clearly had overlap in the persona.
Speaker 1:
So it's a good reminder that even if you know you might be a one person marketing team, you might be a startup, you might be just exploring the power of events and community, you don't have to do it alone. You can partner with other folks, whether that's formal partners through integrations or just kind of your friendlies, that it's like, oh, we don't really compete but we overlap, you know, some in who we're going after, host events together, you know, bring your community together in a friendly way, and it's kind of a great way for you to, you know, dip your toes into those community and event waters without having to take on the full investment yourself. I will say that to me that was like an A plus example of companies kind of coming together and I had a blast. I feel like I met a lot of people and I would definitely like it left a very positive experience, you know, for all of those companies, for me.
Speaker 3:
Yeah On that.
Speaker 3:
My like one asterisk with that would then just be figure out like who or how the post like post event experience is going to be owned by Like is it if you each have your own RCP page? You each like handle it appropriately for your own like RCPs or like some other way? Just because, like the one thing I wouldn't want to have happen if I were working on an event like that is like another company that I as an attendee didn't sign up with or like because of, but they got my information or they like acted in like a really like negative way, and so then it impacts all of the brands, like reputations, who were involved with the event. So, like that would be my like. One really big asterisk next to that is figure out that upfront, not after, because either then you're going to be delaying the like follow up, which then isn't really timely or potentially relevant to and we both know how I feel about that, especially by now or it's going to be like chaotic. Neither which of those options are good, by the way.
Speaker 1:
Oh yeah, definitely some logistics to figure out, for sure, and creating that great experience for folks not only at the event but also post event as well.
Speaker 2:
Before we get into post event, I want to just touch on some elements that you could bring into virtual events. So it could be like content marketing. World, for example, had an app where you could build a community in there. You can direct message people. We created like a solo, solo travelers group on there where anybody who went to the event alone can meet up. What are some other ways that you encouraging conversation during that digital event and making manufacturing the conversations and little pools within your chat? Do you guys have anything that I haven't thought of for building community on a virtual platform?
Speaker 3:
At least this is kind of a different take on that. I was going to an in person event in the fall of last year and not through their app or anything like the company that was hosting it specifically owned, but in a different community that was for the same persona. We actually had a dedicated private space for folks in that community to chat about it. I guess the reminder is like to me it's not, it wasn't top of mind or something that I wanted to do in their formal space. I also don't really know too many people in their space or like community, but I definitely did in this other community. So I went to like where automatically I felt comfortable and confident to have that kind of conversation, to build it. So I chose to build it like where I want to build it. So I guess the end all be all of this is you can do all you want. Equally, people are gonna go where they want to go, not always to where you like want them to go, and you just sometimes have to be okay with that.
Speaker 2:
That also just made me think of like kind of community jacking, where you could be your own brand and going to an event but you can create a community around it in order to gain some of that audience for yourself, like if they're missing the mark and they didn't create a community around it, you can do that.
Speaker 3:
I mean they have at least that specific one. They have a community space, it's just not one that I've gained exceptional value from, I would say, and, as we all know by now, I need that in my life, for me to come back to his face. So with that, I just kind of did this in sync set and went bye, bye, bye and went to a place where I was happier. So yeah, Make sense. Is that okay?
Speaker 1:
I think for digital. I know I also one of my prior role was at a digital event platform, so I would be remiss if we didn't list some of the again like very low effort, high impact ways you can promote your community, engage your community. A lot of these might be kind of obvious, but I've seen events where they kind of position it as sponsored by the community, which it's not like there's probably dollars being exchanged internally, but it might be this event by our community just to kind of position it as a thought leadership event and you're putting the community front center. That could be one way to attract folks to come and again kind of elevate the community. There's so many features within these platforms now where you can add in different CTAs or change backgrounds or add in, you know, pre-event slides or sizzle reel, so there's just a lot of like small branding and marketing opportunities, I think, to really highlight and remind folks about your community.
Speaker 1:
And then I think one of like the sneaky ways that and this is something that I think a lot of people just turn off because they don't want people to get distracted. But I personally love events digital events specifically that have the ability to connect and chat with other attendees one-on-one. I've definitely been on like webinars or digital events where I see like oh, joel's there, like let me like sneak in and say hi, or you know, you see people there. You kind of the B2B marketing community kind of run in the same circles. So there's that ability to like connect and be like oh, what do you think about what they just said? Or kind of having conversations around the event. I personally love that and I don't think it's distracting. And I love, again, that ability to engage with folks during the event.
Speaker 3:
I definitely agree with Misha on that point. I'm not sure if we've ever done it, but I've definitely done it with other folks too, at events, and like whether it's being like, oh my gosh, that was so good. But or being like a little snarky, because you need like all, you need the full commentary, you need all the commentary on it. But I think that it just makes it like more memorable for you and like there's someone else who you're engaging with, so you also are staying like more engaged in the content itself too.
Speaker 1:
I think another like hack for your digital events too, just to again like the on the theme of during the event, trying to connect people, trying to continue conversations, like obviously prompt people to use your chat that's like digital event management, one-on-one, but definitely like encourage people like hey, do you want to connect? Keep the conversation going, drop your LinkedIn.
Speaker 3:
People love it.
Speaker 1:
It's like such an easy thing to ask people to do and then, once somebody does, you'll get a flood of a hundred people and then they're going and connecting with each other and hopefully commenting on each other's content and building those relationships, which is awesome.
Speaker 2:
That is all folks we're going to pause right here, and because this whole conversation with LinkedIn transitions really well into how to continue those relationships in that community after the event. I hope you enjoyed this episode and just to connect on some of those pieces we've talked about today, you want to create little sub-communities within your event to encourage engagement and relationship building during the event, and this can happen in person super easily, but also digitally in the chat section, in hijacking other communities and building sub-groups within those and connecting with them on LinkedIn to continue the conversation. So those are just a couple ways where you can build community during an event. If you enjoyed this episode, make sure to hit that share button and share with a friend and like subscribe. Wherever you're listening to this, go follow Misha and Joel and next time we'll be sharing the third part of the third and final part of this series where we will talk about how to create community and a nurture experience after the event is over.
Speaker 2:
All right, I love you. Go follow me on LinkedIn. Let's be friends and hang out. Did I not sound like Buddy the elf, like I'm like? I love you, I love you, I love you. Smiling's my favourite.