Creating an event content strategy

If you want people to attend your events, you have to give them something worth giving up their valuable time for. So, ensuring the right content is crucial when it comes to shaping your agenda and finding the right messages to attract and influence your audience. But creating an event content strategy takes time. You have to think about themes, identify what type of content you need, generate this collateral, and promote it to your audience. Luckily, help is at hand, and, at Apex, we’ve been helping clients to develop effective event content strategies for over 30 years. Here are some of our top tips to help you crack the content code at your next event; making sure you deliver those all-important communications in a way that informs, impresses, entertains, and motivates. 1. Understand your audience We know we say this all the time, but insight into who you want to attend is vital to pulling off a successful event. How can you reach out to potential attendees in new and absorbing ways if you don’t know who they are and what will appeal to them? To help you to do this, consider creating ‘buyer personas’. A tried and tested marketing approach, personas are fictional representations of your various ideal attendees. These can help you to get under the skin of your visitors by giving you a deeper insight into their challenges, wants and needs. Once you understand who you are talking to, you can then craft an event that appeals directly to them. 2. Understand what you want to achieve In addition to your audience, before you start creating any content you need to know what impact you want your event to have. What are your goals? What do you want attendees to take away from your event? How can you address their needs? Whether you’re organising a conference, award show or roadshow, it pays to start with a strategy. Without establishing the purpose of your event, and setting defined outcomes upfront, there’s a real danger that attendance will be low and that any benefits will be short-term and easily lost. 3. Identify hot topics The best way to attract attendees to your event is to identify subjects that are of real interest to them. One way to do this is to find existing content that they are already engaging with. You can do this by looking at industry media, listening to your sales team and other experts, and searching social media to find out what people are talking about. To find out what questions your potential attendees are already asking, you could also reach out to your guest list to find out what topics resonate the most with them. If people are not talking about a subject, they probably won’t be interested in finding out more about it. 4. Identify what channels to use An event doesn't last long, so it makes sense to share your content on those platforms that will drive the most engagement. For example, if you have a keynote speaker, make sure to make a copy of their notes available digitally to all attendees. You can also use Twitter to live-tweet speeches and awards. Don’t be afraid to experiment to find out what works and what doesn’t. Video can be a great tool when it comes to event content; helping you to increase the size of your audience by streaming live sessions. If revenue is an objective, you can also package recorded content and sell access to this throughout the year, and/or offer sponsorship opportunities for ad space in video content. Alternatively, footage from a previous event can be used as a marketing tool for future sessions, and you can use video clips to breathe life into your ongoing content such as e-newsletters and blog posts.

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