Discover how to host community events with a purpose, maximize your reach through engagement and, in turn, contribute to your business goals.

1. Discover how to host community events with a purpose,
maximize your reach through engagement and, in turn,
contribute to your business goals.
Community
Management Tips
3 Tips For Hosting Community
Events With Strong ROI

2. Community Management Tips
3 Tips For Hosting Community Events With Strong ROI
HootSuite Media Inc. Community Events | 2
Building a community of like minded, passionate individuals means activating
people both online and off. Hosting community events is an effective way to get
personal with your customers and fans, as well as connect with prospects while
encouraging real time feedback loops.
Deciding to commit the necessary time and resources to planning an in-person
event requires the confidence that you will be able to prove ROI. You will need to
leverage support company wide, develop an effective communications plan and
curate the perfect attendee list. Not to mention nurture and retain relationships
months and even years after the event.
Read on to discover how to host community events with a purpose, maximize
your reach through engagement and, in turn, contribute to your business goals.
1. Events with a Purpose
2. Maximizing Reach
3. Measuring Impact

3. HootSuite Media Inc. Community Events | 3
Before you can decide what type of event to hold, you need to align your
decision making with both your internal business goals and the external
needs of your target audience. Event planning can not only be time
consuming, but also demanding of your resources. In order to ensure you
are getting the most value out of your events, try following these steps:
Set Business Goals:
Hosting events can contribute to a variety of business goals, including
lead generation, customer acquisition and brand awareness. The first step
in organizing a successful event is deciding which business goals you aim
to support. By weaving in a clear strategy from the beginning, it will be
easier to structure the event around optimizing impact. Moreover, when
doing an event retrospective, you will be able to effectively measure both
KPIs and ROI.
Audience Care-abouts:
Once you have decided which business goals your event will be built
around, it will become clearer who your target audience is. At this point,
it’s important to research what your core audience careabouts are and
where their values and interests lie. This will help you develop the type
of event that will get the most response from potential attendees. For
example, if you are hosting an event that is tied to lead generation goals,
you may consider targeting your audience around a specific vertical.
Advertising the Event:
Socializing your event before the big day arrives is key to guaranteeing a
packed house. Be sure to establish an event hashtag early on and include
it in all your promotions. Build out and leverage your attendee list ahead
of time and use your brand advocates to target and amplify via their
networks. Having a strong communications plan from the get go is vital,
including key messaging, channel distribution plans and prepared social
content for both internal employees and external community members to
use.
1. Events with a Purpose
“Discover what the industry
best practices are and
what’s appropriate for
your audience. This is a
vital step for planning any
event. Aim to curate the
activities towards your
target audience. Do so by
attending industry events
yourself and listening to
conversations on social
media.”
- Elaiza Datar
Community Events
Coordinator,
@elaizadatar

4. HootSuite Media Inc. Community Events | 4
With the right preparation, bringing your community together at an event
will be smooth and painless. With time saved not having to troubleshoot
during the event, you will be able to take advantage of networking
opportunities. To make the most out of your event, you need to have a
thorough communications plan that covers real time engagement both
online and off; here are a few strategies how:
Online Experience:
The size of your event doesn’t have to be limited to the capacity of
the venue you are using. Creating an online experience for those who
attend virtually is a great way to expand the impact of your offline event.
Consider a live stream of your keynote speakers or panelists and dedicate
an individual on your team for live tweeting and engaging. Holding a live
chat session after a keynote allows virtual audiences to pose questions
and comments. Remember, even though the room is full of people, the
best conversations may be happening online.
Offline Experience:
Building a community online is an important skill, but nothing compares to
the power of in person networking. Make sure you have enough freedom
to socialize with attendees during the event, be familiar with who you are
talking to and be sure to thank attendees for making it out. Offline events
are a great stage for sourcing brand ambassadors or strategic partners for
your organization. Make the venue fun and photo worthy, so that guests
will be encouraged to share their experience online.
Gain Company Wide Support:
Getting stakeholders across your company to buy in to the event is crucial
to its success. This allows you to attract a wider audience by leveraging
your coworkers’ professional connections and, in turn, tying the event
closely to other departments’ business goals. Not to mention, the extra
support advertising on social media will help your event dominate the
online space both before, during and after the event. Your attendees will
also benefit from the increased networking opportunities.
“A great way to track how
much people are talking
about your event, as well
as promote ahead of time,
is by creating a unique
event hashtag. This way
you can not only monitor
and engage with online
conversations in real time,
but also use the data later
when compiling your
metrics. Perhaps even
take your event a step
further by incorporating a
TweetUp on site to better
include virtual audience. ”
- Connor Meakin
Community Manager,
North America
@connormeaks
2. Maximizing Reach
Through Engagement

5. HootSuite Media Inc. Community Events | 5
After hosting a successful event, you have the opportunity to share the
event’s ROI with the rest of your organization. To ensure you get the most
out of your time and resources expended, ensure that the relationships
you started don’t go stale over time, here’s how:
Establish a CTA:
It’s important in the initial planning phases of any event to consider
how you want to continue your relationship with attendees afterwards.
Your post event call-to-action should be a key component of the overall
communications plan you have in place-- this includes those who attend
both online and offline. Don’t forget to gather contact information for any
influencers or advocates. Depending on the business goal your event
targets, you can strategically engage with your attendees afterwards.
Continue the Conversation:
Another vital part of your event communications plan is conversation.
Continuing the conversation is key to supporting your post event call-to-
action and also nurturing valuable relationships. Individuals who take the
time to attend or track your event could be potential brand ambassadors,
business partners or even new customers. By using a hashtag for the
event, you allow your audience to identify follow up activities and other
ways to continue connecting with your organization. In turn, attending a
single event will be a small part of a larger customer journey.
Measure Key KPIs:
There are many metrics that can be tied to events, it’s choosing which
ones to focus on that is the difficult part. As a start, gather information
on who actually attended, as it will most likely be different than your
RSVP list. As a general measurement of the success at your event, track
hashtag mentions, social reach and engagement through comments,
tweets and conversations with your brand. Another valuable measurement
is sentiment analysis, you can do this using HootSuite Analytics. Finally,
when possible, compare competitor results for overall share of voice to
better set benchmarks for future activities.
3. Measuring Impact
“Incorporating
measurement can be
quick and easy as there
are a lot of great free
measurement tools
available online like UberVU
for HootSuite. Remember,
it is important to measure
both quantitatively and
qualitatively, so even
out the number data
with engagement levels,
sentiment analysis and
potentially valuable
relationships that came out
of the event.”
- Lotta Ygartua
Community Manager,
APAC
@kinalotta

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