How do you incorporate your community into in person events?

annaleesasahara
annaleesasahara Vanilla Sprout
in Talk Community #1

Hi Vanilla Community members! My company is hosting our annual user conference in February and I'd love to hear how you've incorporated your community into in person events.

We have not quite figured this out in past year's events. It's difficult because we encourage attendees to engage with each other on the event app, but this does not integrate with Vanilla.

How have you pushed users to your community at in person events in the past? Looking for any and all ideas/advice!

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  • Kirstie Macfarlane
    Kirstie Macfarlane HLV Staff
    edited October 22 #2

    What a great question!

    One obvious thing we do is to record all of the presentations from our live events and post them in the community so those who missed it can still watch. For examples here are recordings from our last Super Forum.

    We've also used our community to poll members before hand on what they would like to see, and gather feedback afterwards to make adjustments for our future events.

    @annaleesasahara didn't your team do something cool at your first couple of live events when you launched your community? What did you find worked or didn't?

  • annaleesasahara
    annaleesasahara Vanilla Sprout
    #3

    @Kirstie Macfarlane we had QR codes that linked to the login page of the community and encouraged people to login. This worked great for the launch, but didn't translate into users actually posting on the community during/after the event.

  • Kirstie Macfarlane
    Kirstie Macfarlane HLV Staff
    #4

    Ok gotcha thanks, I thought you had also done some sort of "Community Room" as well but maybe I'm confusing another customer.

    @gxjansen we just talked about some of your in-person vs virtual hackathons, can you share some of your experiences and what worked well?

  • Heather Wendt
    Heather Wendt HLV Staff
    #5

    Hi @annaleesasahara- love this topic!!

    So some of the things I have done that have worked in the past are:

    • Do speaker spotlights in the community leading up to the event
    • Invite speakers to create a conversation in the Event Category (I always segment it out so I can design an experience around the event rather than having it buried in the regular community work) - this can include polling the audience, sharing their topic, give some pre-event homework so their session is even better
    • Spotlighting any top community users/steering committee members/beta testers from the podium
    • Creating a 'scavenger hunt' on the community that is supported at the event to drive awareness and build engagement (can have a prize drawing for participants who complete the work)
    • Hosting videos, etc. after the event
    • Create an attendee badge for those who joined the event
    • Host AMAs for select speakers to continue the conversation after the event
    • Have a cocktail hour space for your community super users/stseering committee/volunteers/etc.

    The biggest piece is using the community before the event to drive awareness and excitement, using the time at the event to really spotlight your community and encourage your customers to visit, and then using the community after the event to keep conversations going, share content, and allow the learning to continue.

    Hope this helps! I love entwining the community with events as it can really help both succeed 😊

  • Alex Dunne
    Alex Dunne Vanilla Ice Cream
    #6

    I love these ideas @Heather Wendt ! I always want to do a "Community In Real Life" room at our user conference where we can have coffee/tea and snacks and encourage mingling but alas it is yet to come to fruition. Bookmarking this page so I can refer to it next year.

  • Heather Wendt
    Heather Wendt HLV Staff
    #7

    Thanks much @Alex Dunne :) Glad it was helpful!!

  • annaleesasahara
    annaleesasahara Vanilla Sprout
    #8

    @Alex Dunne, we've done a Community Lounge at our last two user conferences where we've had couches and chat sets out for people to connect with limited time activations. This year's event was in New Orleans so we had a "Make Your Own Mardi Gras Beads" station in our Community Lounge on one of the days. This was a huge hit both years for building in person connections with Community members, but didn't quite translate to digital community activity.

    Hoping to think of a few ways we can incorporate the digital experience into the onsite event.

    @Heather Wendt, thanks for these ideas! These are super helpful!!

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