Image by: Pattys-photos
Following is a guest post from Jordan Schwartz, CEO of Pathable, one of the sponsors of the 2014 Online Community Software Selection Guide.
The online world is littered with “ghost communities”: feature-rich web sites designed to create engagement and conversation among members, but lacking one key ingredient: people using it.
But if your organization holds a conference or events, you have the key to avoiding this fate.
An event can be the critical motivation people to dig in and engage with an online community. Here’s why.
Events have a deadline: Invite someone to join a generic membership community site, and they’ll get to it as soon as they have some free time. And you know how often people have “free time” in their workday. But events have a deadline: your members want to engage before the event starts, so it’s less likely to be put off indefinitely.
Attendees care about their ROI, too: Sure, your budget dollars are being evaluated for their ROI, Return on Investment. But you’re not the only one thinking about an event’s ROI: your attendees are evaluating their ROI, too. And what is the return they look for? They choose events to attend based on whether they can help build their professional network and nurture relationships. If you provide a tool that helps them with a real problem they have, they’ll use it.
Conferences can be scary: Sure, you’re an old pro. You run conferences or at least have been going to them for years. And you know all the key players in your membership, because that’s your job. But what about the younger and new members? Or those who lack your social comfort? Networking receptions, where everybody else seems to know each other can be nerve-wracking. But if you provide an online tool, a community, where people can do their homework and figure out who to look for, what to talk to them about before hand, they’ll lap it up.
And that holds whether you’re looking for a mobile event app or a year-round community for your association, or both. Each can serve the other: the app drives adoption for the community, and the community adds richness and content to the app.
Of course, even event communities need nurturing. If you’re interested in learning techniques and tips from some people with experience growing hundreds of online communities, join Jordan Schwartz of Pathable and Ben Martin on Creating Year-Round Community: Event Marketing Nirvana or Pipe Dream? Register today!
