How To Not Suck At Creating A Conference.
Don’t make participants curse every dollar they spent.
I have to confess something because I’m sure I’m not the only person like this out there:
Conferences are not my thing.
Rather, I’m extra cautious about them. I don’t automatically sign up for every conference I hear about. I don’t automatically buy into what they’re offering me. Never at first.
Part of this has to do with the fact that I was very poor in college. Not OMG-I-have-to-budget-for-the-first-time poor. I took out my first credit card so I could afford a suit for a job fair and feed myself. I cleaned apartments over the summer to make ends meet and pay my rent. I gave up vacations so I could babysit and earn enough money to go to my first conference.
That time shaped me, and it made me extremely cynical about conferences in general.
As marketers, we are implicitly expected to love conferences.
Many conferences are designed to cater to the main stereotypes of what marketers are like: Gregarious, extroverted representatives of major companies who are there to network and schmooze.
I’ll call this stereotype Kelly because I picture her as looking like this back in the day:
Kelly’s a great person. She’s exactly who you want to be spending money to attend your conference. She’s also probably a delight to work with.
But…
- Kelly’s not at the beginning of her career, where the networking would go farthest.
- Kelly is representing a company, which means she’s probably not willing to be vulnerable about what she doesn’t know.
- Kelly is used to the conference circuit, which means she may skip lectures entirely to hang out with people at the bar.
- All this hanging out likely takes up all her potential social-media-posting time. Does she have an assistant doing this for her?
- It’s possible that Kelly didn’t pay for this trip herself. Someone in her company endorsed her for it, bless her heart. But that means she’s not as personally invested as, say, someone who worked and saved up to get there.
- This also implies that Kelly’s at a high enough position at her company that she wants to start looking at speaking. Wait—is this her plan all along?
- Is Kelly interested in seeing the city the conference is in? Who knows? No one’s asked her.
So yes, Kelly’s great. But Kelly’s not the only person for whom conferences can be designed.
Here’s how to do it better:
Build up conversation around your conference.
One of my secret social media loves is conference hashtags. I love ‘em.
If a conference is smart enough to reserve a hashtag early, that means they’re ready and willing for the conversation to start early. WHICH YOU NEED TO HAVE A GOOD CONFERENCE.
In my time running events, I feel like I discovered a new use for event hashtags every time I ran an event. People use them to talk to each other, sure. But also for…
- Checking times for events among the attending crowd.
- Rallying for drinks.
- Live tweeting lectures/keynotes.
- Asking pals what they’re going to.
- Shouting out people from their city.
- Hyping up the conference to their followers.
And the big one:
- Interacting with the goons running the conference.
I say “goons” with love, as they are the invisible minions doing the majority of the grunt work. And I have been one of them soooo many times.
If a conference doesn’t want to answer questions about itself, or can’t handle the idea of public side conversations about itself, it shouldn’t exist.
Hashtags aren’t the only way to make this interaction happen. Specialized Facebook group attendees can make participants feel free to converse. Ditto on an exclusive email list.
Encouraging people to talk to each other and adding an “in-crowd” flavor to it all doesn’t just add intrigue. It creates evangelists.
Legitimize your prices as much as possible.
Let me address the elephant in the room: Conferences tend to run hella expensive.
Not always prohibitively expensive, but enough to make you do a double take. And wonder why the hell you don’t have a career running conferences.
It makes sense once you break down the numbers: Booking a place and feeding people (plus plying them with drinks when appropriate) costs dough. Same for the labor used to move those dumb folding chairs around.
And if this conference is a good conference, i.e. trying to do the best good they can in this imperfect world, they’re making it worth the time of the speakers to attend. This doesn’t always mean pay! It could be covering their flights, hooking them up with a hotel room, covering babysitting for their kidlets, etc. Personally, I don’t mind paying a little more if it means killing the culture of not paying speakers.
A good conference acknowledges that it’s often expensive to attend conferences. And they will, in essence, explain the price.
This doesn’t always take the form of publicly breaking down food and drink prices (although Pat Flynn would do that, I’m sure). It often takes the form of a detailed outline of all the perks attendees will enjoy over people just watching the broadcast or livetweet.
Some conferences offer scholarships or work-trade agreements for attendees. This isn’t the same thing as explaining the price (however lovely that action is).
Explaining the price means not expecting attendees to attend just based on hyperbole. It’s taking the attendees seriously, answering their “explain yourself!” with true and nuanced answers.
Lean into the conference as an immersive experience.
You know who’s the best evangelist for a conference? The first-time conference attendee who had an awesome time.
Let’s call this first-time attendee Christy.
Christy’s probably never been to a conference before this one. She’s a little bit scared, and a little nervous to travel for a “work event.” This may even be her first time in this city.
How do you make Christy an evangelist?
Give her an “on rails” conference experience.
Unlike Kelly, Christy can use all the guidance she can get. Are there cocktail parties she can attend? Suggested activities during the night? Include them!
But if you have particularly charitable speakers, ask if they’d be willing to hold office hours during the conference. Ask the nearby restaurants if they’d be willing to have their hours published in the conference info.
Not everyone will use every resource a conference offers. But if a conference is designed to take care of the participants who need guidance, they’ll have some really loyal attendees.
My official conference endorsement: #TCCNYC.
Yes, I was planning to tell you about this conference from the beginning!
And yes, I work with TCC. But I work with them specifically because they are not f*cking this up.
#TCCNYC is designed to mess with and ultimately legitimize the idea of the copywriter conference. They’re cramming it with speakers like Amy Posner, Joanna Wiebe, Sam Woods, Tepsii, and Brian Kurtz.
It’s cool if you’re a corporate copywriter. It’s cool if you freelance. All copy freaks are welcome.
But here’s what convinced me to advocate for this conference: It’s tiny.
Seriously. The venue is big enough for 75 people.
You’re going to be elbow-to-elbow with all of these sweet speakers. The whole conference is practically engineered to make sure you’re besties with them when it’s all said and done.
The swag is valued at $300. That’s almost half the price of the ticket as of Wednesday the 24th.
There’s also a buttload of activities if you’re looking for an on-rails conference experience. Cocktail parties, a NEW YORK CITY SCAVENGER HUNT….
Can you tell I’m hyped?
The price to attend this conference is $750. That price goes UP on Friday the 26th. I hope to see you there!
Seriously, tweet at me if you’re coming. Let’s hang.
