written by Achintya Gupta
Why do you need to build an event based community and what are the important things you need to keep in mind
Background
Offline events have always been a great fit for online community creation, for one – events are themselves a social engagement and connecting visitors online before or after the event happens makes sense. Secondly, some of the events are built around passions (like Academy Awards, Super Bowl etc) and it is valuable to connect people around these passions not just to promote the event but to promote the passion itself.
Sometime back I got the chance to look into SXSW’s (the mega music, film and interactive fest that happened in the month of march) event networking community, which is a closed network of people who are attending the event. I found the community an interesting way to connect people and facilitate networking before they actually attend the event making it a more valuable connect model for those who see a great potential in the event to meet interesting people. Some of the other interesting features included your personal network integration (like on Facebook / Twitter) with the platform so that you can see who other people in you network are attending SXSW. You can see a few snapshots below: (thse actually belong to @ksarda who kindly gave me access to this closed network)
Why an online community is a great idea?
Like SXSW, I am seeing an increasing preference for brands, PR companies and event management companies towards such event based social networks and communities. Brands are reaching out to white label social networks products or getting custom communities built specific for their event. The reasons in my mind for such rising inclination are:
- Event promotion: Since they show the buzz being generate around event, interest of other people in the event
- Increase event longevity: Event based communities start generating buzz around the event, conversations around the topic, even before the event and provide a platform for continued discussions after the event has ended.
- Valuable information: Brand get to know who are the evangelists around the topics they want to attach themselves. They come to know about supporters to the concept of the event, something no other medium can tell them
- Increase in event interaction: Such communities not only help in increasing numbers to the event but also help improve the overall event quality. It connects people around a particular interest (the one around which the event is based) and engages them in conversations and this makes the meetings at the actual event more fruitful. Overall this turns out to be a very impactful model.
What are the interesting communities in this space?
In my research I have come across 3 types of event based online communities. They are:
- Communities for small and large events built over white label platforms (e.g. Esomar Congress 2009 event community)
- Custom built communities around events (e.g. sxsw 2011)
- Communities of passion built around events (e.g. grammy )
To begin with, there are many players in the white label platform market whose services you can use for building a community around your event. Crowdvine (that powered UX 2010 Week and Esomar Congress 2009) and Pathable (that powered World Education Congress 2010) are few of the companies that specialize in building event based online communities. Some other companies have platforms which can be customized, grown and moulded according to your needs like Qontext, which powered SugarCon Community (btw I loved this platform for their clean UI) and Ning that powered the unofficial sxsw insider guide. These platforms contain all the required features to build an event based network like people profile, discussions, news, networking tools, rich media, blogs etc.
Whether you would want a community on an already existing white label platform or you would like to build your own from scratch, like sxsw 2011, depends on what you want the community for. If the purpose of the community is to facilitate networking, build a conversation platform around the theme of the event which can be sustained even after the event gets over, you should be fine with such white label platforms. But if you want a deep integration of user interface with your existing website (i.e. if you want the look and feel of you community exactly like your existing website) you might prefer a custom built community. The problem with a lot of white label platforms is that all communities end up looking the same. Similarly many white label platforms only allow integration with a certain set of plugins and hence if you want something very specific (like running a contest around your event or integration with the event registration site) you would need services to customize these platforms or build one from scratch.
However there is a certain set of event based networks that instead of promoting the event, focus on promoting the passion around the event. Here the focus shifts from networking to connecting around passion. If you see the Grammy website or the NFL website the highlight is vis -a- vis music and football rather than the event. But research shows that such a promotion of passion has been highly impactful in increasing the viewership of the event.
What works in event based communities -what are the important questions you need to ask before planning a event based community
- What is the key objective: Is it event promotion though networking, thought leadership, video campaign, contest, referral campaign or connecting people around their interest
- How long do you want it: Is the community planned to cease after the event or you want to sustain it for loner. In fact you might even want to build a community that can add upon it’s network event after event and operates round the year. In such case the community has to be built around something bigger than the event itself (like a lifestyle, passion or cause and events appear as campaign to energize the community)
- Which tools do you need: Are the tools and platforms of your choice facilitating your objectives.
Hope this discussion was fruitful in helping you out in your online community decision for your event. Comments, feedback and added research are most welcome.
[ This research will be a part of the social technology quarterly by Kuliza which we plan to publish by end of this quarter. Also I would like to take this opportunity to add here that Kuliza helps companies build user communities and Facebook apps through it's ZaSocial offerings. ]
Image credits : Gamespy and road dog production
+1
@Brant – Thanks