The event experts blog
by Marvin McTaw
What’s In This Article?
One of the more interesting things event planners have been doing over the years is to extend the life-cycle of their events and build year-round communities. While we applaud the effort, I think it’s a bit ridiculous to expect your attendees to stay fully engagedwith your event, year round. Let me be clear: I am not advocating no interaction with attendees, I am however suggesting you change your paradigm to this: maximize full engagement while you have attendees attention and use additional interactions as a way to buttress and magnify the impact while you have their attention.
South by Southwest (“SXSW”) is one of the largest and best known annual events in the world. SXSW takes place every year for about 10 days around the second week in March (March 9-18 in 2012) and is recognized as one of the best run conferences and festivals focused on technology, film and music. It has an estimated $167 million impact on the local Austin, TX economy and is has profits (i.e. revenues - expenses) of $100+ million.
Event organizers envy the year round engagement strategy SXSW has with it’s audience including using things like Panel Picker where everyone regardless of whether they are an attendee, sponsor, exhibitor…or alien has a voice. This strategy has worked for SXSW, but is it worth it? And furthermore, can you replicate it for your event?
Google is the undisputed market leader in internet search with 66.6% market share in the US. Google provides a way to track historical search volume for terms with Google Trends. Below is a Google Trends chart for the past eight years for SXSW. While there are definitely limitations, search volume is a good way to way to determine what people are looking for and when they are looking for it.
I’ve narrowed the Google Trends chart down to only show activity in 2011:
I’ve noticed a fairly consistent pattern in these charts that reminds me of my oldest sister’s days playing volleyball in high school and college:
I’ve tried this search for a number of widely known conferences, festivals and conventionsand they all seem to have the same “Bump, Set, Spike” pattern.
Click Here To See If Your Event Has The Same “Bump, Set, Spike” Pattern
I will note that with music festivals, there seems to be significant traffic volume increases associated with lineup releases. These releases can match or even exceed the volume during the “Set” period which occurs during the event. This is likely due to the large fan base of some artists finding, sharing and promoting their favorite artists’ gigs. Music festivals should leverage their artists’ brands to help promote their event.
Some will argue that looking at search activity is a bit misleading because it only tracks behaviors on search engines and doesn’t track the totality of engagement with attendees. I agree with this statement and so have extended my analysis to include website engagement estimates from Alexa and our own network of conference and festival sites using the Sched.org free content management system.
Note: Panel Picker Spike
There is a smaller “boomlet” in pageviews that happens in the August-September period. Those increases can be attributed to the SXSW Panel Picker where potential speakers and panelists promote their proposed sessions in order to be picked to be a part of the SXSW Interactive Conference the following year.
Our free content management system (“CMS”) helps conference and festival organizers control and publish information to their event’s website. It is an integrated system focused on the individual elements that make up your event: sessions, speakers, sponsors, exhibitors and attendees. Event organizers use our CMS in order to
While it is not a perfect indicator of total engagement, it is a relatively good proxy for the attention of the audience interested in the event i.e. attendees and potential attendees.
I reviewed several conference and festival sites and once again, they all seem to follow the same “Bump, Set, Spike” pattern we’ve repeatedly seen. This pattern also applies to other metrics including unique pageviews and in many cases, average time on site.
While I don’t have complete attendee engagement information, the signals provided by the Bump, Set, Spike pattern are pretty clear and lead me to one main conclusion: attendees do not pay attention to or engage with your event until they have to. The “have to” part could be a registration deadline, some internal deadline for purchase approval or the biggest trigger, the actual start of your event.
Most likely, your event is not SXSW and can not be SXSW as you do not have the size or resources of SXSW. Do not be fooled: SXSW is a major corporation with dozens of full time staff members, probably thousands of volunteersand $100+ million in annual profits dedicated to making 10 days in March awesome. SXSW has the time and dedicated resources to execute a year round strategy.
Given the resource constrained environmentplanners generally find themselves in, most events would be better served by shifting their focus from year-round engagement to making the most of the time they have with attendees.
Once again, I am not advocating complete radio silence. I am advocating
Frankly, your attendees don’t want to hear from you anyway…unless you have something useful or interesting to say.
Do you think pursuing a year-round engagement strategy is prudent or do you think you should stick to maximizing the time you have? What smart, easy measures do you take to extend your event’s life cycle? Do you think your event can be like SXSW? Why or Why Not?
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