7 Tips for Leveraging Your Speakers as Event Advocates
Are you including your event speakers in your marketing plan?
Many keynote speakers and breakout session facilitators have extensive, active networks both on and offline.
By enlisting the aid of speakers to reach out to their existing connections, event planners can tap into an unmined pool of potential attendees.
But you can’t expect your event speakers to do all the work themselves. To get the most out of our event speakers, you need an event marketing strategy that equips them with the right information, tools, and resources to draw their network to your event.
Here are 8 tips to engage event speakers and facilitators in pre-event marketing.
1. Make it easy to share content
As you release information about the event on social media, through email, and via other channels, make it easy for your event speakers to share it as well.
Instead of simply sending them a link to your latest promotion, give them assets they can share in one or two clicks. Consider sending them weekly or monthly promo packages, including:
- Promo graphics sized for social media posts
- Pre-written Tweets and image captions
- Customized assets featuring their name, topic, and event details
- Clear instructions for deals and updates you’d like them to share
By giving them all of these important items in a way that’s easy to share and understand, you’ll greatly increase their participation rate.
2. Conduct pre-conference interviews
Creating “sneak peek” content is a great way to grab the attention of your potential audience before the event begins.
Have someone from your organization interview each event speaker, asking them questions like:
- What are some topics you’ll touch on at the event?
- What are you most looking forward to during the event?
- What questions will you answer for people who attend your event?
- What’s something attendees can look forward to from your upcoming talk?
You can record these interviews over Zoom, or host them on a streaming platform like YouTube Live or Streamyard. Your event host will have a chance to promote themselves and your event, and you’ll have heaps of content to use for further promotion prior to the event.
Recommended Resource: 📹 Planning to live stream, record, and share your event content? Download the free Release Form Template for Event Recordings to ensure there are no limitations on your right to publish your event content!
3. Host a social media takeover
If you are already using social media to promote your event, consider hosting a social media takeover, where event speakers post on your social media channels.
Hosting a takeover is quite simple. Ask each event speaker to submit content for a set number of posts: Perhaps three or four tweets, an image or two of their books or day-to-day life, something they want to promote, etc.
Once you have all of their content, schedule it onto your social media channels, along with a few posts prior to let your audience know when the takeover will be happening. Ask each event speaker to do the same, and you’ll see a lot more activity on your event social feeds.
4. Collaborate on a guest blog post
If you have a blog for your event or business, then you have an opportunity to feature your event speakers prior to your event to drum up excitement.
Once again, it’s all about making the process easy for the guest speakers. You can ask if they have a blog they’ve already written that you can repurpose, or you can offer to send them questions via email or conduct a live interview that you can turn into a blog.
When it’s done, send them a few promotional images and suggested social post text, or ask them to share the blog in their newsletter. Be sure to provide a valuable backlink to your event speaker’s website within the blog, to give them credit for their work and provide them with some enhanced online visibility.
5. Give attendees pre-event Q&A opportunities
Want to get your attendees engaged well before the event starts? Then give them the chance to pose their questions to your event speakers before the launch date.
You can collect questions by surveying your social media audience or creating a survey with your Event CMS to send out to all registrants before the event begins. You may want to save some of the best questions for the event itself, but select a handful for your event speaker to answer via social media or in a pre-event video interview or live stream.
6. Promotional video clips and pre-roll
With a creative approach, video has the power to go viral. Make it clever and upbeat. Use clips from your speakers. Share the video both on and offline. Vimeo, YouTube, and Instagram are just a few possibilities. YouTube offers targeted pre-roll: short clips that run before viewers access the content they have requested.
Once you have videos, definitely Tweet them. Don’t forget to post them on LinkedIn where videos are underutilized but highly visible.
7. Keep promotion going after the event has ended
When your event is over, your job as an event planner isn’t over. If you use event management software like EventMobi, you now have a library of content to share with your audience or use in future marketing campaigns.
You can include your event speakers in post-event marketing as well. Share any footage you’ve created with them to pass on to their network, again providing them with the assets, text, and captions you’d like them to include for ease of uploading.
Give them plenty of warning when you plan to feature them in your post-event marketing campaigns and be sure to keep them informed about future opportunities to speak again.
In Summary
Speakers can be your best event advocates if you let them know what is expected and find effective strategies to manage the relationship. Event speakers can help build excitement for your event and ensure that event marketing efforts go more smoothly.
Recommended Read: 📖 Discover 7 Smart Ways to Add Video Into Your Event
Recommended Resource: 📺 Watch 8 short videos to learn how to you can easily design and deliver in-person events that engage attendees and offer sponsors more value.