In our view, community management and community building approaches play an important role for trade fairs and their future direction. A “real” event community not only wants to interact with other players and members from the respective community during the actual event, but also outside of the event period. On site, at the physical event, the organizers usually – but not always – succeed in creating a certain community feeling – but before or after the event, it is still a major challenge for the vast majority of organizers. Mechanisms and formats that we are primarily familiar with from social networks can enable constant, possibly even year-round engagement. We would like to go into this in more detail in the next blog post on the topic of community – this post will focus on the importance of community activities in general and why trade fairs and event organizers should consider them.
Strengthening your own brand identity
As an organizer, you want to permanently strengthen the brand of your own event in order to achieve greater reach, which should ensure higher exhibitor, visitor and participant numbers in particular. A relevant indicator here is the engagement rate, i.e. how often there is interaction with elements of the event and its digital presence (website, social media, event platform, etc.). This engagement rate can be increased through targeted community activities. From our point of view, user-generated content plays a central role here. By this we mean content (texts, images, videos) that is generated and published by trade fair participants. A content category that currently receives little attention! Up to now, the focus has primarily been on content that comes from exhibitors or the organizer itself. However, the ideal content mix for a real community feeling involves the participants. This may require new digital solutions, but also new ways of working, for example when it comes to curating content.
Added value for the target groups
Every organizer pursues the goal of creating added value for the respective target groups. If the target groups sense such added value, they will come to the event – as exhibitors or visitors. By running an active community, your own target groups receive relevant information and insights, and they have the opportunity to interact or contribute something themselves. Beyond the event itself, it is therefore possible to create a positive experience – which can only be achieved with the help of structured community activities. Positive experiences also go hand in hand with a stronger bond with the community or the event itself. Who wouldn’t want to be part of a strong community?
Source of information for future events
Communities also offer great added value for the organizers themselves, as they are simply “closer to the action”. This offers the opportunity to make quicker and more precise adjustments to the event format or to receive feedback on new ideas directly from the community. A community is therefore an important source of information. User-generated content and the interaction of the community with all content (including discussions, comments, likes, shares, length of stay) provide an indication of the actual needs of the community. By taking this into account, new segments can be developed for the next event or the conference program can be designed differently. All of this ensures more visitors and more exhibitors, and ultimately an increase in sales.
New, additional income
Setting up and running a community outside of the actual event period is time-consuming and requires resources. This use of resources only makes sense if relevant income can be generated from community activities. Consequently, each of these activities should be accompanied by its own business model. We are convinced that it is worthwhile for event organizers to pursue and implement community activities. We are happy to support you in developing community business models.
