Throughout the pandemic, community building and 365 engagement became the latest buzzwords within the event industry, with events beginning to take on a new role within a larger community engagement strategy.
Event planners themselves have become the target audience of several of these communities, including IMEX BuzzHub and Swapcard Evolve, which strive to educate and inspire planners during the transition to virtual — and now hybrid — events.
“When it comes to virtual and hybrid, most organizers were/are a little lost,” says Mia Masson, Content Director at Swapcard. “Since we're the ones developing the technology, it's our responsibility to educate event planners, as well as their sponsors and attendees, on how to make the most of the technology in these new event formats.”
These communities also provide networking and connection opportunities for eventprofs, which are available on the platform at any time, even outside of when events are taking place — hence the community engagement aspect.
“Everything started when the pandemic hit,” shares Masson. “We saw a need in the audience to connect with each other and share doubts and experiences, while reuniting in a free-speech space. We realized how useful the digital world was to create and maintain a community.”
Following the first educational event they held on their platform, Swapcard established its year-round community in response to audience demand. They delivered new content on a monthly basis, and otherwise left the platform open for networking and on-demand content consumption. Since then, Masson shares, they’ve grown the community to 13,000 people.
But when it comes to networking, event professionals already have a near-ubiquitous platform: LinkedIn. So how can these types of niche event communities compete? According to Masson, the niche element is key, as it leads to much more targeted and customized networking experiences.
“On LinkedIn, you can grow your network and build knowledge throughout different industries,” she notes. “If a brand has a community on Swapcard, it'll be used in the same way, but it'll be a closed community and all the noise will be filtered out. There won't be anything irrelevant to that specific community.
“LinkedIn is great because some people use it for personal networking or as a news source, but communities in Swapcard are more immersive brand experiences that only offer specific content and networking matches that are very relevant to the reason people joined that event/community in the first place.”
On the attendee side, Sharon Bonner, President & CEO of Bright Ideas Event Agency and a member of the Swapcard community, prefers it to LinkedIn due to the nature of the relationships that are built on the platform.
“The Swapcard community is warm, inviting and open to exchanging ideas and contact details. I have met dozens of amazing people on the Swapcard platform and find the quality of these relationships very high,” she says. “LinkedIn seems very professional, stiff and all about business etiquette. The relationships I form on LinkedIn are more of a connection and networking. With the Swapcard platform, people are warm and want to get to know me on a personal level as well. It feels like more of a relationship building platform.”
Masson shares that while Swapcard is currently still leveraging the event platform that’s being left open for communities all year, they will soon be launching a new community platform that is more reminiscent of a social platform, complete with a social feed and more interaction opportunities.
In terms of year-round engagement and networking, Masson notes that while there is some activity between events, engagement and networking rates still reach their peaks during their 2- to 3-day flagship events.
“Most of the planned networking happens around events,” she says. “But some natural, spontaneous networking happens during the year. This is because people go back to watch content on-demand and then end up browsing the marketplace or the community list and find people that interest them.”
Bonner notes that she usually uses the platform to engage with other attendees starting a week or so before an event, and continues for about 2-4 weeks after the event. “Initially I was 100% interested in content, but now I use it for networking, so about 75% content and 25% to network,” she says.
While communities like Swapcard’s are far from becoming the default networking platform for professionals, that’s not ultimately their purpose. What they do provide is a place for specific communities to enjoy tailored content and targeted matchmaking opportunities. From there, users may very well connect on LinkedIn as well to continue the conversation.
Masson shares that Swapcard plans to meet its community in-person for a hybrid event early next year if Covid restrictions allow. “Once there is no more risk,” she says, “we plan to keep the community online and meet them at regular intervals. We can't pack everything we need to share and do into a 3-day physical event anymore. We're extending the life cycle and plan to keep the Evolve community open for as long as the Evolvers see value in it.”