Imagine standing on stage at an event, giving your keynote presentation, your opportunity to build rapport with the audience and showcase your expertise.
It feels as if it’s going well but during your presentation you notice members of the audience scrolling through their phones, chatting to each other, or even worse, the odd person sneaking out pretending to take a call.
Your heart sinks and consequently, without knowing it, you’re rattling through the remainder of your presentation just to get it over with.
This scenario isn’t as rare as it might sound. But why?
In B2B events, some organisations start their content strategies by thinking about the stories they want to tell, rather than thinking about the stories their audiences want to hear.
Every business wants to attract the right audience to their events and grow that audience over time.
But you won’t attract or grow your audience unless you make content they value.
We make hundreds of decisions a day about whether to give an email, article, podcast or video our attention. As content floods our inboxes and screens, we constantly have to make one simple decision - is this worth my time right now?
Convincing audiences to give you a bit of their attention is paramount. So it’s vitally important that you invest time in understanding what your audience wants to hear and build your programme and promotion around this.
If you don’t have time, seek out an agency, who has a Manager of Audience Development as part of their team (I know a good agency who has this role 😉).
Once you know what they want to hear you can then format your programme into categories.
Practical - normally evergreen content with a short-term lifespan.
Trends - industry, geopolitical, economic or other, that create medium term engagement.
Major Insight - thought leading research that sets the industry agenda and kick start longer respected relationships.
Then you need to set about creating your content. Here’s a few approaches.
Create your own content that brings new value to your audience.
Edit existing content from your network to save your audience time and effort.
Gather a community to present content to help the audience grow their knowledge.
Audiences value content that will either provide solutions to their pain points or help them realise new possibilities.
Remember, it’s all about value from your audience’s perspective, not yours, or your organisations.
Consider all the above when you next build and promote your event.
Now imagine yourself standing on stage with your keynote presentation …
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