Are year-round communities overrated?

What if trying to build an engaged, year-round event community was actually detrimental to your event's success?
Lee Matthew Jackson

Lee Matthew Jackson

January 25, 2024

What if trying to build an engaged, year-round event community was actually detrimental to your event’s success?

Event organisers are aften advised to create 365 communities around their events, nurturing relationships long after an event wraps. But event strategy expert Dax Callner argues most organisers lack the skills and bandwidth for ongoing community management.

In this episode, Dax asserts that overextending resources to force year-round conversations does a disservice to both organizers and attendees. Rather than community, he believes events should prioritise delivering incredible experiences, which lead attendees to naturally return, year after year.

Join Dax and host Lee as they challenge enduring community-building advice. You’ll reconsider assumptions about the best ways to invest time and energy to make your events thrive for the long haul. Rethink what matters most.

Video

We recorded this podcast live at Event Tech Live London, so if you’d prefer to watch you can do so on YouTube.

Key takeaways

Our chat really challenged me as a community builder! Here’s some things that jumped out at me:

  • Forcing year-round community engagement puts an overwhelming and unrealistic burden on most event organisers when their skills lie in executing exceptional in-person events.
  • Attendees have many other communities and interests; asking them to be highly engaged with an event year-round is often unwanted and ineffective.
  • The most important success factor is delivering incredible value and experiences at the live event itself, which will organically lead people to return.
  • Keep communications between yearly installments simple: announce new details leading up to the event when excitement and registrations naturally build.
  • Don’t worry about trying to persuade every attendee to promote on social media – super users will, and others attend for value, not to document the experience.
  • Think carefully about whether year-round conversations are wanted, useful, sustainable, and the best use of limited time and resources.

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Event Engine Podcast Artwork

Speakers

Lee Matthew Jackson

Lee Matthew Jackson

Event Engine