How to build an effective content strategy for in-person events

Attending industry events is a great way to expand your presence in multiple markets, meet investors, attract new customers, and showcase your products and services to a wide audience. If the event is international, it is a great opportunity to immerse yourself in a different environment, learn about business and a new market, as well as the culture of another country. 

Whether you’re a startup or an established company, attending events of this caliber will increase your brand and product awareness and allow you to find new partners. 

In 2023, Usetech became a Bronze Sponsor of GITEX Global tech startup show in Dubai. In the process of preparing and analyzing materials, however, I realized there are very few resources on how to develop a content strategy for such an event. Therefore, I decided to write this article to offer my advice and experience.

Step One: Define your goal

This applies to both the purpose of your attendance at the event and the purpose of your content plan. For example, it may be:

• Attracting new partners, customers, or users
• Increasing brand and product awareness
• Entering a new market
• Networking
• Demonstrating the expertise of your employees or the expertise of the CEO

Typically, the main goal of a large event is to meet potential customers and formalize deals, partnerships, and the possibility of entering a new market. Based on these goals, it is reasonable to assume that 60% of your content will be sales and awareness related.

Step Two: Familiarize yourself with the event’s target audience

My advice is to look at the event’s website; you can usually find information about past attendees, key audiences and industry information. This will help you understand what to emphasize in your content strategy, as well as what services and products you will bring to the event and how you will position yourself. 

Step Three: Conduct competitor analysis

This is where it pays to analyze past attendees: 

• What social media they posted before and during the event
• How often they posted
• What was the topic of the posts
• What was the engagement
• Did they publish articles in other media and press releases
• Was the CEO involved in publishing the posts (is he or she mentioned)
  
• Any other important data you need to analyze

Step Four: Identify content types and create a content plan

I suggest using the following types of content: engaging, expert, and sales. They include:

• Engaging content: Event ticket giveaways or promo codes, interactive content, video content, event announcements
• Expert content: Articles and comments from your employees, helpful guides and checklists, training materials, information about your employees
• Sales content: Information about your company, its products and services, how these services can help your business, examples and cases, customer testimonials

For example, I used the following content:

• Information about the company, its products and services
• Information about the speakers at the event
• Announcements of the event and workshops
• Expert articles
• Information about the ratings of the company was included in
• Information about raffles and branded gifts

This helped to attract attention to the company and its services, as well as to increase the organic number of subscribers on the LinkedIn page.

Step 5: Engage with your audience and adjust your content plan as needed

Actively respond to audience comments, and thank them for their feedback. Analyze audience engagement and reach: if you see that a publication has low reach or there is low engagement, adjust the content plan. Change the content format, change the number of posts per week, replace sales content with engaging content, etc.

Some additional tips:

• Prepare different design templates for publications in the form of announcements, information about the company and its services.
• Use different types of content: video, audio, presentations, etc. Analyze which of these types of content is most suitable for your audience.
• Try to publish 2–3 times a week.
• Interact with other participants of the event: see what they post and comment on their posts. This way, firstly, you expand your circle of acquaintances, and secondly, you attract attention to your brand.
• Use different ways to distribute your content and use multiple platforms.
• Observe the marketing of the event: what content are they using, and what can you do?
• Don’t be afraid to experiment and try different formats: it’s the only way to find out what resonates most with your audience.

Photo Credit: Sincerely Media / Unsplash

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