Ways to Collect Content From Event Attendees

It’s not very difficult for event planners these days to get people to attend their events via event marketing. With effective social media and email campaigns, they can have a massive crowd turn up. The real challenge, however, lies in getting the most out of this crowd. If you’re an event planner, you might often wonder how to use your event attendees to your advantage. Well, we’ve got one powerful strategy that does this and increases engagement at your event. 

Collect Content from your event attendees. 

This approach helps you gain valuable data, such as images, reviews, and videos from the attendees, that you can use to showcase the event’s success. You can determine how many people enjoy your event and might become potential allies or partners in the future. But is collecting content from the event attendees that easy? Well, now it is as if we’re with this blog, which contains everything you need to know about it. So, without further ado, let’s get right into it.

Why Collect Content From Event Attendees

You might wonder whether collecting content from attendees is as effective as it sounds above or not. Here are some notable benefits to clear all your doubts. 

Event Promotion

Content collected from the attendees can be strategically used to increase footfall at the event. If you’ve organized a multiday event, collecting and showcasing content from the people attending the event creates, among others. Seeing such content also encourages them to attend the event, increasing the overall footfall. 

Cost-effective Content Creation

Collecting content from attendees eliminates the need to create content yourself. Images and Videos of people enjoying the event can be impactful social proof showcasing the awesomeness experienced at your event. Creating content yourself requires a lot of time or effort, which is not the case if you collect it from your attendees. Repurposing this content on social media is a great way to save the cost of creating content from scratch for post-event marketing. 

Enhanced Event Engagement

There are many creative ways to ask your event attendees to provide content related to the event, such as photos, reviews, videos, etc. Techniques like event gamification can make it fun for them, eventually increasing overall engagement. This way, you’ll get loads of content from the attendees while simultaneously captivating their attention. 

Valuable Feedback

It’s not just photos and videos; the content collected from the attendees can also include their overall event experience. This might consist of what they liked and what they did not enjoy, helping you identify areas for improvement. Feel free to use any tool that suits you. A proven method is using a meeting recording tool that replicates the experience of a face-to-face interaction with an attendee. You can use this feedback to plan your next event and eliminate the issues you found.

Personal Connection

The content shared by the attendees can be showcased during the event itself on digital signages and event walls to make them feel more connected to the event. This content can also be repurposed in personalized emails sent to attendees as a post-event marketing strategy. Watching themselves on the event walls or emails, you send helps create a personal connection you can benefit from in the future.

What Content Should be Collected During the Event?

Now that you understand what a game changer collecting content from attendees can be for your event let’s understand the type of content you must look for.

Brand Reviews

Positive brand reviews can be a goldmine for brands, and organizing events is among the best ways to collect them. Brands often organize events to reach a larger audience interested in their niche. You can ask the attendees to share their event experiences and showcase them as impactful social proof, enhancing your brand credibility by 72%. 

Event Images and Videos

Collecting visual content during an event is a great way to evaluate its reach. People sharing images and videos often signifies that they had a good time. This content can be used in post-event marketing and promotion of the next event. Watching such videos creates FOMO in the minds of potential attendees, which might convince them to attend the remaining or the next event.

User Generated Content (UGC)

If you’re a brand and have organized an event to promote your products/services, collecting attendees’ content can be a great opportunity to do so. Offer your audience a one-time free access to your product/ service and ask them to share videos of using the content. This content can be used on marketing fronts like websites, social media handles, emails, etc. UGC is 20% more impactful than any other type of ad in terms of converting potential customers.

Event Feedback

Event feedback is essential for evaluating how the event performed and how it can be improved in the future. It helps you identify the points that the attendees liked and disliked. To flaunt the event’s success, you can display positive feedback on various marketing fronts like websites, press releases, and emails. 

Information About Attendees

It’s important to gather details about the attendees for various reasons, such as networking, sending post-event emails, and future communication. Getting details of the attendees helps you understand the demographic attending your event. You can figure out what industry most attendees were from, the most common age range among them, etc. This insight can be used to plan future events.  

Leads 

Is that even an event if it did not generate any potential leads? A large-scale event attracts more attendees, increasing the chances of finding more potential clients. You must identify and collect every possible lead for future communication.

How to Collect Content from Event Attendees?

So you know why collecting content is important and what content you should collect, but how’d you do it? Here are some simple yet effective strategies. 

Using a QR

A QR Code is the most effective technique for collecting content from your event attendees because it is easy for them to use. Make the QR code accessible to the audience, and all that’s left for them to scan and upload the content. Your audience can share feedback about the event or videos and images of their experience, enhancing social proof for the event that you can leverage.

Excellent tools like Social Walls allow you to showcase the content collected from the QR on large screens. With the SnapUp feature in Social Walls, you can display the QR code on the screen to encourage more people to upload their content, such as reviews, images, videos, etc. This can considerably increase engagement at your event, making it a massive success. 

Link

This is also a widely used method in which attendees receive a link via text or email. The link redirects them to the page where they can upload the content you need. You can ask them to upload details like their name, email address, contact information, industry, how they learned about the event, etc. This data can later be analyzed for better planning. 

Sending a link can be very effective, as anyone reading the text or email needs to click on it. 

Event Apps

Creating an event app is a game changer as it gives attendees information, like the latest updates, schedule, location, etc., in one place. The app’s many functionalities make it easier for attendees to navigate through the event. Adding an option to upload content related to the event makes the app interactive, increasing the chances of getting content from the audience. 

Social Media Hashtags

Hashtags are one of the most commonly used methods to promote your event and collect content at the same time. Ask the attendees to use the same hashtag while uploading content on their social media, making it easier for you to find. With Social Walls, you can collect all the content uploaded to social media platforms, including your hashtag. Be it Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook, if the hashtag is used, you can collect it and then display it on the event screen.   

Photo/ Video Booths

Adding a photo booth is a great way to collect content from the attendees by letting them click and share cool photos. You can create virtual frames and funky filters to grab the attendees’ attention. Use Social Walls to showcase the images collected in the booth on giant screens at your event to encourage others to do the same. These images can also be repurposed in other content, such as events after movies, social media posts, post-event emails, etc. 

Conclusion

So, this was all you needed to know about collecting content from your event attendees. Interesting, right? Who knew that people attending your event could be such significant assets, providing content with little to no investment? Using the methods we’ve discussed above provides you with impactful social proof and increases interaction at the event, making it successful.

So, next time you plan an event, include these strategies to make the most out of the amazing people attending it.