The 5 Benefits of Hosting An Influencer Event! (Post COVID-19)
More often than not, people are looking to voices they can trust for recommendations. Most influencers have spent years cultivating trust between themselves and their audience. When they recommend products, people listen. Influencer events are a powerful tool for brands that want to build a stronger relationship with their audience. With these events, brands invite influencers to participate in a gathering, getaway or other event in order to promote their products or services. These events are a great way to tap into the audience that influencers have built up and connect with people you may not have been able to reach otherwise.
Here are the five biggest benefits of hosting an influencer event — plus some tips on how to keep your event running smoothly.
1. They Build Trust
By inviting influencers to your event, you can benefit from the relationships they’ve established with their audience. Influencers attending your event and promoting your brand will lend a little bit of their credibility to your business. While this won’t create deep relationships with an audience overnight, it is a great way to attract an audience that is engaged and open to the products or services you have on offer.
2. They Help You Expand Your Audience
Influencers — and especially micro and nano-influencers — tend to fit into online niches and cultivate strong relationships with highly specific audiences.
By partnering up with influencers, you can gain access to the audiences they’ve built. Influence events are a great way to direct your content and brand to the specific people you want to target — often, even more effectively than with other targeting methods alone.
3. They Build Long-Term Partnerships
Some businesses can struggle to create long-term, authentic partnerships with influencer marketing. If you partner with an influencer for just one or two posts, it can be hard to create content that feels like a genuine and authentic promotion of your brand or its products.
By giving influencers a positive and memorable experience, you can foster a strong relationship that will last well into the future — and may even encourage the development of further campaigns and content.
4. They Create Content
Events naturally generate a huge amount of content. Users and influencers upload photos and videos from the event to social media. Influencers also usually create content leading up to the event and after.
While you won’t have much control over this user-generated content, it can be extremely effective at building buzz and extending the reach of your brand. If you’re struggling to create new content, or experiencing a lull in your content strategy, an influencer event can be a great way to keep up the momentum.
5. They Provide Value to Your Audience
Any effective content strategy relies on content that provides real value to its audience. Often, however, it can be hard to know exactly what your audience needs.
Because influencers know what their audience needs, these events are usually very effective at delivering value. As the event goes on, the influencers you partner with will create content that’s tailored to their audience — ensuring that it’s both relevant and valuable.
Tips for Hosting an Influencer Event Post-COVID
Running an influencer event will be a big undertaking. These tips will help you ensure that your event runs as smoothly as possible.
1. Communicate Early and Often
From the very beginning, communicate with everyone involved in the project. Keep influencers and staff updated on the venue and event schedule. Build a social media strategy that clues guests in on key information. If things change — you swap venues, move events or relocate registration — let people know as soon as possible.
2. Think About Housing
Your influencers will need somewhere to stay. If your event is held at a hotel, housing may be as simple as booking a few rooms — but things may not be so easy in other cases.
You should look for housing in the area that will be a good fit for your influencers. Serviced apartments, for example, are fully-furnished living spaces — and unlike some hotels, they’ll also let your influencers bring their pets. Room cleaning service in these apartments is also typically less frequent than service in a hotel, which can afford some extra privacy and room to decompress.
3. Take Advantage of Your Venue
When selecting a venue for their event, most brands go for unique and exciting destinations in order to make the event as Instagrammable as possible. Leading up to your event, you should show off the venue you’ve selected to build buzz and excitement.
You should also take advantage of any special certifications or amenities your event may have. Many venues, for example, have the new ISSA GBAC STAR accreditation — a credential awarded to venues that make outbreak prevention a top priority. These credentials can let your guests know that their health and safety are top priorities.
4. Create an Event Schedule
Part of your comms strategy should be a good event schedule. You want to make sure that there is enough going on that your event doesn’t lose momentum, but not so much that attendees feel overwhelmed.
Sharing this schedule with event staff and influencers will help keep your team on top of things during the event.
5. Follow the Conversation On Social Media
Keep an eye on what people are saying about your event once it’s kicked off. You can use social media to see how people feel about your event — providing you with instant feedback, information to tweak the event and suggestions about making future events even better.
Building New Relationships With Influencer Events
Influencer events can offer serious benefits for brands. The right event will help your company build stronger partnerships with influencers and reach audiences that can be difficult to target.
If you want to host an influencer event, planning and a strong communication strategy will help you keep the whole thing running smoothly. Be sure to also find the right housing for your influencers and keep your staff updated on the event’s schedule.
Guest Contributer – April Miller
