Make Your Summit An Event People Want To Attend

Are people going to be excited when they see your summit pop up?

Of course we all want our audience to be pumped about our summit, but there's actually some intentional thought that goes into creating an event people want to attend.

In this episode we'll break down the main key to doing that and dive deeper into 3 specific tips to make it happen.

The key to a summit that people want to attend

The key thing to a summit that people want to attend is to create an experience, not just host a boring summit. You can line up some speakers, create a quick promotion strategy and start accepting registrations, but if you don't give anyone a real reason to show up, you're going to see that in your results from the very beginning because no one's going to be excited about what you're doing.

When you open your summit for registration, you should immediately start hearing from people about how excited they are and get specific ideas from them about what piece got them the most excited. If you don't see that, you know you've missed the mark. If you don't see those registrations rolling in, if people aren't excited, there's something you need to change.

Make your summit fun

You can do everything right in the planning of the summit presentations themselves, but if there isn't a way for people to have fun during the event, they aren't going to show up and it's going to reduce your engagement.

The easiest way to create engagement is to do something fun. That's when people participate and get excited.

Having five presentations per day and doing nothing but sending an email with a schedule’s not fun. No one's excited about that. It takes a little effort and planning to create something fun, but you can do it.

For example, you could:

• Q&A session - Is that something that your audience would get really excited about? Being able to hop on a call with a panel of your speakers and ask questions?
• Facebook community - Is it a Facebook community where they can go to connect with other attendees, yourself, and the speakers? Maybe in that Facebook group you set up accountability groups or accountability partners. That'll make it more fun cause it's going to let them connect with people.
• Networking sessions - Are you going to host networking session so they can get together with others as they would an in-person event and get to know some of the other people there and make those important connections?
• Games & Prizes - Maybe you have some games or some prizes. I'm going to do trivia at the summit I have coming up and have prizes based on that.

What can you do to add some fun and excitement to your summit? If you want your summit to be something people are excited about, incorporate some fun into your plans.

Solve a problem

Make your summit an event people want to attend. Set it up in a way to solve a real problem that they’re facing.

People want to attend when you hit one of their pain points and offer a solution.

Maybe you help them:

• get clients on a specific marketing platform
• help them organize their home
• reduce stress in a relationship
• learn to effectively manage their team

Those are real problems that people are facing, that they want solutions to and that you can offer solutions to. When someone sees a free solution to a problem they're facing, it's something they're going to be excited to attend.

Do something different

The last way to create an engaging event that people want to attend is to do something different. This industry is growing, and I don't think that's a bad thing.

One way to stand out, apart from your specific niche and topic, is to do something different.

Find a way to do something different. Some unique examples are:

• Presentations – Instead of each speaker teaching us strategy, they talked through an email template that this person used for our launch, the strategy behind it, and why it worked for them.
• Summit Schedule – Instead of releasing presentations at a specific time (for example, they'll release at 9am every morning of the summit), this host released 1 presentation every hour for 2 days straight around the clock. No matter what time of day it was, a presentation was going live.
• Networking – I tried networking sessions to make my summit more like an in-person event. Attendees get on a call and are broken into groups for 15-20 minutes and chat and get to know each other.
• Speaker Trivia – When my speakers submit their presentations, I ask them for a trivia question. It can be about them, their presentation, anything. Based on that, I’ll have trivia questions going live in the Facebook group and prizes based on those questions.
• Choose New Speakers – Choose speakers you don’t see on every summit lineup. Find some people who aren’t constantly on summits. They’ll have some unique things to say.

These are just little details that might catch the attention of someone who was mildly interested before, but a lot of these ideas also boost that fun factor.

Plan with Intention

None of these things are difficult but do take some intentional thought and planning. Brainstorm how you can make your event something people will want to attend and be excited about.  

Resources

• Episode 53: How to Craft An Engaging Virtual Summit
• Episode 57: 4 Keys to a Profitable and Impactful Virtual Summit
• Summit Host Hangout Facebook group

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