Capitalizing on Networking Beyond an Annual Conference

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Capitalizing on Networking Beyond an Annual Conference
12/07/2023

Associations invest a lot of time, money, and resources into planning their annual conferences with the hopes that their event attendees walk away with a great deal of knowledge from the keynote presentation and individual sessions as well as providing their attendees with several networking opportunities.

You should capitalize on the content presented at your conference and give your session attendees a chance to continue engaging with each other post-event. You can send out a survey that asks your attendees what their favorite sessions were, and if presented with the opportunity, ask if they would like to continue the discussion. Then, you can organize smaller events for the most popular sessions and invite the session attendees to attend - either in person or virtually. 

You can also create message boards and email list services for each session and give your members who attended these sessions a platform to easily engage with each other to continue the discussion. 

In addition to educational opportunities, one of the main reasons members join organizations is to network with like-minded individuals, so both of these post-event options will allow for extended engagement possibilities.

You can learn more about after event engagement from Christine Umbrell, a freelance writer at Associations Now in her article, ’A Look at Year-Round Event Engagement.’