Event Strategies Used at Web Summit

Recently, I went to Web Summit Vancouver as part of the media and was lucky enough to interview some amazing female founders. In this blog, I’ll share about pre-, during, and post-events and how to get the most out of them. It's from my experience over the years, as my energy levels change, and from my goals and what my business needs.

PRE-EVENT

1. Get on the Conference App

As best as you can, try to get on the conference app. Web Summit has an amazing app where you can:

• See all of the speakers and connect with them
  
• See all of the other delegates or attendees
  
• See what their business is
  
• Connect with them in different ways
  

If you're going to start connecting with people, have a purpose.

For me, I was looking for female founders. I started going through the list, trying to find them and the businesses they started.

2. Connect with Intention

You only have one chance at it. What I did was say straight up: "Hey, I want to talk to you because you're a female founder and I'm looking for guests for my podcast called Dynamic Women." Put a link to whatever it is you want them to know about.

As my coach says, this is "being in service." Imagine a waiter putting a napkin on their arm when you go to a nice restaurant, then welcoming you in and serving you. You want to come into your connection, serving the person.

Even if it's like "Hey, I'd love to learn more about you. I see that you're doing X, Y, Z. Maybe you'd like this article", something where you're serving, not where you take the napkin, put it like a bib, and come with the intention of "give me, give me, give me."

I had a few people reach out wanting to connect and say things like "Hey, this is my business. You can book a call to learn more here." I'm probably not going to even connect with them.

On LinkedIn, always send a connection request with a note so the person knows why you're reaching out.

3. Plan Your Schedule

If there are multiple stages/speakers, where do you want to be at what time? Which makes more sense?

At Web Summit, their app is fantastic. You can:

• See all of the things that are happening
  
• Say you're going and move it to your schedule
  
• Get reminders (if you get caught in the hallway, it reminds you "15 minutes from now, this is starting")
  
• Connect it with your regular calendar so it fills up your day
  
• Watch stage recordings after the fact ​
  

If you're at the conference and know certain sessions are recorded, plan to go back and watch them later. This gives you the freedom to attend meetups, have hallway conversations, or attend master classes (not otherwise recorded).

4. Know Your Goals and Intention

Before you go, think about: What are my goals? What am I hoping to get out of this?

If you want to have a good ROI (return on investment), you want to make sure you know your intention for being there.

Why I attended Web Summit? Two reasons:

1. Interview female founders. With my media pass and podcast, I can provide a platform, reach, and airtime to women who may not otherwise get it. Often, the media wants you to interview more well-known people. My approach is different. I want to give airtime to those who wouldn't normally have it.

2. Learn about AI for my virtual assistant agency (VA Made Easy). We're in the age of AI. I was there to learn what we can integrate into our business and what I can bring into VA Made Easy to make it easier for my VAs and clients.

Many small business owners think, "I can just use AI to replace employees, contractors, and my VA." Don't, don't, don't, don't. When you replace a virtual assistant (a person) with software, you become the manager of the software; you're the AI manager.

I attended to explore how we can have the virtual assistants become more managers of the AI to free up more of their time. Their current tasks can be completed faster, allowing them to take on more and increase their value to their client.

When you know exactly what you want to do going into it, you can have a better ROI of your time and energy. Even if you were going to something that is free, it's still a killer of your time. You want to make sure you're getting something out of it.

DURING THE EVENT

1. Manage Your Time and Energy

There are a lot of night events, and they're fantastic. But for me, I'm looking to get most of my stuff done during the day. That means some of the things I step out of, and then I listen to the recording as I'm on my way home or later in the evening.

I don't necessarily need to be at the night events to reach my goals. Some of the founders I've interviewed might want to attend these night events to meet investors, mentors, or other founders. Just know how your day needs to be based on your energy level and your goals.

2. Use the App as a Connection Tool

At Web Summit, we have name badges with a QR code. We can scan them and connect with the person on the app. This is a feature that many big conferences are now doing.

But I suggest you also connect with them on LinkedIn. The reason: if you connect on LinkedIn, once you're done with the app, you can still move forward and have that connection. You don't always remember who you connected to. If you have them in the conference app as well as LinkedIn, you can refer back to the app.

3. Take Screenshots and Photos

Once you've made that LinkedIn connection, if there's one you don't want to lose, take a quick screenshot to save it to your images. You can add that to your Notes section and write something below it.

You can also take a photo together. Take the photo and send it to them on LinkedIn and say, "So great meeting you and talking about XYZ" (whatever the topic was).

I've had a lot of people connecting about interviewing them. I said, "Message me on LinkedIn and say we're going to talk about being on the podcast" or "I'm going to be on your podcast", just so it's that reminder.

You meet hundreds of people, and then afterwards you go "Shoot. What was the name of that person who was wearing the red outfit, who did that business I wanted to connect with?" Hopefully, on LinkedIn one day you see a post from them and remember, "That's who it was." But we want to be more intentional about the connections.

4. Make a List at the End of the Day

Have a list of everyone you want to follow up with. I promise you, a week or two weeks from now, you're not going to remember everybody.

POST-EVENT

This is where a lot of my business-owner clients, before they come to me, completely waste opportunities.

If you're going to be a vendor at a trade show, a speaker at an event, or just attending, you want to have a post-event strategy.

The Three-Part Strategy

1. People You Connected With

Go back, look at all the people you connected with, and move them into some buckets. Use your CRM, Google sheet, notepad, or something. Put them in the list of:

• Primary people you want to follow up with right away
  
• Ones you will nurture
  
• The ones after that you will just stay connected to
  

Set reminders in your CRM so you know: I'm going to connect with this person in a week, or tomorrow, or a few weeks, depending on the urgency of that connection.

Post those photos you took. If you took that selfie with someone, make a big post with lots of images and tag that person so they can see it.

Make a general post about the event, thanking whoever hosted it, and tagging a bunch of the speakers you want to stay connected with. Hopefully, you've taken images of them, because as a speaker you don't always have your own photographer on hand.

If you can take some nice photos of a speaker you want to get connected with, even some short video, and if you have one little nugget you can say that they taught you: "So great hearing from Mary Smith, and she spoke about [insert the title]. My biggest takeaway from them, or the piece that I'm going to implement, is..."

That's really nice feedback for the speaker. They're going to see that because you've tagged them, and they're going to think, "Wow, this person cared about my talk," so they might care about connecting and engaging with your post.

Once you've done these posts, don't just leave them be. Go back. Check on them. Comment back. There might be some more connections that happen.

Ninja tip: Google or search for the event hashtags, then look at the event's profile on different platforms. Maybe you're in some of the photos, and you didn't know. Other people might be posting, but they didn't know your name. It's also great to be reminded of people, "Oh right, that's that person. I wanted to connect with them, but didn't get their LinkedIn."

2. Your Notes: The 10-24-7 System

One thing I like to do is called 10-24-7:

• 24 hours after the event: Review your notes for 10 minutes. Highlight: "I'm going to implement this" or "This is for something I'm going to do in the next season, not right now."
  
• Seven days later: Make a date in your calendar and give yourself another 10 minutes to review your notes again
  

I promise you: the next day it's all fresh, and you'll think, "Oh yeah, those things were so awesome." A week later, you've already forgotten it. Unless you've put those highlighted things on your calendar to implement or done some goal-setting around them, you're probably going to forget them.

Look at all the highlighted items and put them on your calendar if you haven't yet, even if it's three months down the road or six months down the road. Put it as a task to review the goal or add that in so you have those golden nuggets there.

Otherwise, with the information you gathered, it was a waste of time. We've heard a lot about "shelf help." We don't want any of the self-help or professional development to just get lost and forgotten on a shelf. Otherwise, you’ll keep making the same mistakes.

3. Implementing: The 12-3-1 System

You don't have to implement everything. 

• Go through and grab the top 12 ideas (things you have to implement into your business or life)
• For the next month, look at it and each month ask, "What would the top 3 things be that I could implement?"
  
• From the three, pick one. Just one. (If you want to do more, okay, fine, but let's make sure that one thing happens first.)

That one thing could be really big, so you might have to break it down into something smaller.

What do you do next month? Go back, look at your list (maybe you have 11 things now, or maybe you've added one). Ask, "What are my top three, and what's the one I'm going to do this month?"

This really helps you actually lock in and put into play the things that matter most.

Don't Do It All Yourself

If this is overwhelming and there are so many things you want to implement, don't do it all yourself.

A lot of times, I'm in the middle of a workshop or talk, and I'm texting my virtual assistant or messaging them on WhatsApp (the free way to do it, especially when they're in the Philippines). I'm saying:

• "Hey, look at this."
  
• "Can you implement this?"
  
• "Please make this."
  

Or I'm in Trello (my project management platform), adding a task specific to them.

Quick Implementation Example

One example was quote cards. One of my coaches shared that rather than a business card, make a quote card with 10 quotes connected to your business, not quoting other people, but quoting yourself with your business info on it.

As he's talking, I'm writing down the 10 quotes I think would be great. I shoot that over to Kristine, my VA and say, "Hey, can you make a business card with five quotes on each side?" I took a picture of his, and sent it over. She had it back to me pretty quickly, so at break I showed him. I said, "What do you think?" He gave me a few pointers, and I was already off and running, sending it off to my printer.

This is how you have massive, quick action: by not implementing everything yourself.

If you're like "Oh yeah, but Diane, you have a team", you can have support too! You wouldn't believe how affordable it is to bring on a virtual assistant. And I make it super easy for you. Our company VA Made Easy, starts at just 10 hours a week. You don't have to hire full-time staff. You don't have to have an office they work in. You don't have to buy them a computer. It's all set, and it's definitely doable.

We have an upcoming delegation workshop titled “Build Your Business & Reach Your Goals with the Help of a Virtual Assistant”. It’s free to join here. But if the date has passed when you read this, email my team at [email protected], and we will let you know about the next dates.

Get the Best ROI

When you're going to invest time and money in an event, use my recommendations to make sure you get the best ROI.

Share this with a friend or another busy business owner who wants to achieve better ROI (return on investment) in their time, energy, and money.

Until next time, stay dynamic!