How to Promote Your Atlassian Community Event

[#1]

I recently teamed up with @Andy - PTC Redundant and hosted a virtual Trello Halloween Party, and it. was. a blast. 

Super successful event, and we had nearly 60 people RSVP! I was really excited for this event, and Andy, the Crmble team, the Unito team, and I put a lot of time into it, so we wanted to have as many friends join us as possible. Because I'm a marketer by day, I had a few ideas up my sleeve for driving RSVPs. I wanted to share my promotion plan so if you're planning events of your own, you have some ideas for how to spread the word. 

1) Come up with a plan

I use Trello (who is surprised?) to make a promotional checklist and brainstorm all my ideas. 

Andy is a star with using Trello boards to organize everything for his events, so maybe we can get him to write an article all about that, but I just jumped in with a single card with a checklist for all my promotion tasks.

2) Think about where your people are

One benefit of events being virtual means that they're open to just about anyone across the globe! Although we technically hosted the event from Rotterdam, NL, we had attendees from the United States, Spain, and other countries as well! This opens up promotion to be outside of just your local zip code. 

If you're only promoting in-person, local events, you're going to have to be a bit more creative to ensure you're focusing on people in your area, such as local coffee shops or community calendars.

3) Find influencers and partners with fans

We're all a part of the Atlassian community because we love the products, and most of us have made some other friends who like the products too. Find people who are already talking about something that relates to your event (like Trello!) and let them know about your event. No pressure to join, and definitely no pressure to promote, but if they're interested in something you're doing, they might want to reach out to their friends about it!

If you enlist some sponsors and partners for the event, ask them if they'd be willing to share an email with their newsletter and post on their social channels. We got many responses for our event from sending an email to the Crmble newsletter subscribers. 

4) Use creative content for your promo

A little creativity can go a long way. Make your event promotion fun so people will talk about it. I came up with the idea of promoting Trello themed snacks like "a cheese board" so we could use that in promotional materials and give people a taste (no pun intended) of all the fun to come in the event. 

We also had a fantastic graphic design make some amazing graphics for the event. This gave it a great level of polish that showed we were not just hopping on a zoom call, but actually putting on a proper event and that it was going to be a good time! If you're not a designer, look at tools like Adobe Spark or Canva for creating graphics. 

Andy and I also created a video walkthrough about Trello basics to give people a preview of me and Andy's personality, and also to help them to have more context for the type of content and what they'd learn from the event. 

The marketer in me struggles with this, because I can't necessarily say we got any RSVPS from doing these things (you can't really measure the creative/brand aspects), but I can say there were definitely several positive comments and feedback about doing these things, and we had some decent engagement in our social posts about these creative aspects.

5) Specific channels for promotion

Here's the bulleted list you were probably looking for when you clicked this article :) 

- Social media channels (Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram)

- Send emails (using partner email list, your ACE's email list, or asking other ACE leaders to reach out to their groups!)

- Post an article here in the community about your event! 

- Post in the Atlassian Slack Community about your event! (Make sure to find the right channels. We used #trello-leaders and #online-community and #community-events and #all-things-community)

- User groups on Facebook (if you're already active in them! Don't be a spammer, but if you participate in group discussions and have an upcoming meetup or event, let other users know they're welcome to join! We used the Crmble Community Facebook Group).

And there you have it! Comment below if you have any follow up questions, or if you have any other ideas for event promotion!

[Cassie Mayes]

I love this @Brittany Joiner ! Especially "one benefit of events being virtual means that they're open to just about anyone across the globe!" Thank you for sharing your tips with us. :) 

[Sajit Nair _Trundl_]

Great post. Thanks for sharing @Brittany Joiner 

[Dave Liao]

If you're promoting a (safe, obviously) in-person event, consider posting on a local service like Nextdoor. (Nextdoor is available in many countries, including the United States, France, and the United Kingdom). Obviously craft your event so it's specific enough to interest specific people, but generic enough to get lots of attention. 😄

Whether you're running an in-person or online event, don't forget to hold an event retrospective to measure how your event did. Consider things like (1) how many people RSVP'd, vs. how many showed up? and (2) what were the most effective channels you shared on?