The best evangelists for your event are the people who play a part in creating it. And by that I don’t mean the meeting planners, I am talking about the volunteer leadership and loyal members who are committed to building your organization and growing their professional networks.
Most volunteer leaders are on-board with supporting your show growth. How do you translate that into delivery from busy volunteer leaders?
Be specific in your ask.
Do all the upfront legwork.
Have a starting and finishing point.
The well-connected volunteer leader is able to juggle many activities when they have specific activities assigned to them. Event promotion is the perfect project for the connector who is willing to contribute resources but can’t commit to regular meetings and open ended volunteer roles.
- Create a marketing “toolkit.” This is a short document that summarizes all of the details of the event. It contains key links, hashtags and details needed for successful event promotion. It’s much easier to plug an event when you have the details, handles and hashtags at your fingertips. Provide some examples of posts and encourage volunteers to customize the message.
- Direct volunteers on where to share their messages. Ask your leaders to post information on the event on their social media, internal work networks, online (and live) networking groups.
- Provide a plan and a schedule. If you have a good list, divide and conquer! Break it up into smaller tasks with deadlines that are easy to add to their calendars. Consider creating a Google doc where people can track their progress.
- Be specific and send calendar invitations. Getting it on the calendar decreases procrastination. For example:
- Make first contact with presidents of 3 Ohio chapters by January 7.
- Follow up with chapter presidents by January 15.
- Provide all chapters with complete details by January 30.
Having a structure helps facilitate the flow of your volunteer outreach and creates a process to recognize volunteers’ work at update meetings. Keep the assignments manageable and defined, and volunteer engagement will increase!
