Your event grows in the networks of your guests
The most effective advertising space for an event does not belong to the organizer. It belongs to the speakers, exhibitors and attendees who tell LinkedIn they are taking part. Every one of these posts opens a network you never reach with your own channel. This article shows why the lever is so large, and works through an example of what it delivers.
Why your own event channel alone doesn't carry it
Most organizers promote their event where they have control: on their own LinkedIn page, in the newsletter, on the website. That is right and still limited. A company page organically reaches only part of its own followers, and those followers are mostly people who already know the event. Anyone posting only on their own channel is mainly talking to yesterday's audience.
Posts from personal profiles work differently. They land with the sender's colleagues, clients and acquaintances, so with people who have probably never heard of your event. And they carry something no ad can buy: the recommendation of a person you trust professionally. When a developer posts that she is speaking at a conference, for her network that reads less like marketing and more like news from someone they know.
How a single post spreads
The animation below shows the mechanism. A speaker posts their badge, and the post first reaches their direct contacts. Some of them react, comment or congratulate. This is where the second stage begins: with each reaction, more people see the post, including contacts of the reactors who are not connected to the speaker at all.
For you as the organizer that means: you don't have to own these networks to reach them. You only have to make sure your people have something they enjoy posting. If ten speakers announce their appearance, your event speaks in ten networks at once, and through the reactions into second-degree networks that none of you could ever address.
One post activates entire networks.
An example calculation with cautious assumptions
How much difference this makes can only be shown seriously as a model calculation, because every event is different. The calculation below therefore works with deliberately restrained assumptions that you can replace with your own figures at any time.
Take a mid-sized professional conference: ten speakers and fifteen people from your exhibitors' booth teams post a badge. We leave guests out entirely, even though they are often the majority. Let's reckon 600 contacts per person and assume that only one in twenty contacts actually sees the post.
- People who post a badgeAssumption: 10 speakers and 15 people from booth teams, no guests
- 25
- Contacts per personAssumption for working professionals in B2B
- Ø 600
- Contacts who see the postAssumption: 5 percent visibility per personal post
- 1 in 20
What the calculation means
Around 750 people reached from 25 posts, under cautious assumptions. For comparison: an event page with 1,500 followers, assuming its post reaches every thirtieth follower, comes to about 50 readers. This has little to do with your people writing better copy than you. It comes down to the arithmetic: 25 senders with 600 contacts each together span a surface of 15,000 contacts, while your channel only ever has its own follower list.
Two properties make this reach more valuable than its bare number. First, it is almost entirely new: the contacts of your speakers barely overlap with your followers. Second, it comes with context: every post carries the message “I, a person from your professional field, am going there”, and that personal note is what gets read.
And the calculation stops at the first stage. Once posts collect reactions, the second-degree effect from the animation kicks in, and individual posts run considerably further. You shouldn't budget for it, but you may still be glad of it.
The catch: almost no one posts on their own
If the lever is this large, why doesn't every event use it? Because posting is work. Anyone wanting to announce their appearance needs an image that looks good, the event name, the date, maybe the logo. Very few speakers build a graphic for that, and a PDF logo pack sent over rarely makes it better. You know the result: three out of ten post something, the rest firmly intend to.
This is where the badge comes in. You design one motif in the look of your event and send a link. Your speakers and booth teams open it, drop in a photo and name, and within a few minutes have an image worth posting, with no account and no design work. “I should get around to that” turns into a two-minute step. How to raise the rate further, for instance with the right timing and a good invitation email, is shown in the playbook for activating speakers.
From the principle to practice
- Design a badge in the look of your event, fastest via the ready-made templates.
- Send your speakers the link together with the confirmation, so the announcement becomes part of the natural flow. For exhibitors the same works through the we're-exhibiting template.
- Spread the posts across the weeks before the event, so it stays present in the feed throughout. The full schedule for that is in the guide to promoting your event.
- After the event you turn the effect around once: an attendance certificate gives your guests a second occasion to post about the event.
Related
Frequently asked questions
- Isn't this just employee advocacy?
- The principle is related, the senders are different. Employee advocacy activates your own staff; here external multipliers post: speakers, exhibitors and guests. All they need for it is an occasion and a finished image that makes them look good too.
- How many of those invited actually post?
- That depends heavily on the occasion and the effort, which is why no one here will quote you a rate. The direction is certain: the smaller the hurdle, the more people join in. A finished badge by link lowers the hurdle to a few minutes, and a personal request alongside the confirmation lowers it further.
- Why isn't a shared post from the event page enough?
- A shared company post stays a company post, even on a personal profile. An image of your own with your own photo and your own words reads like a personal message and gets read accordingly. On top of that comes the sheer number: from 25 posts of their own, 25 senders speak, each with their own audience.
- Where do the numbers in the example calculation come from?
- They are openly declared assumptions, not measurements. The calculation is meant to make the scale of the effect tangible, not to promise a result. Put in your own speaker count, team size and a visibility rate you consider realistic for your setting.