How To Keep Bloggers Happy And Get Them Sharing - 5 Keys To A Successful Blogger Event 1 Minute Moment #28

Is Your Blogger Event Designed To Succeed? 5 Tips

When I saw the post pop up on the Irish Bloggers Facebook group I was excited. I never get invited to blogger events.

This blog isn’t really suitable for most launches or events, although I review cool tools now and then I never do this for cash and I don’t accept sponsored posts. So it’s rare that I get invited to an event, particularly one that isn’t business related.

Because of this, the invite to ‘GoQuest‘ as a member of the group was a new thing for me. I had a great night out and got to meet lots of other bloggers. On the way home I discussed the value of blogger events with my companion, Kate from Pet Sitters Ireland.

Blogger events can be a fantastic way to spread the word about your business. Invite bloggers to an exclusive evening, give them a special experience and they’ll be keen to share their experiences with their readers.

Watch my five tips for better blogger events below:

Here are five tips we came up with for getting the most from your event and keeping the bloggers happy.

1. Feed us

Hungry people are grumpy people! If you are running an event make sure there is plenty of food and refreshments on offer. Always make sure you know your attendees dietary requirement in advance. As a vegetarian, there’s nothing worse than turning up at a venue and realising they don’t cater for weird eaters like you. I always tell venues in advance about my meal requirements but you’d be surprised by how many pay it no heed.

GoQuest was great, we’d been promised finger food but instead there was a tray of tasty rolls to keep us satisfied. Much better than finger food. Lots of veggie options in there too.

2. Let us know what to wear

The event last week was organised by Darragh Doyle. I’m always worried before I go to events with other bloggers, knowing I’ll be surrounded by beauty and fashion bloggers as my fashion sense is not well tuned. Luckily a comprehensive email from Darragh beforehand informed me that I should wear comfortable clothing. This was essential. If we’d turned up in heels or short skirts we wouldn’t have been able to participate.

3. Manage expectations

Don’t tell your atendees everything that is going to happen in advance. Save some surprises for when they arrive. You’ll get far more value if you under promise and over deliver. I deliberately didn’t look too hard at what was going to happen at the event. This allowed me to build our own experience of the event rather than trying to judge the event against expectations.

4. Let us know what we can do

I was a little unsure if I was allowed to bring my camera into the experience. In the end, I left it in the locker. I did take photos on my phone but I still wasn’t sure if this was allowed. I’d have felt more comfortable and taken more photos and snaps inside if I’d know it was OK to do so.

5. Give us something to take away

We were told a lot of stuff on the night, we were told the Twitter handle, the hashtag and some interesting stuff about the top scores ever amongst other things.

I have a memory like a sieve so I instantly forgot everything, I’d recommend giving out an information sheet with your key info on it.

It’s also good to give something to attendees that they can take away and photograph, this could be a goody bag or a branded product. Of course, a goody bag will bring you more value as we love to take photos and videos showing what we got but it’s essential that there is something visual in the hand of each blogger when they leave that reminds them of who you are and encourages post-event sharing.

As I used Snapchat to share the story of my night out my images disappeared, if I’d had something to bring home I could have shared more on more permanent social networks.

I will have lots of good memories from the night at GoQuest, it’s a great place and would make a great venue for a team building event or an icebreaker for new acquaintances.