If you’ve ever hosted or attended a professional event, you know it can be challenging to find the time to successfully network with your fellow attendees. You likely also are aware that networking is one of the major reasons people attend professional events. An event that allows participants to make plenty of meaningful connections leaves a much more positive impression on its guests than an event that doesn’t. Simply put, if you want your guests to enjoy your event, to have fond memories of their experience, and to return to future events, you need to make networking a priority. This post will outline a few of our favorite tips to ensure that your guests leave with a smile on their face and many new connections.

 Before your guests arrive

• Research your guests. Strategize about who should meet and what would be the ideal networking connections. Create assigned seating or round tables based on shared industry, job titles, interests, etc. You can even ask each participant to send in a bio, and then use that information to create individualized lists of the other attendees that participants should seek out during the event. Your guests will make more productive connections and you’ll save time during the event with more efficient networking strategies.

• Make a group on LinkedIn or your preferred form of social media. Invite all of your participants to the group, and encourage them to write a post about themselves and connect with other members of the group. This group will give your participants a head start on networking. It will also act as a directory for all the connections they made and all of the people with whom they did not have the opportunity to connect.

As soon as your guests arrive

• We cannot stress this enough: name tags. Even the most talented networker will not remember the names of all 500 participants at your conference. Do everyone a favor and insist on name tags.

 After your guests get settled

• Get started with some icebreakers. Provide structured questions that get people talking about what inspires them or what they have in common. For example: “What do you hope to learn from this event?”, “Share your biggest success”, or even “Where is the place in the world you’d most like to travel and why?” Encouraging people to talk about topics that interest them will create more meaningful connections than typical small talk.

Throughout your event

• Be conscious of networking throughout every step of the process. A speaker that likes to say, “Turn to the person next to you and discuss…”, can just as easily insist that participants find someone they haven’t spoken to yet.  

• If you’ve done the research to match up your attendees based on shared interests, go a step further and schedule a time for your guests to meet with an assigned partner. Even building a 20 minute meet up into your schedule will allow for hundreds of valuable connections.

 Free time

• Unstructured free time allows for increased flexibility and a number of other benefits, but to maximize networking opportunities, it should not be the only type of networking you are building into the event.

• Coffee break idea: Before you release your attendees for their coffee break, give them a challenge. For example, encourage them to introduce themselves to three new people and learn a fun fact about each of them. After the coffee break, ask for a few volunteers to share the favorite fact that they heard. This is a great competition for your shy guests, and ensures that your outgoing attendees will seek out new connections.

• Happy hour / dinner idea: Assign teams randomly or based on your prior research. Create a trivia game and offer an exciting prize to the winning team. There’s little that connects a group of people more than competition and nostalgia, and trivia has both. 

After the event

• Post in your LinkedIn group to thank everyone for attending (and to remind your guests about the group!).

• Invite your guests to add their contact information to a shared Google Doc in order to continue their networking after the event.

• Write an article or make a video with highlights from the event. Post it on social media and encourage your attendees to like and share. Sharing the success of the event with their network will ensure that you benefit from increased interest and participation at your next event!

To make sure your next event is a success, the best connection you can make is with Wizard Studios. Contact us today to get started!