10 Powerful Strategies to Grow Your Conference
Ten Powerful Strategies to Grow Your Conference
Increase Attendance, Submissions (and Revenue)
Growing your conference means accepting more papers. Of course, for this to work you need to have many more submissions. To increase the submissions and visibility – we have come up with 10 strategies that have worked well for our clients - and then we add an extra bonus idea.
Here they are:
1. Get the word out everywhere: Use social media, email lists, and academic networks to spread the news about your conference. Shout it from the virtual mountaintops! You can ask your current attendees and members to share it with their friends, perhaps offering them a discount on their registration if they send a number of emails or social posts.
2. Strength in Numbers: It is time to look at other conferences that are similar and figure out creative ways to work together. Each of you can promote the other’s conferences your past attendees. Find other organizations that are similar and offer to promote each other's activities, in a way to each gain from the increased exposure.
3. Networking & Community Building: Most researchers are really coming for the networking. Highlight all the community building and networking opportunities that you offer, giving them more reasons to submit to your conference versus the competition.
4. Show off your SuperStars: Let everyone know about the well-known speakers and exciting sessions lined up for your conference. If you don’t have it for this year, you can highlight the ones from last year as a sample of what to expect. Give them more reasons to want to attend.
5. Early bird discounts: Give researchers an extra incentive to submit their papers early by offering discounted registration fees or special perks. Who doesn't love a good deal?
6. Make it super-easy to submit papers: Clearly communicate the submission guidelines, formatting requirements, and deadlines to potential authors, making it easier for them to understand and comply with the submission process… and make the process easy.
7. Extend the Deadlines: Extend the submission deadline to allow more time for authors: Consider extending the submission deadline if you notice a lower-than-expected number of submissions, allowing authors additional time to prepare and submit their work.
9. Increase the Awards: Recognize outstanding research by offering awards, certificates, or special mentions for the best papers presented at the conference, incentivizing researchers to submit their work and compete for recognition.
10. Success Stories: Ask your past participants for stories of successes they have had at the conference in years past. This includes people they met, career advancements and other lightbulb moments. People are drawn to good stories. Emphasize these stories in your communications, in your call-for-papers, in your social media posts – as additional reasons why they should submit to YOUR conference.
Bonus Idea #11 11. Greater Visibility. While many conference offer just the opportunity to present and publish in the proceedings, our clients at Underline offer much more. We offer:
- a) A second DOI for the video presentation
- b) We make the videos available to tens of thousands of researchers at the many libraries around the world. This comes with an interface for people to be able to easily contact the presenter and start a collaboration.
- c) We promote individual talks as part of ‘theme collections’
This offers each presenter 10 times the exposure they would have at other conferences. With these fun and friendly strategies, you can enhance the visibility of your conference, attract a larger number of paper submissions, and ensure the success of your scientific event.
About Underline Science Underline Science specializes in Scientific conferences, having produced more than 200 events. We help to produce a smooth and successful, profitable conference. Our aim is to grow your conference and reach. We aim to increase your membership engagement and value to your constituents. We are experts in Audio Video (which we do in-house) and technology, usually one of the largest conference costs. Societies we serve include IEEE, AAAI, ACL, ACM, SEB and many others. Don’t take our word for it, contact our very satisfied repeat clients. Let us introduce you to happy associations we serve who keep coming back for more.
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