Events Are the New Content: How Solopreneurs Can Get Started

As LifeStarr started to market to solopreneurs, we followed the tried-and-true playbook of creating quality content that would benefit our target audience (in our case, solopreneurs, freelancers, consultants, coaches, and other one-person businesses). We knew that it would start slow and take time to gain traction. That’s the deal with content marketing. But it was taking longer than we had hoped to build a large audience.

Then we discovered a secret.

Maybe it has something to do with the isolation imposed by Covid. Perhaps it’s just because we were targeting people who tend to work alone (although the data disputes this) but creating virtual events has been an amazing way to:

• Help the people we want to help
• Rapidly engage people more deeply
• Learn what else people need from us
• Build out a vibrant Facebook Community
• Quicky grow our list of engaged contacts
• Have a great time doing what we’re doing

The reality is that having a monthly event did everything we hoped great content would do… but faster.

And this can be your reality too. Here's how.

What to Consider for The Event Agenda

It’s important to think through the agenda of your events as this will determine what the result of the event is. I recommend the following:

1. Define the goal of the event first. 
1. Is it educational? You will need to offer classes.
2. Are you helping people network? Plan on breakout sessions with ice-breakers.
3. Brand building? Get some impressive keynote speakers.
2. Decide how much you will charge to attend. Is the event free? Is there a cost? Decide this early on. 
3. If you are having other people speak, you should sign a simple contract that will outline the details.
4. Check for conflicts with the date you are considering. This is especially important for in-person events. I remember one year when HubSpot scheduled the Inbound Conference for election day. Not such a big deal now with early voting but it was then.
5. Think about time zones, especially for virtual events. Are you targeting just the US? Starting at 9:00 AM Eastern is asking our west coast friends to be bright and bushy-tailed at 6:00 AM. International may require staggering session start times or multiple events.
6. Avoid rushing the sessions. It’s tempting to pack as much as possible into the time allotted but it can create a stressful experience for attendees and cause a cascading breakdown if something goes off schedule. If you are having multiple sessions, build in slack time between them.
7. Keep the presenter on schedule. We all know those folks that take more time than they were given. You need to monitor and enforce the schedule.
8. Use surveys and in-person interviews before and after the event. This will give you insight into what they need and how well you met their needs. Net Promoter Scores are a simple way to gauge how you are doing. Be sure to use the exact phrasing of “How likely is it that you would recommend [event name] to a friend or colleague?”
   
   

Finding People to Attend

If you don’t already have a list of people to email or a large social media following, you’re going to need to find some way to engage people to come to your events. One of the best ways to do this is by finding them and reaching out to them. I have had great success using LinkedIn Sales Navigator to identify the right kinds of people and then reach out to them. 

I’ve also had some success using Facebook ads, but this has gotten more expensive recently. Depending on your business, you’ll need to decide how to best engage people to come to your events.

Tools to Host Events

If the event is virtual, you will need to choose a tool to host it. If it is live, you don’t have to have an event management tool, though they can be helpful, particularly if a lot of people will attend. I will focus on virtual events as this is the most likely scenario for most of us these days.

There are several event-hosting tools. Some are virtual only; some are designed for hybrid events (both in-person and virtual). Given that we are solopreneurs, we probably won’t be doing hybrid events but who knows? 

Lower-Cost Event Hosting Tools

The problem here is that most of these tools are expensive. Thank goodness for Zoom. While it lacks some of the advanced functionality of the pricier apps, it’s a solid product that has affordable options as you grow. As of the time of the writing, you can upgrade from the free version with its 40-minute time limit to a $149 per year version that eliminates the time limit and allows up to 100 attendees. You can increase this to 300 attendees for $199 per year.

Another contender that is reasonably affordable is Airmeet. They have a free version for up to 50 attendees. But the next level-up paid version is $500 per MONTH with up to 200 attendees.

Expensive Event Hosting Tools

For a more professional event functionality like multi-track sessions, sponsored lounges, and so on. There are some providers that charge by the event. That’s great if you are doing something annually but, at least from my perspective, the value here is on engaging people on a more regular basis.  For higher-end tools that allow you unlimited events, you start looking at prices starting at $1,250 to $1,500 per MONTH. This is well beyond what most solopreneurs will need, but there are exceptions, so let’s explore.

Some things to look for if you need more advanced event functionality are:

• Ability to sell tickets through the event portal – If you’re paying this much for the technology, you will probably want to charge for at least some events. Integrating this into the event platform will simplify your life.
• Multi-Track Sessions – Have more than one speaker at a time and let attendees build their own agenda.
• Tiered Ticketing – Different tickets with different price points that allow access to different aspects of the event.
• Limit Attendees – If you want to limit the number of tickets available for your event.
• Native Broadcast – Some platforms require Zoom to broadcast the event. This is an additional cost.
• Broadcast Video – This allows you to broadcast a video to a session.
• Post-Event Video on Demand – Give attendees access to recordings of the session post-event.
• Breakout Rooms – Put people into virtual rooms together. Note that Zoom has this functionality at a very low cost.
• Sponsored Virtual Booths and/or Lounges – Charging for tickets isn’t the only way to monetize events. You can potentially sell virtual spaces to companies that want to reach your members.
• Mobile App – This is most important if you plan to host a multi-track in-person event. This would seem to be too large and undertaking for a solopreneur but some of you amaze me constantly so who knows?
• Integration to Your CRM – If your events involve more than a few people, this can be a time-saver.

Things to Watch Out For With Event Hosting Tools

There are some basic things to be aware of with respect to these event-hosting tools.

• Participant Limits -There are limits to the number of participants. Be sure you don’t exceed them, or some people won’t get in.
• Event Time Limits – Some plans have limits on how long the event can be.
  
  

How Solopreneurs Can Get Started Hosting Events

Unless you have a grand vision, I recommend starting with something simple like Zoom and seeing how it goes. You can always move on to more sophisticated tools once you’ve established the value of the event to your attendees and to your business.

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