Content creation is crucial to enhancing attendee engagement by sparking interest, showcasing event highlights, facilitating more effective networking, and tracking successes from start to finish. All of which can result in increased attendee registration, enhanced satisfaction, and sustained success.

Successful conference content marketing matters because it empowers event planners to:

• Establish the event as an industry authority
• Provide attendees with valuable information
• Promote ongoing engagement before, during, and after the conference
• Polish the event’s reputation in the process.

With your conference goals and objectives established, you can expect to invest a considerable amount of time on content development. This is where event technology solutions and strategies play a crucial role, as they provide tools and methods to streamline and enhance your content creation process.

Developing Your Content Marketing Strategy

To reach your destination, in other words, to achieve your conference goals, you need a well-planned approach for your arrival. Along the way, you need to ensure that every point of your content plan points in the same direction.

A well-defined content plan and strategy for your conference is not just a map; it’s a compass. It’s the tool you need to know you’re going to reach your destination and the actual steps you’ll need to take to arrive.

Speaker Selection Process

Speakers are an integral part of your content marketing strategy, which means your team needs to check the following boxes to make the most of every speaker who lends their voice to your event.

1. Feature a diverse roster of speakers. Diversity and inclusion apply to all industries and should be reinforced at events, regardless of their size, scope, or theme.

2. Establish a straightforward process for speaker evaluation and selection.  Your team will thank you, and you will undoubtedly attract stronger speakers as a result.

3. Create a speaker selection committee. They will identify key criteria for speakers and recruit them with greater precision, relative to your event’s goals and budget realities.

4. Capitalize on technology to call for speakers. This is the no-brainer box to check because enlisting software support will take many of these tasks off your list almost immediately.

5. Leverage software. Collect session and abstract submissions, review the content, organize, and accept all on a simple and customizable step-by-step interface.  In other words, no more manually reviewing, compiling, and scoring speaker submissions.

6. Attract a larger pool of speakers. Utilize event technology software and assign your team to rate the sessions, allowing you to quickly decide which ones to feature at your conference.

7. Rely on speakers to help market your event. Offer attendees a photo-op with a celebrity speaker as an incentive to register early.

8. Sell raffle tickets for VIP opportunities with your keynote speaker. Offer lower prices to those who register before a specific date to drive interest, increase registration, and provide your budget with a slight boost.

With a solid speaker strategy in place, you need to focus on creating a content calendar that includes deadlines for submissions and targeted publishing dates.

Content Marketing Calendar

Even the most sought-after speakers will only get you so far. You need to create content that engages your audience from start to finish and inspires your attendees to register —and register again.

9. Create content that pulls its own weight. In other words, your content should do some serious heavy lifting on your behalf by connecting with your attendees and then motivating them to take action; in this case, registering. Once registered, however, you want them to engage with your content, which is why you need the right content and lots of it.

10. Present a variety of content types. This will satisfy ever-shortening attention spans and the reality of disparate learning styles. Your content calendar should include email, blog posts, newsletters, podcasts, videos, and webinars.

11. Repurpose your content. This is another plea to make your content work for you, and all it takes is just a little imagination. Once you get the hang of it, there will be no stopping you. For instance, excerpt a quote or statistic from a blog post, use an intuitive design platform, like Canva, and create a social post that can be pushed to Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, and X. The same goes for video, which can be shared on social media as a live feed or highlight reel.

Incorporating Educational Content into Your Content Calendar

Once you feel confident in managing and maximizing your content calendar, it’s time to integrate educational content to establish industry authority, increase excitement about your event, and drive registrations. The more educational content you include, the better you demonstrate credibility, which engenders trust among your attendees.

While educational content encourages attendees to register, it also has the potential to maintain and strengthen connections after the event, serving as a valuable source of learning materials. Curate the right educational content for your next event by considering the following tasks to help succeed.

12. Demonstrate expertise. Establish the event as a credible and authoritative source within a field or industry.

13. Connect with the audience. Focus on their interests, challenges, and questions to increase event registrations.

14. Highlight the tangible benefits. Highlight key takeaways that attendees can expect, emphasizing the educational opportunities available at the conference.

15. Empower anticipation. Generate excitement and anticipation among the target audience, encouraging attendance and participation in the event.

16. Encourage sustained engagement. Serve as a valuable resource post-conference, offering content that attendees can reference and share, thereby keeping them engaged with the conference brand and community.

17. Highlight speaker expertise. Conduct interviews with your speakers, encouraging them to share not only their wisdom, but also human-factor anecdotes about their personal and professional path.

18. Package highlights into easily digestible content bites. Examples include social media posts, infographics, blog posts, newsletter highlights, and short emails.

Bottom line: great content, structured by a strong content calendar, results in a better event that is easier to market. And the sooner you start, the better. That’s why we’re about to add event previews to your event content marketing to-do list.

Powerful Previews

If your event marketing goal this year is to increase attendee registration, we cannot overstate the value of event previews. When done correctly, event previews energize your event, specifically by creating can’t-miss excitement within your audience.

Hook them with an event preview and continue harnessing their excitement by rolling out more previews in different formats. Your objectives here are:

19. Craft compelling event previews. Showcase a mix of storytelling and visual elements that result in the same thing:

• Audience engagement. If you take the time to imagine event previews, each one should successfully build anticipation and excitement, thereby increasing attendee registration well in advance of the first day.

20. Roll out a variety of event previews. Include a robust blend of the following:

• Traditional teasers and teaser videos 
• Countdowns 
• Visual teasers 
• Behind-the-scenes glimpses
• Interactive content
• Testimonials and reviews 
• Speaker or performer highlights
• Interactive social media stories
• User-generated content 
• Exclusive offers 
• Email marketing campaigns 
• Community building 

With all the focus on driving engagement before your event, we would be remiss if we didn’t emphasize the flip side of that coin, which is marketing your event and connecting with attendees after it’s over.

Post-Event Marketing Efforts

Effective content marketing at your event includes significant effort after everyone has gone home and all is said and done. (Spoiler alert: it’s not actually done.)

21. Commit to engagement. Do not let your engagement efforts end just because the event is over. Content must still be created, attendees must be communicated with, and a buzz created well in advance of upcoming opportunities. Keep your attendees connected after the event so they can join you at the next one.

Pull from this list (as many as possible) and load up your content calendar with as much post-event content as pre-event:

• Event recap videos 
• Detailed event highlights blog post 
• Speaker and performer interviews 
• Attendee testimonials 
• Interactive webinars or Q&A sessions 
• Photo galleries 
• Infographics and visual summaries 
• White papers and reports 
• Thank-you messages 
• Feedback surveys 
• Teasers for upcoming events 
• Community building 

22. Remind attendees of the event’s key takeaways. Use your content to summarize key information that attendees will associate with value from your event.

23. Celebrate success. Showcase everything that made the event successful to clarify its impact and value to anyone unable to attend. They will be there next time!

24. Announce upcoming events. There is nothing wrong with posting event content that promotes your next event. Your attendees will want to be updated on future opportunities, and this also allows you to tap into new audiences who have not yet experienced your events.

25. Ask for and accept criticism. To determine where and how to improve, you must ask your attendees for their honest feedback, which can be easily collected via a survey, questionnaire, or online poll.

Integrating badge scanners into your conference and trade‑show workflow not only accelerates check‑in and lead retrieval but also delivers the real‑time data you need to make smarter, more impactful decisions. 

By streamlining attendee tracking and automating follow‑up processes, you’ll free your team to focus on what truly matters—building relationships and driving engagement.