The connections people build before, during and after events are an invaluable takeaway. And a successful event experience where everyone has a positive experience provides a lasting halo for your organization.
Multiple platforms offer event and community management; some offer both. Selecting the right solution is a matter of understanding not only what the platforms do, but what your organization needs.
Community-first platforms create a hub for your people around a common topic—technology, creative pursuits or fans of a particular show or team. The community is where members share information and encourage each other in that common interest.
While many community apps have event functionality built in, the community is the focal point, with the event being a gathering—in person, online or hybrid—for the community. Hivebrite checks the boxes on this, and it’s the platform Smart Meetings uses for our community.
Event platforms are focused on the time-boxed event itself, or multiple events. Community functionality can help foster connection during the event, but the app is primarily built around logistics.
Event apps manage and distribute critical information and can provide rich, actionable data about the event. There’s a long timeline of interactivity here—planning, ticketing, communications during the event and follow-ups. For comparison, we chose Cvent, a robust, feature-packed event management platform.
If you’re a community manager who wants to occasionally create events, you’ll find everything you need built into a community platform.
If you’re an event planner who builds events for multiple communities, you’re more focused on event organization than community engagement. This extends beyond ticketing for one-off events (which many community platforms offer) to features such as vendor and sponsor management, seating charts and deploying the invaluable app that everyone will use during the event.
It’s possible to use both a community platform and an event platform. Many options for integration serve the time-critical needs of events—including the ability to establish connections—while also providing transparent access to your chosen community.
Things to Consider
Understand who your platform is meant to serve. Once you know if your focus is logistics and data for an event or connecting people with common interests, you’ll know if you need a community app, an event app or both.
Consider who will consume what goes into the app—and when. Is it primarily an information exchange for people with common interests, or will the data be distributed for other uses such as sales, future programming or recommendation engines? Do you anticipate they’ll use the app only during the event, or do you want them to return even after the banners are back in storage?
Evaluate your role and who you will work with as you build and maintain the platform. You’ll collaborate with IT to approve and deploy the technology, but once you’re up and running, you will manage the community, create events, run reports on the data your app contains and more. Consider what tasks you’ll own as the project sponsor and primary stakeholder.
Locate your data, including community, event and vendor profiles. Platform developers already have integration solutions for commonly used CRMs (such as Salesforce) and can provide custom services if needed. It’s not an obstacle; it’s a key piece of information to share with your platform provider.
Assess your feature needs. Ticketing, special meals, complex scheduling, vendor-to-attendee messaging, forums with private messaging—consider what exactly you want people to accomplish when they’re logged in. What don’t you need? Don’t overcomplicate the platform with features you won’t use or maintain.
Knowing your goals before choosing a platform will go a long way toward ensuring you invest in something that works in the long run. Event apps and community apps are valuable in different and complementary ways.
Understanding the difference between these apps—and what you want from your chosen platform—can ensure you’re successful in whatever solution you roll out.
