Planning your event
Consider using Slido to make your events more engaging! Slido is a live Q&A and polling platform that will make your events more interactive. You can use it to crowdsource questions or ideas before/during your meetings, collect feedback in live polls or surveys, and easily run Q&A sessions at your events.
How can you use Slido?
You can open up a meeting with an ice-breaking poll or a few trivia questions, ask for live feedback on the presented topics, and/or run a live Q&A session.
How much does it cost?
Slido is free! You can get started for free here: Slido - Audience Interaction Made Easy . Reach out to @Cassie Mayes if you have questions about a different account type.
Best practices: Slido | Slido Community
Promoting your event
Now that you’ve spent some time building an agenda and securing speakers for your upcoming event, you’ll want to do your best to get the word out! Here are some best practices from our team and your fellow Leaders.
Start promoting your event ASAP! The sooner you get the word out, the sooner members can start registering.
Drive RSVPs to ace.atlassian.com to ensure attendees get automatic reminders before the event.
Create personalized graphics or use photos that users can share on social.
Promote your event URL on sites like Meetup, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn (be sure to follow these best practices from the Atlassian social media team), and specifically call out any trivia, prizes or special guests to build momentum.
Ask your speakers, including Partners, to help promote the event (make it easier by providing them with sample Twitter or LinkedIn copy).
Do some research to see if there are any other tech, agile or productivity groups that would be willing to share with their distribution lists.
If you have one, post a thread in your chapter’s online group with info about speakers, prizes, etc. Otherwise, post a thread in the product collection related to your event topic (sample here).
Share the details in the #community-events channel in the Leader Slack.
Encourage your members to share the invites with their colleagues.
Read this great list of best practices from Leader Brittany Joiner.
Have you used any strategies that were particularly successful? Share with your fellow Leaders in the private Leader collection!
How to leverage your quarterly social media budget
As we enter another year of virtual-first events, we want to ensure we’re providing the tools and resources you need to successfully promote and execute them. As such, we’re now offering a dedicated quarterly budget to help each ACE chapter capture RSVPs on social media!
The budget per chapter is $100 USD, and you may use whatever social site makes the most sense for your region. This budget is in addition to the up to $15 per person reimbursement we offer.
Here are some general pro tips from our own lifecycle marketer, Bianca:
This budget can be used for one ad or multiple ads
Facebook will give you the most bang for your buck; LinkedIn tends to be more expensive for smaller reach
You should begin promoting the ad 10-14 days prior to your event
Traffic and website visits are always the objective
For in-person events, a 1-hour radius from the location is ideal; for virtual, consider a 100km/60-mile radius
Ads in the same language that the event is hosted in tend to perform better
Assume people will be reading your copy on mobile, so keep it short and sweet
“Single image” will likely always be the best format for your ads (vs. carousel, video, etc.)
Calls to action that speak to exclusivity perform better (for example: “Get Access” vs. “Sign Up”)
Graphic to use for promotion
If you are setting up a Facebook event to be promoted for the first time:
Start with this step-by-step guide (you’ll need to set up a page for your chapter; naming convention should be [City] Atlassian Community Events)
Create your event (read all of the pro tips under #1 on this list)
Promote your event via ads (read all of the pro tips under #3 on this list)
Ensure you always set a “lifetime budget,” so as not to exceed $100
If you are setting up a LinkedIn event to be promoted for the first time:
Create a LinkedIn page for your chapter (naming convention should be: [City] Atlassian Community Events)
In the right-hand navigation, you’ll see a box that says “Manage,” and underneath that “Events”
Click the “+” sign
Fill in the details of your event
Follow the steps for promoting your event here
Ensure you always set a “lifetime budget,” so as not to exceed $100
To receive reimbursement for these promotions, simply submit a ticket in the Leader JSD. We do ask that you use the budget within the three months (vs. saving it), so that we may keep our finance team happy.
Lastly, please always feel empowered to ask questions and provide feedback to your Community Manager around what ’s working and what’s not, and any suggestions you have for improving this process!
Event ideas and sample agendas
To make hosting your next virtual event a little easier, we've packaged up everything you'll need in a tidy little kit. In it you’ll find suggested copy for social media posts, a ready-made agenda, prompts for discussions, and much more. We would love to hear what’s great and what’s missing from this kit, so please share any feedback when you have it.
Event-in-a-card examples: Atlassian unplugged: get the most out of Jira and Confluence mobile and Winning at distributed teamwork with Confluence and Trello
Icebreakers
The time machine: "If you had a time machine, to what year would you travel and why?" (this will give you a unique perspective on your audience)
The bucket list: “What’s on your bucket list?” or “What’s the most exciting thing you’ve crossed off your bucket list?”