How to Increase Networking in Events: Strategies and More

Are you looking for event networking strategies to drive engagement in your next event? 

Gone are those days when events were all about listening to speakers or attending sessions. Today, attending an event means building meaningful connections and sharing knowledge & experience. Events become lifeless without networking opportunities. 

Most people attend events to learn new things, share knowledge, and connect with people who are useful to their business. In fact, attendees often judge the success of an event based on the networking opportunities they got and utilized in them. 

If you are struggling to increase networking in your events, we are here to help. We have shared some effective event networking strategies in this article that perfectly answer how to increase networking in events. 

Before diving into the event networking strategies, let us discuss the importance of networking in your events. 

The importance of networking in events

1. Increasing brand awareness

Networking allows attendees to meet and communicate with others in an event with whom they can share experiences, display their products or services or even initiate a collaboration. This creates an amazing platform for businesses to showcase and promote their products to a wider audience and spread brand awareness. 

2. Building professional relationships 

When attendees and other event participants get the opportunity to meet with people with relevant interests or professional backgrounds, it becomes easier for them to build professional relationships that are crucial for growth. 

3. Encouraging collaboration

An event brings professionals with different skill sets under the same roof. They can discuss business opportunities, promote products, and even collaborate for better sales and exposure. This ultimately increases growth and drives success for the brands that collaborate. 

4. Sharing knowledge and experience

Company owners, experts, specialists, and keynote speakers interact with attendees or listeners, share their past experience, and discuss best industry practices in various event sessions that help attendees learn new things about the industry. 

5. Fostering growth

You might be surprised to know that event networking is also important for personal growth for everyone who is associated with it. Interacting with a diverse audience always develops confidence, improves communication skills, and helps understand the importance of networking. 

6. Staying updated with industry trends

Keeping yourself updated with the latest industry trends is essential for business growth. Talking to people in an event through networking or attending interactive sessions lets you discover new trends and useful business insights. 

Now that you know about the importance of networking in an event, let us discover some event networking strategies to increase networking in your next event. 

Event networking strategies 

Here are some useful event networking strategies that you must use to increase networking in your next events. 

1. Speed networking 

You can adopt speed networking for your next events. Speed networking is a practice in which individuals have one-on-one conversations with multiple people within a short period of time, each of which ranges from 2 minutes to 20 minutes. It is one of the fastest ways to meet with a lot of people in an event for which it is called speed networking. It allows people to share their contact and product details with a lot of people.

2. Create buzz before the event 

An event becomes successful when like-minded people meet or find themselves easily. In an ideal event setup, your event participants should find out networking opportunities just after completing the registration process.  

You can create an online community of your registered attendees to kickstart the networking process. Besides networking, such communities also help create excitement among attendees about the event. 

3. Develop a solid networking strategy 

Sometimes, unintentional networking may help attendees create lasting business connections, but your attendees will love it if you have a solid well well-planned event networking strategy to help them meet the right people in your event. Right from breakout sessions to polls and debates, you can utilize various event networking strategies to encourage participants to communicate. 

4. Use branded event badges 

Event badges are nothing new in this industry, but using paper business cards for networking is certainly old-fashioned. Digital badges are used in modern events. Digital badges help attendees connect through their event app without hassle. 

With WordPress tools like WP Event Manager’s event badges addon, you can generate on-demand event badges for your attendees in your preferred badge designs. 

5. Explore creative networking ideas

Considering your attendees' tastes and preferences, you can add some creative and playful event networking activities to your event as a useful event networking strategy. Here it is to be mentioned that speed networking is also a part of it. In such activities, digital badges play a great role in accessing attendee details and ensuring that like-minded people participate in the activity.

6. Embrace intelligent matchmaking 

Matchmaking is an important aspect of events, and it is nothing like online dating. Event matchmaking lets people build meaningful business connections in an event. The best way to initiate matchmaking is to use the right tools for it. We recommend a tool like the AI-powered matchmaking software from WP Event Manager. It is an exclusive feature of the Registration addon that suggests meaningful and relevant matches to your registered attendees. With this feature, your attendees avoid random and unnecessary conversations at your event and connect with only those who really matter to their business.

Wrapping up 

We hope that the event networking strategies mentioned in this article will help you boost networking opportunities in your next events and also drive engagement and attendee satisfaction.

Use the right tools like the Registration addon from WP Event Manager to automate the process and make it smooth and fast.