May 29, 2019
by DR. MARK T. WADE
#012: How Do I Come Up With My Summit Idea or Topic?
How Do I Come Up With My Summit Topic Or Idea
What happens if someone has already done your summit idea, and does your avatar even matter when it comes to the theme? Plus why the problem determines the speakers who you recruit?
All this and more on today's episode of the Virtual Summit Podcast.
Episode 001: https://podcast.virtualsummits.com/001
Show notes: https://podcast.virtualsummits.com/012
Success Of Your Virtual Summit Starts With:
✅Coming up with your idea, theme & topic are super important and vital to the success of your Virtual Summit.
✅Must be specific & niched down
✅Most common mistake is going to general or trying to make the title sound sexy - this confuses the audience.
✅Should be focused on solving problems - one problem specifically
Determining Your Avatar
✅You know the problem - you should know your ideal attendee - who is it you are building this summit for?
Example: Digital Dementia Summit
✅Our avatar was middle age (35+ years old) women
✅ 2 kids
✅Household Income of over 6 figures
✅Priority is her families health
✅Aspirations for her children to have a long, successful, and fulfilled life
***Note: We probably could have even gotten more specific but still that is better than saying “women, or even women with kids”.
What Do We Learn About The Avatar
✅We get to know the person
✅We know their habits
✅We know their concerns
✅We know their goals
✅We see how she thinks about her children
✅We see what matters most to her
✅We can relate and talk directly with her
Determining Your Problem
What Is The Importance Of Determining Your Problem
✅This CANNOT be generic or a minor problem.
✅This MUST be an acute problem that your avatar is actively searching for help with.
✅Example: if you are a small business owner who needs to increase their income, you cannot just target increasing their income.
✅Be specific
✅What exactly are they searching for in that topic
✅They could be looking for customer lifetime value
✅Maybe they are looking to add a high ticket product to increase their income
✅Maybe they are looking to decrease overhead & expenses to give them more of the money they are making.
***These are two very different themes under the same general problem-if you aren't clear on what you are targeting, you will end up turning them all away. If the person is trying to reduce expenses and you are talking about bringing on a sales manager to increase a high ticket sales funnel you’ve lost them.
Determining Your Theme
Now for the theme I like to use a framework to narrow this down & give myself a better understanding of where I am going with my summit.
It goes Main Category ➡️ Sub Category ➡️ Speciality ➡️ Niche
Example:
✅Main Category - If you are a marketer
✅Sub category - This could be Facebook, Google, or Email marketing. For this example, let’s go with Facebook Marketing.
✅Speciality: You probably have multiple even under that sub category. But you need to pick one. So for example with Facebook marketing, we could have messenger marketing, or lead generation, or retargeting, or even group growth, etc. So pick one speciality.
✅Niche: It doesn’t have to be quite as specific as that but definitely can be! You could go with solopreneurs, or podcasters. Or more specifically you could go with a male podcaster focusing on selling courses. Your call.
***This helps you narrow down your theme. So now you know who the summit is going to be for and about Facebook Messenger Marketing for Podcasters trying to sell courses.
***Much more targeted & specific. This will help with your branding, the speaker recruitment, and what the summit is about.
Doing Your Research
At this point we want to spend some time doing some research into other summits that have been done! Specifically others done on your topic or theme.
✅Don't panic and get worried - I tell my students who are in my Online Training programs, there is a 50/50 chance someone has done a summit similar to yours - unless of course you are a super awesome specific niche like stamp collecting or microbiology
✅It’s ok if someone has done something similar, that is what we are checking into.
✅This is good - it means there is social proof which means that there is a need for the topic you are creating.
✅We are going to get super specific so yours will be different when we are done.
✅The last thing we want is to do a launch only to find out after that it has already been done!
✅You want to know ahead of time if your summit is going to be worth your time and energy.
✅If you find a summit similar to yours:
- How long ago was it run. (Was it recent or 5 years ago.)
- Who was their avatar.
✅Find all the summits on a similar or same topic and write those down.
✅Look and see where the gap is.
- What is missing?
- Where is the niche that you can fill and solve?
- Can you target a different avatar or specialty or even sub category?
✅If it is different enough (niched down enough like it should be) then you can actually look to having that other summit host become an ally, and have them speak or support your summit. Especially since you know his list is going to be your target avatar anyways.
Determining Your Sessions/Solutions
✅You can now identify the specific solutions, topics or information that your audience will need to solve that original problem.
Example: If the problem was a podcaster who sells courses not knowing how to generate leads & sales from Facebook Messenger Marketing you will need:
- A session on what is messenger marketing.
- A session on copy writing for messenger communications
- A session on frequency
- A session on reach
- A session on lead generation
- A session on Conversions, etc.
Example: The problem you are solving was like ours, 35 year old woman with 2 kids & her problem is she can see her kids are having behavioral changes because they are on their phones & computers too much.
✅Our solutions would be:
- Proper tech habits
- Setting phone time limits
- Creating a tech free family space
- Understanding the neurologic consequences of tech addiction, etc.
✅These solutions that you are mapping out, these now become your sessions. The great part is this now maps out exactly who you need to reach out to as speakers for these sessions.
***Now we could go even deeper and more finite on these topics, but for this episode of choosing your theme and topic we have walked through the proper way of narrowing it down & ensuring you minimize any overlap or issues.
***Follow these steps and you are well on your way to success. If you want additional insights into this process you can grab some of my free resources in the show notes at Podcast.VirtualSummits.com/012
Now go and get started building out your next virtual summit!!
Table of Contents
Steps you can use to create your topic:
✅ Determining Your Avatar
✅ Determining Your Problem
✅ Solidifying the Summit Theme
✅ Thorough research on your topic
✅ Finding the Right Speakers
LINKS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE
🔗 Virtual Summit Podcast Episode 01
OTHER WAYS TO ENJOY THIS POST:
