HN Explorer

Ask HN: How to reach out to freelancers for conference?

7 points by mgkimsal ↗ HN
I'm organizing indieconf.com - a conference for freelance web professionals - and am wondering how I should best reach out to the community. I've been using buysellads on various freelance-oriented blogs/sites, using google adwords, and some other approaches, but am afraid I'm reaching somewhat limited audiences.

Yes, this is somewhat of a plug, but there's also a lot of wisdom and input here, and probably the majority of people reading this aren't my target anyway (likely employed, not freelance). Ideally getting input now is better than getting it a month after the conference.

What techniques would you suggest for reaching web freelancers? Also, I'm finalizing the session/speaker list over the next few days - what topics would you expect to see at a conference like this?

Thanks.

7 comments

[ 2.1 ms ] story [ 31.2 ms ] thread
pwim
To organize a successful conference, you need support from the community. Why do you need to buy ads on these freelance blogs and sites? If your conference is truly a great resource, those sites should be promoting your conference on their own. Perhaps you need to talk directly to them?
mgkimsal
Good point, except some (many) simply do not make any means of contact possible beyond public twittering, and others don't respond :)

Many of the speakers are already promoting this themselves (which is great), but as this is the first event, I'm looking for as many ways as possible to spread the word. The ones I can reach out to I've made efforts to and will continue to do so.

Thanks for the feedback/input.

RobGR
Talk to law firms that provide services to freelancers, they may sponsor you. Also reach out to co-working spaces.
mgkimsal
Have done that - we've only got one in the area up until last week - a second just opened and I'll be hitting them up. Thanks!
il
You're in luck- web developers are a very easy audience to target online due to the wealth of content aimed at them. Stop screwing around with niche stuff like BuySellAds and get into some serious high volume media buys, especially on tutorial sites, JavaScript libraries Jquery plugins etc. You can also try big ad networks tech verticals, TribalFusion's is pretty good. Feel free to email me if you have more specific questions.
msmithstubbs
Lanyrd, a web app for tracking conference just launched.

It's new, probably still has a limited audience, but it can't hurt to add your event.

http://lanyrd.com

I would also suggest contacting meet up groups in your area (web, design, whatever -- any topic freelancers would attend) and asking the organisers to do a small announcement for you, or at least post on the mailing list. The people that attend these events are likely to go to conferences, too.

For a large-ish meetup group you could consider offering a free ticket as a door prize.