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Event Tips & Guides

Your Complete Guide to Compete

By Lexi Godfrey February 26, 2021 14 min read

Cadence’s Compete feature is designed to unilaterally increase audience engagement for your events. This guide will give you all the tools you need to set your event apart with friendly competition!

What is Compete?

Overview

It’s proven that friendly competition can increase productivity and engagement for employees. Cadence’s Compete feature bottles that magic up while making the backend process as easy and accessible as possible. There’s a lot to know before you get started, but don’t worry – we’ve got all the best tips & tricks for our Compete feature detailed below! ⬇️

Compete as a Menu Item

When you first access the Compete menu item, you’ll find that it has 3 preset sub-menu items: Competitions, Leaderboard, and Teams. Each of these menu items can be edited to be visible to everyone or only certain designated people.

  • Competitions – This sub-menu item is where attendees will be able to access all of the active competitions your event is hosting, should they have visibility access.
  • Leaderboard – This is where attendees will navigate to in order to keep track of the progress of each active competition. Points are automatically tallied up here, so your attendees will always have a live snapshot of who is leading in your competitions.
  • Teams – This sub-menu item is where the admin of the event can create different teams based on how they’d like to set up the event’s competitions. Attendees can navigate to this item to view other teams’ members, create team slogans, and more. Currently, the admin is the only one that can designate attendees to specific teams. While teams is an amazing resource, it’s also not mandatory – you can leave your attendees to fend for themselves, too! 😜

Different Types of Competitions

The first thing to know about Cadence’s Compete feature is that we actually have five different types of competitions to choose from. You read that right – five. So, there’s something for everybody! Learn more about each type below:

  • Survey 📝
    • Create a survey for your attendees to complete to win. Award points for correctly answered questions and bonus points for passing the survey, and/or answering the quickest.
  • Appointment 🕑
    • Incentivize attendees to connect with sponsors/companies by creating a competition to set the most appointments during an event.
  • Leads 💸
    • Increase ROI for everyone and get your attendees excited to pursue leads with a little dose of healthy competition. Set points for each lead. Whomever collects the most leads wins the competition!
  • Live Feed 📲
    • Worried about your attendees missing out on forming genuine connections with each other? Create a competition that encourages attendees to post, comment, or like things in the Live Feed to relate to other audience members. You can even set each action for a different amount of points to further incentivize attendees to get involved.
  • Custom 🖋️
    • Got a different idea? The possibilities are endless as a Super Admin with Cadence! You can work with our Customer Success and Development team to create another sort of competition you’d like to see at your event.

Benefits of Compete

  1. Increased Engagement 👀
    • If you’re worried about your event’s engagement levels, competition is a great tool to use to encourage attendee participation and interest. Competition provides variety, increased productivity, skill improvement, and general camaraderie!
  2. Insight/Data Collection 📊
    • While competition is great for creating a little extra fun, it also provides event organizers the opportunity to learn more about their attendees. You can collect insights such as knowledge retention, return on investment, engagement with partners/sponsors, and so much more.
  3. Connection 🤝
    • Some friendly competition can not only encourage attendee participation but can also result in long-term genuine connections! Create teams of people that would otherwise not know each other, encourage attendees to reach out to sponsors or partners to make connections, foster friendship in your Live Feed, and so much more.
  4. Motivation 💡
    • Look, we’ll level with you – everyone loves a good prize. So, give the people what they want! Create a little motivation with competitions that attendees are excited to participate in to prove their skills and win some recognition.
  5. Customization ✏️
    • With Cadence’s Compete feature, you are beholden to no one. You are free to create a competition as custom as you’d like! Hit the nail on the head every time to meet attendees, sponsors and even organizers’ needs with your competition.

Best Practices for Organizers

    • Design Competitions to Align with Your Brand
      • The Cadence Compete feature is fully customizable, and you ought to take advantage of that! Even your competitions can fit your brand narrative and event theme, so that your attendees will always have an unforgettable experience.
    • Keep Them Short & Sweet (Surveys especially)
      • Keep your attendees’ interest piqued with fast-paced, engaging competitions that cut straight to the chase. This way, you’ll be sure people don’t get lost on the way and are more likely to fully participate.
    • Use Picture/Gif Reactions
      • Everyone loves a good meme! Keep things fun and lighthearted with some gif action during your competitions, instructions, or even gameplay.

  1. Underestimate the power of a reward
    • Your attendees need a little motivation – keep them interested with prizes or awards that they can show off to their peers!
  2. Create too many Competitions at once
    • Too many competitions running at one time can create confusion, discontentment, and even lower engagement. Be sure to pick and choose what is most important to your event and create competitions that meet those goals. Our Customer Success team recommends a maximum of 5-7 competitions at any one point, so attendees can still focus on the event’s main happenings.
  3. Make directions too confusing or too long
    • If your instructions are too long or too vague, you’re going to lose engagement right off the bat. Make sure to explain the competition’s point clearly and succinctly to ensure as much engagement as possible.

How to Design Your Competitions

  1. Evaluate which Competition is Right for You 🔍
    • As aforementioned, you don’t want to lose the attention of your attendees or throw in too many competitions that will clutter your event. Take the time to really evaluate the needs of your event.
      1. Do you want to collect insights on material presented in sessions? Surveys is for you.
      2. Want people to really get to know each other and form lasting friendships? Create a competition in the Live Feed.
      3. Interested in maxing out return on investment for your sponsors or partners? Get people involved in an Appointments or Leads competition.
      4. None of the above? Go custom and provide an experience your attendees will never forget.
  2. The point is to tailor your competitions to your audience’s needs. Hone in on what you want your event to be remembered for and create a competition that supports that.
    • Questions/Wording
      • Keep your brand’s attitude with custom wording and/or questions in your competitions so your attendees never feel unclear with your narrative.
    • Imagery
      • Choose images that perfectly reflect your brand mood and tone.
    • Competition Restrictions
      • When creating your competition, make sure to allocate whether you want the count to be a total or unique to each user. For instance, if you have a live feed competition, do you want Miss Posting Polly to get points every time she posts, or do you want it to count just once even though she’s posted 12 times? Just things to think about during your customization process!
    • Data/Insights
      • Make sure you’re gathering the most highly tailored audience insights that will elevate attendees’ experiences and allow you to intimately understand your event’s impact.
  3. Create Teams that Make Sense 👯
    • Create an experience full of friendly competition and connection with teams. Attendees will get to know new people, form relationships, and branch out in a way that sets your event apart from other events time and time again.

Return on Investment

Ensure that your event never suffers from low engagement ever again with the addition of Cadence Compete. See connections skyrocket, knowledge retention soar, and motivation climb in a way that attendees will never forget. Everyone loves a little taste of glory – and you can give it to them!

Ready, Set, Go!

Okay, young grasshoppers, we’ve bestowed to you all of our Compete feature knowledge. Go ahead and give it your all 🎉. But don’t worry, if you need a little help along the way, we’re always here for you! You can reach out to the Customer Success Team in the Knowledge Center.

Lexi Godfrey
Lexi Godfrey
Lexi is a Content Marketing Manager at Cadence. She loves crafting strong brand messaging, and her Mean Girls meme game is strong #grool. Her dream event is a surprise party for herself, and she never gets tired of listening to Yacht Rock - it's 5 o'clock somewhere!
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Lexi is a Content Marketing Manager at Cadence. She loves crafting strong brand messaging, and her Mean Girls meme game is strong #grool. Her dream event is a surprise party for herself, and she never gets tired of listening to Yacht Rock - it's 5 o'clock somewhere!