Episode 84Jun 5, 2026· 18:58

Replay - How Bloggers Can Benefit From Participating in a Virtual Summit

▸ Show notes from the creator

Should you be promoting your blog in a virtual summit? Yep! Tune in and learn why. More Show Notes From This Episode: What’s up my bloggy friends! I'm slowly updating the show notes for this and every episode of The Bloggy Friends Show. My new home base for all things Bloggy Friends can be found here: https://www.famousashleygrant.com/podcast/ Be sure to follow me on social: Facebook | Instagram | X | LinkedIn | TikTok | YouTube ------------------------------------------------------------------- This podcast is supported by affiliate partnerships. Please check out a few of our partners below: – Start a podcast today here: https://rss.com?via=famous – Create content from your own voice with Castmagic's Suite of AI Tools: https://get.castmagic.io/dcjy15cirnts – Want to help support our show? Buy a girl a drink perhaps? https://ko-fi.com/famousashleygrant – Need content for your podcast or blog? Check out Tools for Motivation! The links above are affiliate links. This means my podcast will receive a small commission if you order through any of them at no additional cost to you. Affiliate commissions are one of the ways my podcast makes money so that I can create episodes free of charge. If you do purchase anything from my links, I sincerely would like to thank you for your support!

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About this episode

Should you be promoting your blog in a virtual summit? Yep! Tune in and learn why. More Show Notes From This Episode: What’s up my bloggy friends! I'm slowly updating the show notes for this and every episode of The Bloggy Friends Show. My new home base for all things Bloggy Friends can be found here: https://www.famousashleygrant.com/podcast/ Be sure to follow me on social: Facebook | Instagram | X | LinkedIn |…

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Full transcript

00:17

What's up, my bloggy friends? Famous Ashley Grant here. And if you have been considering participating in a virtual summit, this is the episode for you. I highly recommend that if you are a blogger and you are trying to get your name out there, consider... doing a virtual summit. I have participated in a virtual summit in the past where I have been a speaker and I've also attended many of them as a guest. And I think that they are the coolest thing that people can use for what a lot of people consider audience jacking or using other people's people to get your audience to grow. And so in this entire episode, we're going to jam on all the things related to virtual summits.

00:56

And I will leave some links in the show notes all about. how you can participate in them, or even start your own, because I think that virtual summits are the next big thing for podcasters and bloggers alike. They have been around for years, but I really see them becoming more and more of a thing in 2024 and beyond. So let's get into it. So virtual summits, they are becoming more popular than ever, especially with more and more people working remotely. This started in the pandemic where people were working from home and still trying to attend events or host host events. And so you may have attended a virtual summit yourself or maybe you've hosted one. And if you have not hosted one or attended one. I at least recommend you check them out. There's a couple that are coming up right now. I know that Podcast Summit is next week at the time of this recording. And there's a bunch of other podcasting summits and, excuse me, a bunch of

01:52

other virtual summits coming up in all kinds of different categories. I mean, they've got them on how to host a summit. They've got blogging summits. They've got so many different virtual summits. And I bet you if you were to type in whatever it is you're into and virtual summit, you'd probably find some. I have seen them for doctor's office. offices. I've seen them for lawyers. I've seen them for a whole bunch of niches. And I just think that they're a very cool way to get access to a bunch of different people in an industry and learn more about what your industry is about. And it's just a great way to educate yourself on any different niche.

02:27

So virtual summits are a great way to connect with customers and increase your bottom line. And best of all, they usually cost. a lot less, like up to 90 % less than what an in -person conference or expo would cost to put on. So they're great for almost any niche as long as your customers can access the internet. They can be great for coaches. They can be great for consultants, online marketers, small business owners. You get the idea. And as a bonus, you can use your recorded virtual summit for future marketing and sales.

02:57

And I've seen some people actually build entire businesses on virtual summits. So what they'll do is they'll invite a bunch of people to talk on a topic. they will sell tickets to this summit. And sometimes they'll give away free tickets just to get you an entry point and to get your email address. And then they'll sell a discounted version of the ticket so you can have access to all of the recordings and notes and all the things from the virtual summit. And maybe they'll sell it at a low price point, like $47. Or if you want lifetime access, they'll sell it for $99 or whatever the number may be. So they give you the free access. Let me try that again. They give you free access in exchange for your email address. And then that email address is shared with all of the speakers. And so it's a great way to build an email list really, really quickly for someone who is brand new or trying to get

03:49

their name out there, trying to build an audience. And then all of this amazing content can either go into a membership site or it can be sold at later dates. And if it's not timely, it can be used as like an evergreen sales tool to create. All kinds of different physical, excuse me, can be used to create all kinds of different digital products, including e -books or recordings on the go or private podcasts or all the things.

04:15

There's so many different ways that you can use a virtual summit in your monetization toolkit, as it were. But as with any online activity, you need to have reliable technology to host a virtual summit. You'll want to have all the required hardware, software, services needed to deliver an excellent experience for your audience. And without these essentials, you won't be able to hold your audience's attention. So if you're considering holding your own virtual summit as a blogger, here are a few things that you need to think about. So first of all, to host it yourself, you first need to determine what type of event you want it to be. There are so many different styles of virtual summits, and each one has its own unique benefits and features. So you first have to decide which one is right for your audience or if you should create a new style entirely.

04:59

Here are a couple of different examples of the most popular virtual summit formats. The first one is mastermind summits. Now, mastermind summits bring together a small group of people to discuss a single topic. And it's both educational and inspirational and often very interactive between all of the participants. And after hosting one, you'll be. probably planning several mastermind summits throughout the year for your customers so that they can gain access to more experts in their field of choice. The second one is a product launch summit. This event is where you bring together minds from different industries to discuss a single subject and at the same time launch your latest product. A good example of this is probably podcast movement. Though they are known for doing an actual in -person conference, what a lot of people don't know is that they also sell access. to all of the recordings from

05:50

the conference. And in a way, that's considered a virtual summit. So they're talking about all the various aspects of podcasting. And that's like the unique, unified theme that is bringing all these people together. But they don't just talk about one aspect of podcasting. They talk about monetization. They talk about building an audience, building a community. They talk about how to market it, all the things. And so that is what a product launch summit would look like. And although some companies have taken it further, they're usually done in about one day in length. Podcast movement, for example, is usually three to four days. But you can use this as a single product that you are selling.

06:28

So you host the summit and this is your product that you are now selling as your digital product. Another type of summit is called a content distribution summit. You'll want to host something like this if you already have an established audience, but you need to increase your social media presence. This is more like an interactive version of a webinar where you get people engaged with each other. They share content. You share brand updates and behind -the -scenes news. Another summit is live conversations. A live conversation is more of an interactive virtual summit, and it's usually just one person, similar to a webinar where you're hosting for about an hour or so.

07:05

You're doing this with usually just yourself, but sometimes you'll do it with another person in the industry. And you guys just chat and have a live conversation with each other or with the audience. And you can do this for networking, content distribution, connecting with and providing value to your audience. It's very similar to doing a live podcast, but it is considered a form of a virtual summit. So those are the most popular types of virtual summit. But what kind of tools do you need if you want to host one?

07:33

The first thing you need is to get the proper tools, things like your desktop, your laptop, your phones, your tablets, etc. You need to consider your audience numbers and you may find that it's going to be easier to manage chat replies or interactions better on one device than it would be on another. So things that you want to consider are having a high quality microphone. You want your viewers and listeners to be able to hear you clearly. You also need a really fantastic internet connection. This is even more important if you plan on doing your summit live. A lot of virtual summits are hosted and held prior to the actual live event. meaning all of the recordings are handled ahead of time. So whenever it goes live, so to speak, it is actually a pre -recorded audio that is being pushed out as if it were live, but in truth, it was recorded in advance. So if you are going to be doing one that is live, make sure you have a really good

08:27

internet connection. And I'll also say that with this, if you're going to do it live, make sure you do a test run just to make sure you understand all the bells and whistles and how you're going to do it. Do you plan on having more than 50 participants in your virtual summit? You want to probably opt for a wired connection, not Wi -Fi, and test your provider's upload speed before your summit actually begins. The last thing you want is to bring all these people in, especially if they're paying for it to be there live. You don't want them to miss it just because your internet wasn't reliable. Other things that you need is video conferencing software. I've seen people do this with Zoom. I've seen people do this with Riverside. GoToMeeting. And the other one that I've also seen a lot is Virtual Summit Software that is hosted by or not hosted. I'm sorry. It is owned by Dr. Mark Wade. I actually

09:16

had the immense pleasure of interviewing him for Podcasting 101 with RSS .com. And what I will do is I will leave the link to his episode from Podcasting 101 in the show notes, because if you swap out the word podcaster for blogger throughout that entire episode, it's everything you need to hear. It is just a fantastic episode and I highly, highly recommend it. He talks about how if you participate in one, you can build an audience or if you host one, you can basically turn that into a income stream for your business.

09:44

Other things you need if you want to host a virtual summit, emailing software to invite your attendees and to keep up with them as the summit gets closer. You want to remind people about it so they actually show up. You want a landing page for your event and sales page. I've seen people do this with landing or leadpages .com. I've seen people create their own pages on their own websites. Some people who have used programs like Stealth Seminar, they actually have a plugin where you can create a landing page in the software and it links to your domain. That's an option as well. And finally, you want a payment processing of some kind to collect payments for any sales. And Virtual Summit Software is really good at this because they have upsell pages. So whenever you bring people to your landing page to participate in your summit, they can get their free ticket. And then after they get their free ticket, That's when you can

10:34

start offering them options like purchasing the recordings or the downloads or whatever it is that you want to offer your attendees. So when it comes to software, there's a lot of software options available for hosting your virtual summit. I've mentioned a few here already. I've also seen people use things like Facebook or YouTube to host a small virtual summit. But these platforms are pretty basic. And if you want something where you can have like polls. or ask your audience questions and be able to catch up with them in real time, they may not be good enough for, you know, actually being able to engage with your audience. So if you only have about 50 attendees, though, that's not going to be a big deal. You can use a smaller software or, you know, something like that. But many of the other tools that I have mentioned, like, you know, the Virtual Summit software or GoToMeeting and all the other ones.

11:26

they offer some really amazing tools that give the host more control, not only over their content, but also over how they engage with the audience. So what I mean by the control over the content is once you put something on Facebook or you put it on YouTube, you can usually download it in some way, shape, or form using some type of software. When you use a platform like Virtual Summit Software or GoToMeeting or even Zoom, it's much harder to download this content for free. So if you are paywalling it, and you want to make sure that people can't get access to it after the fact, you'll want to use the software that's going to actually, you know, take it offline, so to speak. Even though it's still available to those who have paid for it, the people who haven't will not be able to have access anymore.

12:10

So like I said, one of the best options for hosting a virtual summit is virtual summit software. They offer the best virtual summit and webinar platform on the market right now for the price. And usually if you purchase a a package with them they not only give you the software but they also teach you how to use it how to promote your first summit and all those good things so this software it allows you to create a custom landing page and I'm not sponsored by them in any way shape or form I've just checked out a few of them and this particular one is is really awesome from all the ones that I have seen if I ever host a summit of my own I intend to use this software personally so The cool thing about once you host one is then you can turn it into, like I said, evergreen sales products. And one of the most valuable ways to monetize your virtual summit is by turning it into a product that you

12:59

can sell later. So you record your summit and you turn it into an evergreen sales webinar or a video series or repurposing it in some way that makes it into an actual product. This could be an e -book, a workbook, a workshop, anything. We previously talked about the Summit software and how to host it, but now let's discuss how you can actually monetize your Summit. So like I said, you need to create a sales page. It's the first thing you need to do whenever you're creating your actual Summit. You can use the software to build your landing page in Lead Magnet or whatever program you are using. Make sure that somewhere, some way you have a landing page and a lead magnet. And the reason this is so important is it actually will give you a way to keep in touch with your audience. Even if they're not purchasing tickets, if they're getting them for free, you want some way that you can get in touch with them before, during and after

13:51

your summit. Next, you want to funnel to larger products. You want to create a sales funnel that leads your viewer from the summit to a larger, more profitable offer. This could be things like. More extensive summits, masterminds, courses, coaching, all that jazz. And it's important to know where these people are entering your funnel and how to ensure that they'll be on board and find value in your upsell. So ensure that you're not putting people through an information overlord.

14:18

Ensure that you're not putting people through an information overload when you're trying to sell them something new. And then finally, they're selling your summit as part of a membership. I know a lot of internet bloggers, internet bloggers. I know a lot of business owners that are actually using summits as their way to create a membership. What they do is they host a big summit and they invite all kinds of industry experts to talk about any different subject, whatever it is that their business is based on. Then what they do is they take all of those videos and they put them into a monthly membership because the idea is you can't always get all of the content within two, three, maybe even a week. two, three days, even a week. Sometimes it's hard, especially if they have a lot of speakers. For example, one of the summits that I attended, there were 48 speakers and you only had 48 hours to listen

15:08

to all of these speakers. Without paying for the membership, it was impossible to do. So to be able to actually hear everything that everybody had to say, get access to the people that were speaking, you could pay for the membership and have access to those people. And you can do this by packaging it with other products. For example, if you have those conversations already recorded, you could add additional conversations. You could add coaching. You could add all kinds of different things to make it a valuable membership that someone would actually be willing to pay. One of the ones I saw recently, it was like $20 a month to get access to all of the speakers, and you had to pay for a year up front. So that's just an idea of something that you can do. So what are the best ways that you can see a return on investment from participating in a virtual summit? The first one is that you want to give

15:58

sponsors a seat at the table. This tip came from Jonathan Zacharias, who's the founder of GRO. And what he said was invite industry experts from up and coming companies who would co -sponsor the event with you in order to make the much needed splash. For a summit, you always need a variety of expert speakers. Why not invite someone who's also seeking a seat at the table? His idea is that if you assemble this virtual summit, it could be an opportunity for them, giving them hard data about who is taking part and why they can build credibility by being seen as an authority alongside the other participants.

16:30

So long as they have something of value to add when speaking on the topic, they can help you get your return on investment much quicker so you can make it a better overall event. Brendan Thomas, who's CEO of Twibi, he said that it's important to define your goals and metrics if you hope to be successful. What he says is before the event, determine what you hope to achieve, whether it's increased brand awareness, lead generation, or thought leadership opportunities.

16:55

And he also recommends that you identify key performance indicators, also known as KPIs, that align with these goals and track them throughout the event. This can include metrics such as registration numbers, attendance rates, engagement levels, and even post -event follow -up activity. When you track these metrics, he says, you can assess the success of the event and make data -driven decisions about how to improve your future events.

17:19

And there's a lot more ways that you can actually see a return on investment from hosting or participating in a virtual summit. Additional ways include make it as niche -specific as possible, build relationships with attendees, offer virtual sponsorships, evaluate networking opportunities that are gained, and bring value to your target audience. I'll leave a... an article in the show notes about how to see ROI from participating in a virtual summit. It's filled with a bunch of great tips from 11 of the experts that I spoke with who either hosted or participated in a virtual summit.

17:52

And I just loved everything that they had to say. So I'll definitely leave that. If you go to famousashleygrant .com backslash virtual summit, you can see all of the information about how to create one of your own, how to participate, why they're beneficial, and the link that I promised to Dr. Mark Wade's amazing episode that I did on Podcasting 101. So I hope that this kind of got you excited about the idea of virtual summits, whether you want to host one or just participate in one. I think they're a really cool idea. Like I said, I have participated in one myself and I am considering participating or hosting one myself in the future. And I think they're just a neat way to engage with your audience. So I hope you found this helpful. And if you did, please share it with someone. And until next time, may your page views be high and your bounce rate below.