Marketing & PR

Get the word out

Getting the right people into a remote workshop starts long before the invite goes out, and how you describe the session shapes who decides it is for them.

Marketing and PR for a workshop is how you reach the people you want and give them a reason to show up. For an internal session that might be a single well-written email from the right sender. For a public or community event it might involve social posts, a landing page, email sequences, and outreach to specific communities.

Online sessions remove the geographical limit, which is an opportunity. You can reach people who would never travel for a session. But it also means you are competing with every other thing a person could do with that hour, in their home or office, on the same device they use for everything else.

The framing matters. People sign up for a remote workshop when they can clearly see what they will leave with, how much time it takes, and why this particular session is worth an hour of their attention rather than another one.

Online, specificallyOnline you can reach anyone in the world, but you are also just another browser tab to them, so the description needs to make the value concrete and the time commitment crystal clear.

In a remote session

The same building block as it plays out online: how experienced facilitators tend to handle it when the room is a screen. Illustrations to react to, not rules to follow.

Lead with the outcome

Experienced facilitators write their session description starting with what participants will have or know by the end, not with what will happen during it. People sign up for the result, not the process.

Be specific about time

They state the exact duration, the start time in multiple time zones if the group is international, and any pre-work or follow-up expected. Vague time commitments reduce sign-ups and increase drop-off.

Use the right channel

They put the announcement where the intended participants actually look: a Slack channel, a mailing list, a community forum, or a personal message to specific people, rather than a broad broadcast that misses the audience.

Questions to plan around

Use these on your own or in a group. There are no right answers, only better conversations.

Who exactly do you want to reach, and where do those people actually pay attention?
What does a participant gain by joining this session, and is that clearly stated in the description?
How much of the participant's time does this session actually require, including any pre-work or follow-up?
What makes this session worth attending over others covering the same ground, or over doing nothing?
How far in advance do you need to start promoting the session to hit your target attendance?

What trips people up online

Describing what will happen in the session rather than what participants will leave with is the most common reason good workshops get low sign-up rates.
Announcing the session too close to the date, especially for a public or cross-organisation event, does not give people enough time to clear their calendar.
Broad outreach to everyone often reaches no one well: targeted messages to the right specific communities almost always outperform general announcements.