A plan without a goal is just a dream. You might want to expand your book of business with networking, thus planning one yourself could be the more rewarding. But, how can you create an event where real industry players will actually attend, which is not over the budget that exceptionally will bring you amazing new connections?

Let’s face the music, it’s very easy to be boring when planning for networking events. I hear your struggles, how demanding your audience can be and how tough it is to find new ideas all the time. Fortunately, there are numerous methods to take the pressure off from meeting people and make the event run smoothly as well as fun for the guests.That’s why I am here to give you 5 cool, yet simplistic ideas that you can use to jazz up your upcoming networking sessions.

• Speed Networking

This is now one of the fastest growing forms of networking throughout the world. Simple and quick, yet efficient way for participants to enlarge their network circle in short amount of time. How does it works? Essentially, a set amount of rounds with a set amount of time per round will be rotated among the attendees accordingly. Arrange seating arrangements of two parallel rows to make them easier to move along while facing each other.

The average 90-minutes speed networking attended by 100 people could generate more than 1000 new connections, in which it is 333% more than the usual networking events people have ever had. Not only that, it helps to take away the pressure while eliminating intimidations.

• Roundtable Networking

This is another prevalent and compelling networking popularly being used to connect people during networking events. Allowing idea sharing and joint effort through open talk among attendees. Uncommonized the common open seating arrangement with strategically seating your guests to unite them altogether. You can group the participants on industry basis, job title, region, favored subjects for discourse, or others related categories. 

Roundtable networking is frequently viewed as less terrifying as it ease the heat off the people.

• Targeted Connections

If you’re on a budget but still desire to execute a networking event, this option is definitely financially savvy that puts the reins of networking under the control of the attendees. The format is just simple. Every participant gets a customized rundown of individuals they should reach out to. The list is created based on every member’s unique interests shown before or at the beginning of the event. Throughout the sessions, it depends upon every individual to choose when, where, and how they need to associate with their matches.The procedure is driven by every attendee's own drive.

This configuration makes it a lot simpler for facilitators, as they don't need to stress over fitting networking time in with individual calendars of hundreds or thousands of participants.

• Competitive Networking

Fuel up the traditional networking with some fun competitions. Maybe you can start off the simplest one like creating a contest of whom meets and connects the most people. See how many business cards they collected and incentivize the champ for a prize at the end of the event. Competitive networking works incredibly in both devoted networking sessions and as a challenge that keeps running in the background during the entire occasion.

• Icebreakers

This is a topic I have written before for my other article. Icebreaking or breakout sessions are an excellent approach to connect, get people together, and make them feel more comfortable in a group of strangers. Taking this advantage, try to slip in some games or activities that are fun for people to play along. With this way, it helps to make people familiar with one another and learn some significant things about others. Perhaps it could be beneficial to you in future. Sometimes, little things of others will be our big thing afterwards. 

Need ideas how to execute this? Compose a scavenger hunt, human bingo, or get them to play truth or dare, fun yet challenging! Needing more info? Read over this article. Make it one stride further and execute these gamified networking ideas utilizing live surveys. It is a powerful approach to immediately draw in a huge group and stand out.

Connecting with somebody on LinkedIn while never meeting them can just go so far. Accordingly, it doesn't really allow genuine relationship building like a person-in-person meeting does. Even in today’s digital age, there are still so many ways to do the physical networking. Yet, drawing the crowd’s attention to surely exist in your networking event must firstly start off with getting it right. Take the time to really understand the objectives and see who are you inviting, what types of audiences, what are their backgrounds and many more. And next, consider which type of networking suits your event the best. 

Hopefully, this article would make you networking event planning (as well as execution) seamless. Head over to our platform and check out event spaces in Kuala Lumpur and Klang Valley which could be a perfect fit for your next event.