Part 1: An Introduction to Virtual Hackathons

Virtual hackathons are online events where participants gather to build products or solve complex problems. Usually, following a specific theme or subject, hackathons are one of the most proven ways to incubate and build great ideas using a targeted technology or stack. At the end of the event, a selected panel of judges (usually industry experts) assesses the projects entered and awards prizes to the teams that build the most successful product or proof of concept. As you’ll read later, success is a relative term that you get to define as the event organiser.

Over the past year, BOLT🔩FUN has hosted a number of different sized events that varied in subject, length, and target audience. Throughout these events, we registered > 800 makers on to our platform, incubated 100+ projects and ideas, hosted 60+ workshops and discussions, and distributed over 3.5 BTC (~$65,000) in prizes - onboarding the next wave of bitcoin maker talent. Our most recent event, the Legends of Lightning tournament, was the largest bitcoin hackathon ever run.

In this 4 part guide, we will break down the key details, considerations, and modules you will need to know to run your own successful online hackathon event.

Discover & Incentivise Your Target Audience

When running an online event, one of, if not the most important aspect is who will take part. Stating the obvious, hackathons don’t run without participants. Make sure to put a lot of thought and energy into who you will target to sign up to your event. This effort will also greatly impact your marketing and registration success rate.

Finding Your Target Audience

Hackathons are run for different demographics, differing in both skill sets and interests. Typically, hackathons are run in industries like software development. The approaches detailed in these guides apply to any industry.

There are 4 things to consider when setting your targeted audience & their outputs:

Volume
Generally, more participants = more teams and projects. If you’re looking for greater breadth of products being built, try to get as many hackers on board as possible. However, more hackers can come with some downsides, such as a need for more or larger prizes, bigger overheads and judging workload, as well as an increase in participant monitoring and admin.

Quality
If you’re looking for a handful of high quality projects, target fewer makers but with more refined skill sets. You will have a smaller, but richer talent pool to work with. The added benefit of this approach is the ability to closely monitor hackers and teams, coaching and mentoring them along the way.

Goals & Outputs
Before you run a virtual hackaton, it’s good to think about your desired goals and outputs. In short, what do you want to achieve from this event? Hackathons are a lot of work and demand organisational effort and energy to run smoothly. So before you start marketing your event, start with your ideal endpoint and work backwards.

Diversity
If you’d like to develop a range of different ideas and projects, it might be worth thinking about the diversity of your hacker group. Different cultures, genders, and ideologies will bring a mixture of skill sets and mindsets to the table. Diversity should be encouraged and can even be incentivised through targeted advertising and prizes.

Developping Hacker Personas & Marketing Narratives

Once you have chosen your target audience, it’s time to meet them where they are. We find it useful to develop participant personas and empathy maps in order to get into your ideal participant’s shoes. Think about it this way…

- If I were a hacker, why would I take part in your event?
- What will I gain or lose?
- What can I win?
- What types of learning or networking opportunities are there?

Depending on who you target, change the narrative and marketing of what your online event will provide. For example:

Prizes & Financial Reward
A major motivator of participation in virtual hackathons is the prizes on offer. Make sure you give an adequate reward for hard work. If you invest in your participants, they will likely invest in you. Read more about how to consider setting prizes in our Hackathon Prizes & Judging guide.

Learning Opportunities
A lot of hackers take part in virtual events to learn new skills or get introduced to novel tech stacks and specs. If you provide learning opportunities, such as tutorials, workshops, and discussions, advertise that you do!

Networking Opportunities
Hackathons are a great way for participants to meet new people, teammates, co-founders, mentors, and employers and make connections within the industry. They may also meet other builders who they can make partnerships with, or use their tools. If someone has been hired following an event you previously ran, this is marketing gold dust for others looking for work.

You can, of course, target multiple types of personas. Varying demographics and skill sets often lead to a more diverse range of projects being built because of the different mindsets, work processes, and experiences.

Marketing your event

We are not marketing gurus. However, over the course of the last year, we have learnt a handful of lessons, tips, and tricks for marketing online event. This section will give you some ideas on how to refine your marketing approach and effectively reach your target audience.

Create an event page or website
This may seem like a no-brainer, but you’d be surprised how many event organisers fail to create a clear and informative website that provides event details, schedules, speakers, judges, and prize information. And we cannot stress this enough, but make sure there is a clear call to action and a path to participant registration. This doesn’t have to be complex. It could even be a blog post with an email sign up form attached! Having a single place where participants can come to find details of your event will save you time by sparing you from manually sending information one by one.

Create SEO friendly & marketable content
When creating your website and marketing material, use keywords that will help show your event in Google searches. These include words like “hackthon”, “virtual”, “digital”, “event”, “network”, “professional”, “industry”, “workshop”, “developer tutorials”, “software”, “bitcoin”, “blockchain”, and more. What’s more, for your visual marketing material, create “sexy” (or visually appealing) content (images, posters, videos, etc) that makes your event stand out and easy to digest.

Use emails & newsletters
Whilst you can reach potential participants from all corners of the web, never underestimate the power of emails. If you already have a user base and mailing list, market your event to them. In case you’re starting from scratch, collect emails during registration and create a newsletter to promote the key event details, prizes, and perks to increase participant turnover. You can also keep your audience engaged, leading up to + throughout your event, with regular emails to market workshops, tutorials, deadlines, and other key info.

Leverage social media platforms & paid ads
Whilst you may not want to use paid ads, they are an effective way of placing your event in front of a target audience. This could be through selected social media channels or websites that have user bases containing much of your target demographic (e.g developers, designers, etc). What’s more (relating to point No.2), when using paid ads, make sure your marketing material is visually attractive and easy to understand. Written or visual information that is too complex will fail to hit the mark and create good participant turnover.

Get your event sponsors, speakers, and judges to spread the word
If your event has sponsors or co-sponsors, use them to help you promote the event. They will probably have budgets designated for event marketing and, more often than not, two sets of hands are better than one. Additionally, if your event has speakers and judges (often industry professionals), leverage their followings, influence and social presence to help promote your event (or at least their own part in it) and gain further outreach. Their influence will not only match your target demographic, but will also help interested participants to discover and register for your event.

Create referral schemes
Word of mouth is an old school, powerful marketing tool. Get your hackers to spread the word and get their friends to sign up too. This could be through a referral programme, or even by encouraging professionals to sign up with their teams of colleagues.

Create press releases and target relevant news websites/outlets
Don’t wait around for people to discover your event themselves. And certainly don’t expect news outlets to write about it on their own accord. Prepare a press release and contact relevant websites and journalists to write about your event. Clearly lay out all the details, and provide branding and marketing assets (e.g. logos, banners, #hashtags, etc) where necessary.

Keep posting about your event
In short, be consistent. Make sure you continue posting and marketing your event online and within the relevant social channels. It’s common for people to scroll past your promoted ads or tweets about the event, but the more you put material out there, the more likely it is to be discovered. When posting online, create and consistently use #hashtags to talk about your event. These are also useful for giving the impression that others are talking about your event, which is fun and exciting for participants. Finally, be consistent in the language and information you use. Don’t repeat the same information in 5 different ways, as it can become confusing. Make sure you stick to the plan and create clear, concise instructions on how to take part.

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Interested in running your own hackathon? Our platform can help teams create tailored events that market key event details, allow participants to register, form teams, and submit projects whilst tracking their progress. Interested in learning more? Contact us

Up Next: Choosing your Hackathon's Length