Five Mistakes Made By Inexperienced Event Planners

One thing a lot of people tend to forget – particularly in our rather perfectionist society – is that nobody’s perfect. Planning an event is a pursuit that requires a great deal of hard work, strategic planning, and managerial prowess. Particularly as a novice, it’s incredibly easy to slip up. Unfortunately, that’s not really something you can afford to do as an event management professional. If you mess up, you’re potentially destroying two reputations in one – both your own, and that of whatever brand your event is representing. Today, let’s talk about a few of the more common mistakes […]

In Training And Loving It: How You Can Use Employee Training To Create A Better Workplace Culture

Some people thrive on stress. They enjoy working in high-octane environments where success and failure are only a razor’s edge apart. There’s a good chance that the majority of the people in your event management firm don’t possess that taste for pressure. And even if they do, it’s worth mentioning that even stress junkies have their limits – that even people who enjoy fast-paced work still won’t be happy if their work environment is completely toxic. Whether you’re an event management professional with their own firm or simply a key decision maker in your organization, it falls to you to […]

Best Ways to get Employees to Volunteer to Work an Event

Imagine this: you have a big event coming up. The last piece of the puzzle is to hire a knowledgeable, customer service oriented event staff. You have two options: Ask current employees if they are interested in volunteering Hire temporary workers There may be benefits of both, but the first choice is almost always better. Not only are these people volunteering their time (meaning you don’t have to pay them), but they are more familiar with what you are trying to accomplish. This brings us to one very important question: what can you do to get employees to volunteer to […]

How You Can Use Eventbrite To Supercharge Your Events

Today, we’re going to be putting together a tutorial for Eventbrite, one of the most powerful ticketing and registration management applications in the world. By using it, you can essentially make event registration a cakewalk for your guests from beginning to end – in addition to getting an awesome-looking event page and formidable marketing campaign on its feet. Let’s dive right in – how can you use Eventbrite to make your events better than ever? The Setup Process One of the greatest things about Eventbrite – and perhaps the thing that’s made it so popular as an event management tool […]

Managing Your Team When Something Goes Wrong

Your event team – volunteers in particular – are an important element of every event you run. It’s imperative that you properly manage your team to ensure you keep things running smoothly. Unfortunately, that isn’t always going to be possible. Sometimes, in spite of your best efforts, something is going to go wrong.

For one reason or another, members of your team may fail to do their jobs properly.  Don’t let it derail your event. By acting quickly and decisively, you can make sure that a minor problem with your volunteers doesn’t transform into an outright catastrophe. 

But what can you do?

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Five Ways Event Planners Can Recharge Their Creative Juices

Discover the top five ways event planners can recharge their creative juices and overcome creative burnout. Hey there, folks! Today we’re going to talk about creative burnout, and its role in event management. As you well know, creativity is one of the many traits shared by the word’s most successful events professionals – and it’s something you’ll need to have in droves if you’re ever to succeed. But what happens when the well runs dry? It’s bound to happen eventually – and a big part of being a creative thinker lies in recognizing it for what it is, and taking […]

How Much Should You Spend On Event Marketing, Really?

We all know that it’s extremely important to market your events effectively. If you don’t get the word out, you don’t sell tickets. If you don’t sell tickets, you don’t meet your budget projections. And if you don’t meet your projections… Yeah, you get the idea. What I’d like to discuss today – aside from how to market, we’ve already talked extensively about that – is how much of your event budget you should allocate to marketing. This doesn’t just apply to event management, of course. The question of how to know when one’s spending their marketing budget effectively is […]

What Exactly Is A Strategic Meetings Management Program

Strategic Meetings Management may well be one of the most commonly-misunderstood business methodologies in the world. Perhaps that’s one of the reasons meetings are so widely and universally decried as horrendous time-wasters – no one really has a decent understanding of how to tap into them. Let’s see if we can’t change that. Today, we’re going to take a brief look at the precise meaning of strategic meetings management. We’ll go over the reasons a business might use such a program, and examine what SMM is – and isn’t. By the end of the piece, you’ll hopefully have a more […]

Event Staffing Mistakes to Avoid at All Costs

As you begin to plan for an upcoming event, there won’t be a day that goes by when you aren’t making big decisions. Which venue is best? How much do you want to spend? Are you comfortable with the features and amenities of the space?

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Support Your Team & Avoid Event Burnout

Tell me if this sounds familiar – lately, you’ve been feeling a little out of sorts. You’re stressed. You’re tired. Nothing really seems as exciting as it used to – where once you were energetic and passionate about your career, now it’s a struggle to even drag yourself out of bed every day. My friend, you might be suffering from a case of burnout. For one reason or another, the difficulty of being an event planner – the high-octane life associated with the career – has finally managed to bring you down. It’s time for you to take a step […]

How To Determine The Proper Size For An Event Team

Today, we’re going to take a brief look at the process involved in putting together your ‘dream team’ for running an event. For newer event managers, one of the toughest tasks before them is estimating how large to make their team. Is there such a thing as too many volunteers? How many security guards should there be? What about caterers and engineers? I’m here with a few general rules of thumb which – while they’re by no means set in stone – should help you at least start to estimate how many people you’ll need to keep your show running […]

Marketing Statistics Every Event Manager Could Use

As an event manager, you will have a lot on your plate. From setting and following a budget to selecting guest speakers, there won’t be much time to sit back and relax. Your marketing strategy can make or break the success of your event. Take the right steps upfront and it will continue to pay off well after the event comes to an end. But make too many mistakes along the way, and you could soon find yourself wondering what went wrong. Fortunately, there are steps you can take to guarantee marketing success. A big part of this is tracking […]

The Complete Guide To The Care And Retention Of Volunteers

Volunteers are the core of most any event. Very few trade shows, conferences, and fundraisers can properly function without a dedicated, devoted event team running the show behind the scenes.

In other words, if you don’t have the proper framework in place – if you aren’t doing as much as you could be to attract people to your events team and retain them – then your event’s inevitably going to suffer.

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Employees: Everything You Need To Know

Employees are the KEY to having a successful event. No matter how successful of an event planner you are, you can’t put your ideas and hard work into action without help. Whether it is full time employees, volunteers, or paid people for an event, it is important to be able to manage them successfully so they are happy, and so are the attendees. Last weekend, we focused on everything that you need to know about location. So now that you know about WHERE we are going to focus on an important WHO for your next client and event. The topics […]

Choosing an Event Venue: Size Matters

When the time comes to schedule, organize, and manage an event, there will be an unlimited number of questions running through your mind. While every question deserves an answer, there is one you have to deal with before the rest: which venue is best for your event? You can’t do much until you answer this question. After all, attendees want to know where the event is taking place, as this may help them decide if they will attend. A variety of details deserve your attention when choosing an event venue. These include: Size of the venue Number of attendees Location Features […]

Determining The Best Floor Plan For Your Conference

Your conference’s layout is every bit as important as what you’re hosting it for. An event with a terrible floor plan is extremely likely to end in disaster. For that reason, you need to make sure your conference uses its space as efficiently and effectively as possible. That’s what we’re going to discuss in today’s piece – how can you determine the best floor plan for your conference? Figure Out How Much Space You Actually Need First and foremost…how much space are you actually going to require for your event? How many attendees are you expecting to show up, and […]

Why Your Venues Location Is The Most Important Factor In Attendance

Every event planner knows that where they choose to host a meeting or conference is every bit as important as the event itself. Ask anyone who’s been involved with the event industry for even a marginal amount of time, and they’ll tell you as much. If you don’t have a great location, then nothing else matters, right? Even if you’ve got what seems to be the perfect venue, a less-than-stellar location can deep-six any benefits you might gain from it. Why is this, though? One word, folks: proximity. While there are certainly other factors that come into play like technology, […]

Location, Location, Location: Everything You Need To Consider When Choosing Your Venue

Now, granted, location is something I’ve talked about in the past. Venue selection is so central to the event planning process that it’d be bizarre for an event management blog to not have addressed it on at least one occasion. Today, however, I’d like to put together something a little more comprehensive – a one-stop guide that lays out every single detail you need to account for when you’re figuring out where you want your event to be. It’s been said on many occasions that location is everything. In some ways, where your event is situated is even more important […]

Seven of the Greatest Event Venues In The World

It goes without saying that no two venues are exactly the same, and not all event sites are created entirely equal. Today, we’re going to take the time to give a nod to the top places to throw an event. These locales are the best of the best. They’re the living legends of event management; they’re the places where everyone wishes they could host. Chances are you’ve heard about at least one of these places in passing – some of the biggest events of the past decade have been hosted within their walls, after all. Madison Square Garden We’ll start […]

Selecting The Right Event Management Software For Your Business

There was a time when the people responsible for running events had to rely almost exclusively on their wits to ensure that things went off without a hitch. Thankfully, those days are well behind us. Although event planning still requires a great deal of organization, logistical skill, and charisma; there’s now a bevy of tools on the market to make the job a whole lot easier. Fortunate thing, too – as events grow larger and more complex, the need for tools and platforms that streamline the planning process grows greater and greater. Today, we’re going to talk about how you […]