How Can You Engage Attendees That Aren’t At Your Event?

As an event organizer, it’s your job to keep your attendees entertained and engaged. It’s your job to ensure that everything at your event goes off without a hitch, and that everyone who goes there leaves satisfied. What you may not know is that this process actually starts well before the event itself – and expands well outside the walls of your event venue. After all, being an event planner is only partially about running events. It’s also about effectively marketing them. Today, we’re going to touch on that. How can you keep your attendees engaged before, during, and after […]

Eight Awesome Up and Coming Companies In Transportation

As an event management professional, part of your job is to make sure attendees can make it safely to and from your events. Of course, sometimes that’s easier said than done – everything from chaotic rental services to confusing infrastructure to poorly-designed transit systems stands in your way. Thankfully, there’s a new camp of startup that’s been popping up of late; a breed of business specifically dedicated to getting people where they need to go as quickly, efficiently, and safely as possible. Today, we’re going to go over a few of the most interesting, most popular, and most promising. Recommend […]

Event Technology: Are You Up To Date?

I know that we have touched on event technology before, but this week we are going to dive event deeper into technology that can up your tech game, making you a better event planner, attendee, or speaker. When people attend an event, it is a big letdown to see tech that is “so 2010”. Even if the event is not technology based, you want to give attendees the best experience possible. Don’t forget to follow these tips to present your event in the best way possible. We will cover the following topics: Eight Awesome Up and Coming  Companies In Transportation […]

Ten Tips For Planning The Perfect Wedding

Weddings are an incredibly special – and important – occasion. They’re a celebration of the love between a couple; a love intense enough that they’re willing to swear their lives to one another. Not surprisingly, this means that planning them can be an incredibly nerve-wracking affair. But it doesn’t need to be. At the end of the day, how stressed you get about your wedding ultimately depends on you. If you go in with the right mindset – and the proper knowledge – you’ll be able to put together a top-notch ceremony in no time at all. That, in turn, […]

How to Get Truthful Feedback About your Event

Once your event comes to an end, it is time to reflect. Did you reach your goals? Did you come up short in key areas? Are you unsure of whether or not your event was truly a success? While you can attempt to answer all these questions on your own, there is a better idea to consider: ask your audience for feedback. Attendee feedback is important for a number of reasons: Helps you see what you did right and wrong Allows you to adjust your approach accordingly in the future Gives you a chance to connect with attendees one last […]

What Days Should You Avoid Planning An Event On During Summer?

The weather’s getting warmer, the sun’s shining brighter, and people are busting out their shorts and swimsuits. Summer is upon us – and so is vacation season. What that means for an event management perspective is that this can be one of the best possible times of year to host your events, especially if you’re thinking of planning a concert or festival.

There’s caveat to this, of course. You need to make sure you plan them for the right date. See, like any season, there are certain times in summer when you simply shouldn’t run events.

Running an event on one of these dates probably won’t spell outright catastrophe, mind you. That said, it won’t be conducive to your event’s success, either.  Let’s dive in – what days should you avoid if you’re planning to run a summer event?

Read more →

What you Need to Know about Event Disasters

As an event planner, you should live by this mantra: if you plan for the worst you will never be surprised at what happens. On the plus side, the worst very rarely comes into play. On the downside, you never know when something could go horribly wrong. Here are the three questions you need to answer: What types of event disasters are most common? What is the best strategy for preventing these disasters? What process should you follow if a disaster strikes your event? Let’s start out with the first question. Here are some of the most common event disasters: Bad […]

Running The Perfect Summer Event

We’re in the heat of summer (literally) and you know what that means – time to start looking at a few outdoor venues. After all, if the weather’s beautiful enough, you might as well give your attendees the chance to enjoy it, right? Of course, there are a few things you’re going to need to take into account when figuring out where you should situate a summer event. In a lot of ways, running an outdoor event is actually more challenging than hosting at an indoor venue. In addition to all the standard considerations involved in venue selection, there are a […]

Five Days On Which You Should Never Plan An Event

One of the most important steps in any event planning process is deciding when you’re going to host it. The date you set for your event could very well make or break things, and it’ll impact everything in the planning stages, from the venue you choose to the volunteers you go with right down to your potential suppliers, vendors, and attendees. Not surprisingly, this means that certain days and months are a better choice for event hosting than others. This also means that certain time periods are completely out of the question. Here are a few days on which you […]

Why You Need To Plan For When Something Goes Wrong

There’s this old saying which has come to be known as Murphy’s Law: anything that can go wrong; will. As an event planner, this is a principle with which you need to be very familiar. Although the real world is hardly as grim as Murphy’s Law makes it out to be – and you shouldn’t go into your events with the assumption that something’s going to go horribly wrong – it definitely pays to have a plan handy for when things go wrong.  As far as the law of averages is concerned, it’s going to happen eventually. Maybe one of […]

Live Music for your Next Event: Good or Bad Idea?

When planning a corporate event, you must consider every aspect of the experience. From the check-in process to the tradeshow floor to the food, there is sure to be a lot on your mind. At some point, especially if you are planning a multi-day event, you need to consider the steps you can take to keep attendees occupied and having a good time. In many cases, this means choosing the right type of music. Generally speaking, you have two options: Hire a band to play live. Hire a DJ. There are pros and cons of both, meaning that the decision […]

How to Handle Negative Social Media Feedback During and After an Event

Putting on an event is a big deal. From a one day get-together to a multi-day trade show, you are well aware of the challenges. Let’s be honest: it is hard to make it through an event without at least one person getting angry. Many years ago, dealing with such a situation was simple. You would wait for the issue to be presented, and then deal with it one-on-one. The matter was kept rather hush and taken care of in person. In today’s world, where social media is in charge, things are not nearly as clear. Rather than take up […]

Top Tips for Hiring a Catering Company

When putting together an event, there are 101 things that you need to plan for. Obviously it is hard to get every little thing perfect, there is one thing that you should give a little more attention to: the food. You have a lot on your plate (no pun intended), including the task of hiring a catering company. Make the right choice and you will have attendees drooling. Make the wrong choice and you could soon have a problem on your hands. How to Hire an Event Catering Company The catering industry checks in with annual revenue of $9 billion. There […]

Keeping Your Attendees Entertained

Today, we’re going to be addressing a question which has doubtless plagued many event management professionals in the past: how does one keep their guests entertained without sacrificing the value of an event? How much novelty does one need to keep people interested – and how can one tell they’ve crossed the line and lost sight of their event’s original purpose? It’s not an easy question to answer, but I believe I’d like to start with a simple truth: presentation is everything. Every single factor, ranging from what sort of equipment you use to how the conference hall looks right […]

Catering 101: Working Out The Details Of The Perfect Menu

Catering is as much a part of event management as sound design, tech, or marketing.  Making the wrong choice where food’s concerned can be just as bad as selecting the wrong keynote speakers; it could completely ruin the look and feel of an event. That said, it’s not terribly likely that you’ll be designing your menu by yourself (you can, but I’d not recommend it). You’re going to be hiring on a caterer to handle the details involved in keeping your attendees fed and watered. Thing is…that caterer can’t do their job if they don’t know what you expect. For […]

Selecting The Right Music For Events

When you’re applying for a job (or really, doing anything else in life), how you sound is just as important as how you look. Why should event management be any different? A bit of musical flair can be the difference between a good event and a great one. Today, we’re going to discuss what’s involved in making your event sound awesome (literally). Know Your Attendees The first question you need to ask yourself is “who’s going to be attending?” A group of distinguished business professionals aren’t going to enjoy the same music as a bunch of millennial tech geeks; neither […]

The (Not So) Little Details

So you’ve worked for month securing a location, finding the perfect guest speakers, and marketing your event like crazy. You’re exhausted and it may feel like a good idea to skip over some little details. Well, I hate to break it to you but it really isn’t that great of an idea. The food, entertainment, and music can make or break an event. If someone with a gluten allergy is unable to eat any of the food all weekend, I bet that would hold in there memory longer than even the best guest speaker. This week, we are going to […]

The Ten Best Technological Tools For Guest Speakers

The best guest speakers are those who know how to inspire the people who attend their presentation. They’re compelling individuals and natural storytellers, with magnetic personalities, great voices, and boundless energy. They also know their tech – and how best to use it to make their point. The truth is, in many ways the difference between a good guest speaker and a great one is simply how they use the tools they have at their disposal. With that in mind, today’s piece is going to focus on a few presentation tools and gadgets a speaker can use to enrich their […]

The Event Planner’s Guide To Being A Better Guest Speaker

Forget paying for an advertising spot or schmoozing around at a trade show; guest speaking is among the best ways to promote your event management firm. As a guest speaker, you’ve an opportunity to engage with an entire room filled with prospective clients – provided, of course, you fully understand what the job involves. As a result, there are too many guest speakers who are boring or irrelevant, even among event organizers. You want to avoid being one of those. You want to be exciting, interesting, and informative. You want people to leave your presentations passionate, interested, and engaged. How can […]

How to Run an Effective Social Media Contest

Are you looking for a creative way to boost event registration numbers? Are you hoping to get your audience excited about an upcoming event? While there are many ways to make this happen, here is one that you may have overlooked: a social media contest. Social media is hot. Just how hot, you wonder? Here is what Social Times has to say: “Did you know that there are more than two billion active social media users worldwide, representing a global penetration rate of 28 percent?” This statistic alone proves that you are missing the boat if you aren’t using social media to […]