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 Modern Rules of Seeking Your Voice on Social Media

The most important thing about social marketing is your voice – the attitude and language you use to communicate. This is true regardless of industry. If you fail to cultivate a social personality, then it will be impossible for your followers and fans to have genuine discussions with you. And if they cannot have authentic conversations, they’re not going to engage with your brand. What’s an event planner do to? How can you seek out a voice that both fits your firm and makes your brand more appealing to clients? What can you do to ensure that customers see you…

Ten Guaranteed Ways to Make Yourself Unpopular on Social Media

If you’re not really sure what you’re doing, social media can be difficult. Gaining followers is something of a delicate art – retaining them even more so. There are plenty of mistakes you can make; plenty of areas in which you can misstep and send your social efforts down the drain. Thankfully, they’re actually pretty easy to avoid – provided you’re aware of them. That’s where we come in. We’re going to go over some tactics, blunders, and foibles that are pretty much guaranteed to get you on your community’s bad side. Avoid running into any of the pitfalls mentioned…

Seven Steps For Snapchatting At Your Next Event

In the past, I’ve rather frequently drilled home the importance of brevity. People today don’t have time for lengthy marketing pitches or deep, thorough explanations of a brand. They want to know right out the door whether or not something’s worth their time – and if you can’t keep things brief, then they’ll eventually tune out. Case in point, the average human attention span is currently 8.25 seconds, down from 12 seconds in 2000. On some level, this isn’t surprising. Today, we’re bombarded with information from all sides, and we’ve less time to devote to each individual message that comes…

Inside Look: Social Media

We all know that social media is important for the professional growth of your brand, but in order for it really to work it’s magic it must be used correctly. Plenty of “experts” throw around their idea of what will grow your engagements or rapidly increase followers, but it’s difficult to sift through it all to identify fact or fiction. This week we have a great series that identifies key things you can be doing on different platforms. We will be covering the following topics: Seven Steps For Snapchatting At Your Next Event Ten Guaranteed Ways to Make Yourself Unpopular…

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…

What The Late Steve Jobs Can Teach Us About Guest Speaking

Whatever else you might say about Steve Jobs, the man knew how to work a crowd. He was probably one of the most brilliant speakers of our time; his charisma was so powerful that one software engineer at Apple even described it as a “reality distortion field,” adding that Jobs could “convince anyone of practically anything.” Taking that into account, it sort of goes without saying that any guest speaker who wants to perfect their craft should study how Jobs conducted himself – there’s a lot of valuable stuff to be learned from him, after all. That’s what we’re here…

Leveraging The Most Common Types Of Speakers At Your Event

As I’m sure most of you have noticed by now, everyone has their own unique ‘style’ when it comes to speaking. Some people are better at weaving an engrossing, entertaining story, while others can get an audience pumped up just by speaking a few words. Some people know exactly what they’re talking about – and how to present it to the audience – while others are simply able to hold the attention of people based on who they are. As an event manager, it’s important that you understand how to recognize the different types of guest speakers – and how…

How To Avoid Hiring A Bad Guest Speaker

Even if every other element of your event is planned out flawlessly, a bad keynote speaker could ruin the whole experience for your attendees. Maybe their delivery is boring as watching paint dry. Maybe they’re shamelessly plugging a business or brand the audience doesn’t care about, or peppering their presentation with awful-poorly designed slides. Maybe they’re late – or don’t show up at all. Regardless of why, a guest speaker who isn’t good at their job can become a dark, foreboding cloud over an otherwise fantastic event. It goes without saying that you want to do everything you can to…

Five Things An Exhibitor Should Never Do

If you’re setting up a booth at a conference or trade show, you’re there to connect with people. You’re interested in one of two things: selling a product, or connecting with people who’d be interested in buying from you (or working with you). Both are pretty important, right? Today, we’re going to be going over a few of the biggest – and most common flubs – exhibitors tend to make on the show floor. If you’re an exhibitor, have a read-through to make sure you aren’t committing any of these mistakes yourself. And if you’re an event planner, well…you can…

Stand Out In A Crowd

Last week we focused our series on handling all of the different events that an event planner may be asked to do. This week, we are switching gears and focusing on how to be a good speaker and exhibitor at an event that you are invited to. We want you to be able to make the most out of your situation. Whether you are paying to be at an event, or you are the star of the show, we want to share with you tips on how to get the most out of it for your brand. Stop wasting time…

How Can You Add More Diversity to Your Tech Conference

The notion that the tech industry has a diversity problem is right up there alongside “water is wet” in terms of startling revelations. By now, mentioning the issue of gender, race, and culture inclusivity in tech seems akin to beating a dead horse. Everybody already knows the problem exists, and they’re getting sick of hearing about it – but no one seems willing (or able) to fix it. As an event management professional in the tech sector, you’re in a unique position to bring about change. After all, your events are (presumably) the place where influencers from all over the…

The Ins And Outs Of Running An Annual Conference

Many of the best known conferences and events in the world aren’t just one-off affairs; they happen one or more times a year. Annual shows like the DEVELOP conference give industry professionals a chance to strut their stuff, while trade conventions like the Consumer Electronics Show bring the world some of the coolest technological innovations ever designed. Today, I’d like to discuss some of the finer details of running an annual conference – assuming you want to do so. Now, it bears mentioning that much of what goes into running a yearly conference is pretty much the same as running…

The Story Of Suresh Doss Drives Home The Real Cost Of Event Management Blunders

Today, I’m going to tell you about a young man by the name of Suresh Doss. He is – or rather, was – an amateur event planner and freelance food writer. Today, he owes the City of Toronto $36,000. His is a cautionary tale, a story that drives home the importance of knowing who you’re working with and what you’re doing. See, Doss was part of a 2013 experiment to put food trucks in parks all across the city. Armed with an array of different meals, the trucks would keep hungry park-goers fed and content – and make a bit…

Are Business Conferences Really That Valuable?

It’s pretty common knowledge that meetings can be one of the biggest time-wasters in the business world. They’re a place where people go to talk about doing work – without actually getting anything done in the process. Today, I’d like to address a very simple question: do conferences fall under the same umbrella? You could be forgiven for thinking that they might. After all, a conference is basically a meeting between several or more organizations, isn’t it? With that in mind, what is it about a business conference that makes it so much valuable than a run-of-the-mill meeting? Quite a bit,…

How To Keep Your Events Sustainable

Both enterprise organizations and consumers have become acutely aware of the impact modern culture has on the environment in recent years. We’re beginning to warily eye the pollution created by oil, we worry and fret over greenhouse gases, and we’re quick to jump in and support any organization that makes an effort to be sustainable. The trouble is, talking isn’t really enough. What we ultimately need to do is take responsibility for the state of the Earth; we all need to do our part to ensure we keep things clean. In the case of event management, that means reducing the…

How To Run A Top Notch Roundtable

Roundtables are among the most successful and productive conference-style events you’ll ever host. Essentially, they’re keynotes in which everyone is able to offer conversation points and suggestions; a conversation between a small group of industry experts. At first glance, that probably sounds a lot like a traditional meeting – you know, the ones that everyone says are a total waste of time? The difference here, of course, is that the people who attend roundtables do so voluntarily – they actually want to be there, and they’re actually interested in having a discussion. That said; a roundtable can easily end up…

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