Meerkat or Periscope for Your Next Event?

As an event planner, you should always be looking for new ways to bring fresh ideas to your audience. In today’s day and age, this often means the implementation the newest forms of social media. Meerkat and Periscope don’t receive nearly as much attention as they should in the event space. Both these services have been proven effective in an event environment, prompting more and more planners to take a closer look. What is Meerkat? As a live video streaming app, it is easy to see why Meerkat has become so popular with the event crowd. It gained initial popularity on…

How to Increase Visibility for Event Sponsors

As you go through the event planning process, at some point you will be faced with the task of signing up sponsors. If you already have relationships in place, such as from past events, this should not be a challenge. On the other hand, you may have quite a bit of work to do if you are starting from scratch. Sponsors are interested primarily in “brand visibility.” In other words, they care about nothing more than getting their brand in front of your audience. Here are three of the best ways to increase visibility for event sponsors: Online visibility: This is…

Ten Tips For Landing Your Perfect Sponsor

Landing your perfect sponsor can be challenging. As I’ve mentioned in the past, I ran a charity event a few years back. The biggest challenge by far wasn’t the logistics of space booking, nor was it managing volunteers. It was landing your perfect sponsor that’d provide with the necessary funds, prizes, and equipment to run things adequately.

Cold Calling 101 – How To Get A Sponsor On Board For Your Events

In the past, I’ve often instructed you to contact various individuals for your events – be they sponsors, vendors, or guest speakers. I’ve not really gone into any detail on exactly how you should go about doing that. I’ve basically just told you to do a bunch of cold calling, without actually giving you any advice on how to do that. After all, you can’t simply call someone and blurt out the details of your event and expect them to jump on board – nor can you email someone a bullet list and assume they’re going to read it. If…

What Can You Do If Your Event Goes Over Budget?

Where exceeding your event budget is concerned, the general rule is “don’t.” However, sometimes things happen that are out of your control – maybe a piece of equipment breaks down and you need to replace it in a hurry. Maybe you didn’t sell enough tickets to break even, or maybe the materials and supplies you’re using simply turned out to be more expensive than you expected. Either way, it’s something that needs to be addressed immediately. That’s our topic in today’s piece. What can you do if you end up exceeding your initial budget for the event? How can you…

All About The Money

Money is a huge factor when planning an event. If you are faced with a small budget, it is often wise to look into sponsorships. As an event planner, you should network constantly to build your list of sponsors that would be available for different events that you plan. This can be a great relief to clients who are looking to get more for less money out of their pocket. There is almost a science to creating the right relationships to get the sponsorships that you will need for events, which is what we will be focusing on in this…

How You Can Use Facebook To Make Your Virtual Events Shine

You already know how powerful Facebook is from an event management perspective (and how important), and what it can do for event marketing and promotion. Social media is probably one of the most powerful tools in your arsenal. This is true regardless of what type of event you’re running. That said; Facebook’s got a few features that make it uniquely-suited for virtual events. That’s what we’re going to talk about today. How can you use Facebook to supercharge your virtual events, and make them better than ever before? Look For Inspiration Online According to Adrianne Mellen Ramstack, Facebook is more…

Tips For The Best Event Hashtag

Now that you’re in the marketing stage for your upcoming event, you’re probably facing the hard fact that event marketing isn’t cheap. It rarely is– there are dozens of print mediums and online presences to consider advertising through, all of which require quite a bit of cash to kick off. Most marketing techniques also require an additional chunk money to get anywhere beyond the starting line.

Luckily, if you still have some time and creative juices left for your marketing campaign, you can get pretty impressive results from just one, simple (and totally free, by the way) event hashtag. If you can effectively utilize a hashtag that represents your event well, you can increase your outreach significantly and create the kind of buzz that money just can’t buy.

Sound appealing? Give the following tips a try as a part of your current social media strategy, and watch the traction from your hashtag do wonders for your event.

Snapchat: Storifying Your Brand

It seems that with each new year comes a new big boom in social media marketing. Last year, the marketing world was engulfed with real-time advertising induced from the famous Oreo Super Bowl tweet.

This real time advertising phenomena created a storm of over saturation and under satisfaction, and left many marketing managers losing their hair trying to latch on to every social trend they could. This became a tiring endeavor and not as effective as once imagined.

This year’s big boom has been Snapchat, a peer-to-peer photo/video messaging application that allows its users to temporarily share pictures and videos. Many brands were quick to follow the gust of Snapchat trendiness and a few quickly found success, including Taco Bell, Mashable, Sour Patch Kids, and GE.

These brands were doing something different than many other brands on Snapchat, they found a way to stick out and connect with their audience. A more unique persona of their brand than ever before was created. They found the secret.

Reasons to Use Social Media to Engage Conference Attendees

As an event planner, it is typical to have a one track mind. Upfront, you may care about one detail more than the rest: getting people through the door. Of course, meeting your attendance goals is only half the battle. From there, it is your job, along with the help of your team, to ensure that every attendee is treated well and getting what they want from the event. There are many things you can do to engage with conference attendees, with the use of social media at the top of the list. Here is something to chew on: even…

How to Promote Social Media Use During an Event

The growth of social media is astonishing. Starting with Live Journal and MySpace, this trend began to pick up steam 15 years ago. In today’s world, social media is all the rage, with Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn, among others, leading the way. Consider this excerpt from a SocialTimes article published in 2014: “Since 2004, the growth of social media has been near exponential. Back in those days, Facebook — arguably the most mature of the top social networks — only had about 1 million users. By 2011 the network had grown so large, its population was being compared to that…

How To Have Social Media Work For You

Social media, we all love it but are not always sure of the best way to use it to our advantage. This week we are going to really dive into it and take a closer look at how you can use the latest techniques and platforms to really work for you. As with any social media advice, you need to focus on what really works for your audience as well as brand. We are going to offer lots of tips and tricks that you can use to engage & get more followers and use social media to your advantage. Try them…

Five More Incredibly Common Mistakes Made By Novice Event Planners

Nobody’s perfect. I can’t emphasize enough that in a complex, high-stress career like event planning, people are bound to make a mistake or two. people are bound to make mistakes. This is especially true if they’re new to the job – in many cases, they may not even realize they’ve erred until it’s already too late to fix the problem. Today, we’re going to go over a few more mistakes commonly made by event management rookies. While none of these will necessarily lead to a catastrophe on their own, they can still cause a pretty huge headache for planners, clients,…

How To Set Up A Change-Tracking Process That Works For You

Today, I’d like to revisit the topic. Well, sort of – we’re going to discuss one particular aspect: change tracking and incident tracking. Change tracking refers to keeping documentation whenever a change in circumstances occurs related to your event. These could include the loss of a keynote speaker, a request for additional seating, a new sponsor, or a change in food service. Incident tracking, meanwhile, is a process implemented to document any problems that might occur while you’re running an event. Although the two may seem to be very different birds, they’ve actually got more in common than you might…

Most Common Health Issues Faced By Event Planners

Your job can be hazardous to your health.

Every profession carries with it a host of hazards one needs to deal with each and every day. Failure to address any of these problems adequately could well lead to something a lot more permanent. Especially in event management – a career in which you’re constantly on the move – that’s something you want to avoid.

The Three Most Common Event Security Threats

Even if you’ve planned out the best event in the world, without proper security you’re very likely to end up running into trouble. See, there’s a lot that can go wrong with an event besides logistics. You need to take the proper steps to ensure that you, your team, and your guests are properly safeguarded against anything that might cause them harm. In short, you need to make certain your event is secure. The first step in doing so, of course, is knowing what sort of threats you’re likely to face. Let’s get started. Equipment Theft This is by far…

The Importance of Due Diligence And Guest Background Checks

If you’re going to bring a third party in to help with your event – be they a DJ, a vendor, or a security firm – then it’s in your best interests to look into their background before you opt to work with them. The reason, of course, is tied to liability. That is, if you knowingly (or unknowingly) hire a criminal of any kind to assist with your event, then you’re the one who bears the brunt of the legal backlash if and when they step out of line (to say nothing of the damage this can do to…

Dealing With Illness As An Event Planner

As an event manager, you’re generally going to be working with large groups of people on a regular basis. What that means is that even if you take good care of yourself, you’re exponentially likelier to end up sick. That in turn means your productivity goes straight through the floor. It goes without saying that you don’t want that to happen. So, if you should fall ill as an event planner, what can you do about it? After all, sickness is inevitable, especially in your profession. You need to be certain that you can soldier through your illness without letting…

Be Ready, This Could Happen To Any Of Us

For the last two weeks we focused on everything that you need to know about employees, from getting them to keeping them. They are a very important part of your company as an event planner, and this next week we are going to focus on something that you also need to focus ample attention towards: safety. From security threats to personal health, it is important to be knowledgeable and take even little steps to be sure that you have a healthy, happy event attendees & staff. We will be focusing on the following topics to help you be sure that you…

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…

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