Five Features Every Conference Needs To Have

I’ve said on several occasions that conferences are fast becoming one of the most valuable tools in any marketing agent’s repertoire. The thing is, not every marketing professional knows exactly what they need to plan an event. While marketing and event management do require very similar skill-sets, the knowledge base required for each tends to be more than a little divergent. Thankfully, while every event is different – and brings different challenges, requirements, and concerns – there are a few starting points you can lay down that’ll make things much, much easier on you as you move forward. Ignore any…

Read more →

Why Your Event Needs to Account for Weather

If you think the only time the weather matters is when you’re running an outdoor event, you’d be sadly mistaken. The weather has an impact on virtually every facet of your event, even if it’s not immediately obvious. For this reason, ignoring it entirely is a foolish thing to do.

Today, we’re going to examine how the weather affects your events –and what you can do to account for it.

Read more →

The Top Event Industry Trends Of 2015

A new year is well upon us, hopefully it has been kind to you so far. It’s another huge year of event planning and it’s time to start preparing for what’s coming – it’s time to make yourself ready for the technology, trends, and changes that are bound to happen. 2014 was a pretty big year for the event industry – though admittedly, it was something of a rough one, as well. Faced with the echoes of a global economic recession, many event management professionals were by necessity forced to do more with less (though granted, event planners were hardly alone…

Read more →

Learn to Relax—You’ll Have Better Events

Event management is pretty hard work – any event planner worth their salt is well aware of that fact. It’s a profession given to long, irregular hours, and one which requires deep passion coupled with a seemingly endless reserve of energy.  Plenty of event planners speak of working almost constantly, with nary a moment to rest. If you’re a novice event planner, you might be tempted to believe that this is the best road to success; that the best way to rise to the top of your profession is to toss aside everything not related to it. Unfortunately, you’d be…

Read more →

Common Hurdles Event Planners Face

No industry is perfect. Particularly in a field as fast-paced and fast-growing as event management, there are bound to be a few pitfalls, roadblocks, and growing pains scattered along one’s path. What separates the good event planners from the great ones is how they address these problems; how they meet – and overcome – the challenges thrown their way. Here are some issues that you may run into, and how to successfully overcome them: Keeping Your Clients Happy One of the most enduring problems in event planning is that many clients simply don’t have any idea of how the profession…

Read more →

The Event Manager’s Guide To Search Engine Marketing

What exactly does search engine marketing have to do with event planning?

Alright, so this is probably something of a strange topic for an event management blog. A lot of you are probably confused as to why I’m writing on it, but the answer is actually “more than you’d think.”

Read more →

Five Things To Consider When Selecting Your Conference Venue

As I’m certain you’ve heard on more than one occasion (you’re likely growing tired of hearing it by now), location is everything when planning an event – especially a corporate conference. Generally, the people attending these events are going to be discussing some fairly important stuff – a bad venue can leave a dark cloud hanging over the entire affair, something which can, in the worst case scenario, effectively derail the entire gathering. You want to do whatever it takes to ensure this doesn’t happen. Here are just a few of the things you’ll need to take into account when…

Read more →

Best Crowd Management Tips for Controlling a Crowd

We’ve said on more than one occasion that event planning is as much about managing people as it is about running events. Today, we’d like to explore that statement with somewhat greater depth. Today, I’d like to talk about crowd control and offer some of the best crowd management tips we could think of from our experiences.

Read more →

Six Example Venue Amenities Every Venue Should Provide

We’ve talked a great deal previously on our blog about what event planners should do, what they should look for, what they should provide, how they should approach clients, and more. What we haven’t really touched on is venues. Today, we’re going to go over some example venue amenities that should always be included, since the amenities provided to you is what separates the great venues from the good, and the good from the mediocre venues.

Read more →

The Three Most Common Hazards At A Winter Festival

As I’m certain I’ve mentioned on at least one occasion before, winter’s a pretty incredible season from an event management perspective. Although it’s admittedly a little less inviting than the warmer seasons of the year, all that snow – and the holiday cheer that everyone experiences around Christmas – can make for some pretty incredible festivals, in the hands of a skilled event planner.  There’s practically a limitless list of Winter-themed activities you can throw at your guests to keep them entertained, to say nothing of how much fun guests at such events tend to have. Of course, there are…

Read more →

Why Passion Is Important For Event Management

I’m sure you’ve heard the old cliché more times than you’d care to remember – in any industry, passion is one of the most important traits you can possibly have. Without it, nothing else really matters. No matter how talented you are; no matter how skilled and adept you happen to be at what you do, if you lack passion, it’s going to be noticeable in pretty much everything you do. You’re probably wondering why I’m telling you this. After all, informing someone that they just “need to be passionate” is one of the emptiest niceties one can possibly spout.…

Read more →

The Three Biggest Problems You’ll Encounter Running A Charity Event

Charity events are pretty awesome. Not only can you feel like a great person for serving a noble cause, a well-run event can be one of the most enjoyable experiences in the world. That said, they can also be even more stressful than a traditional conference or show.  See, like any other affair, charity events come packaged with their own unique set of roadblocks. It’s important that you make yourself aware of the challenges you’re going to face. After all, it’s better to mitigate your problems before your event kicks off, rather than addressing them during. Engaging People In Your…

Read more →

Why Every Event Planner Should Study Sociology

Today, we’re going to discuss a topic which might –at first glance – seem rather out of place on an event management blog: sociology. In one of my first pieces for Tweetwall, I made reference to Marshall McLuhan; one of the most brilliant sociologists of the 20th century. McLuhan’s insights about a concept known as the ‘global village’ were years ahead of their time, and he managed to predict the strange new society created by social media several decades before it came to pass. Sadly, he never lived to see his theories come to life – he died in 1980,…

Read more →

Is it Possible to Run an Event without a Physical Venue?

It seems like an undeniable truth: if you don’t have a venue in which to run your event, there is no event.  After all, you need a place for your keynotes. You need booths for your vendors, caterers for your guests, a green room for your volunteers, and… Honestly? I’m not certain any of that is even necessary. All you really need is the right software. I should explain. See, we’re living in a society that’s increasingly virtualized. Thanks to improvements in networking technology, what might have been impossible fifteen years ago is completely plausible today. I’m talking about more…

Read more →

Top 5 Event Management Tips for Perfect Weddings

A wedding can be one of the most beautiful events known to man. Here are two individuals ready to swear their life to each other; two people who are ready to devote themselves entirely to one another. Attending one of these events, it’s hard not to shed a tear or two. Of course, for every wedding that’s an awe-inspiring testament to love, there’s also one that’s a complete and utter disaster. Those ones are memorable for entirely different reasons. If you’ve been hired to plan someone’s wedding, you need to do everything in your power to ensure that it falls…

Read more →

5 Tips for Planning the Perfect Press Conference

As a corporate event manager, you may eventually be asked to plan a press conference. More so than any other event, a properly executed press conference can be one of the best things to happen to a brand. Similarly, a terrible press conference can severely damage a brand. You want to make sure any conference you plan falls into the former category, rather than the latter. Here are a few words of wisdom to planning the perfect event: Make Sure Your Speakers Are Naturals I’ve watched some painfully bad press conferences, and most of them had one thing in common: the speakers…

Read more →

Five Signs A Vendor Is A Total Flake

Selecting vendors to populate your trade show is often just as important as hiring people to help you run it.  After all, you can’t really run a trade show if there are no presenters on the show floor, can you? That isn’t to say you can’t afford to be selective with who you call on – quite the contrary, I’d recommend it. See, the thing is, hiring a bad vendor can be worse than bringing on no vendor at all. Have you ever noticed how a single toxic individual at a party can create a black cloud around the whole…

Read more →

Three Reasons Your Event Management Firm Should Hire A Lawyer

One of the most important challenges facing you as an event planner is the law. I’m not just talking about writing contracts or being aware of the legal environment in which you’re running your events – though these certainly do play a part. It’s a little deeper than that. I should explain a bit. It’s no real secret that many in the business world – and that includes event management professionals – have a deeply-ingrained distrust of lawyers. They fret about legal fees. They worry about being limited in what their organization can do with its brand. Most of all,…

Read more →

The Ten Most Catastrophic Event Management And Marketing Fails Of 2014

2014 has finally come and gone. As is the custom around this time of year, we’re going to take a brief look back before turning our eyes toward the future. More specifically, we’re going to take a look at some of the biggest blunders, mess-ups, and fiascos of the year in the dual world of marketing and event management. The catastrophes you’re about to witness are many and varied in nature. From Apple and U2’s decision to force a new album on fans to Paddy Power’s baffling decision to bulldoze part of the Brazilian rainforest; these gaffes all have one…

Read more →

How to Plan a Realistic Event Timeline

While planning an event can be stressful, most agree that this can be exciting at the same time. After all, there is nothing better than watching your plan come together. As you get started, you need to plan a realistic event timeline. The key word here is realistic. In this article we’re going to offer some advice on how to plan out your event timeline. The following five tips will put your event timeline on the right track: 1. Start as far in advance as possible The sooner you have a timeline in place the better off you are going…

Read more →