Four Big Mistakes In Event Planning

I’ve been planning events for over ten years, and well if you include the countless family extravaganzas and rallying together volunteers for ridiculous tasks that number is probably doubled just on frustration and learning the hard way alone.

Remember putting together events without social media, you know when you actually had to go out and talk to people or pick up the phone? It all has changed, but that does not mean your strategy should be all that different. The “build it and they will come” philosophy just leaves you with an empty room and eventually your ramblings about “what went wrong” leads to blaming the current economy.

So, here are my four mistakes of event planning with some easy suggestions to make your next event a success:

Relying on Facebook

Do not rely on Facebook for anything at all. I currently have over 20 event invitations in my Facebook inbox. I can barely tell what is relevant to me, I might be missing out on a killer art show or concert, but I wouldn’t know because some band from Texas invites me to all their gigs even though I’m over 1,500 miles away and my one aunt only uses Facebook to invite me to events that are “inspirational stories”. 

So what do you need to? You need to send emails, you need to use other websites, and you need actually call and invite people. The Internet is there to assist you, it is not there to do everything for you.

No central location for information

You need one place to direct possible attendees for information, not a Facebook page, an event, a ticket site, and your website. Don’t get me wrong, you need all those things but you need to be directing everyone to one place, and that one place is your website.

The real price of free events

Having a free event can seem appealing, however you’ve added no value to your event. If someone just doesn’t want to get out of bed that morning or something else comes up they have lost nothing in that exchange for other plans. You, the planner, on the other hand have empty seats and considerably less attendance. Of course, if you have a reputation for stellar events or were blessed with an amazing speaker or two, you might be ok.

Missing fundamental details

So there’s two weeks until your event and you are still figuring out the major details? This, my friend is not a good sign. You should have your major who, what, when, and why covered and publicized at least a month a head of your event, the sooner the better.