How to Attract People to Your Event

Events Planning & Managing
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You are planning an event with all of the appropriate professional people. Of course, you will use your social media channels to create a giant buzz and to ensure that your event is a raging success. There are several ways that you can go about that and you will have to figure out which combination works best.

Attracting droves of attendees

When it comes to planning events and considering the attendees who will be present at your event, it is not something that you will just throw together. It must be planned carefully and executed precisely. The success of your event should be something that you understand so that you can plan your next event (and the one after that and the one after that) in the same way so that you achieve the same success each  time you conduct and event. It should never be by accident. Remember, luck should have absolutely nothing to do with it.

The way that you can ensure that success is by making the most of your social media channels. The social media channels that you have chosen to be a part of have tremendous potential to bring you very far when it comes to events. A wonderful way to ensure your event success is to look at what other successful business owners do in order to ensure success. There are several different things that you can do in order to make sure that each and every one of your events is a raging success.

  • Request a social handle from each of your attendees: If you charge money for a ticket to your event (or if you don’t), make sure to request the social handle when you issue the ticket to the attendee. If the attendee gives you his or her social handle, you can follow that person and begin to build a relationship together. Additionally, if you have the person’s social handle, you can express  your gratitude as well. It is a necessary gesture but it is also a gesture that will be met with a very positive response from the other person.

    Building those relationships will help you to strengthen your target audience and it will show you the most effective way to interact with them and to get a more accurate sense of what they want and need from you and from your brand. If you are able to follow your target audience members,  you will have access to what they actually speak about, where their passions lay, and how they feel about all sorts of things. As you get to know the members of your target audience better, you can tweak the lists that you have created and your relationships will become more and more solid over time. 

  • Use Twitter to create a buzz: Before your event, you can tweet about the event and get people really excited about what you have planned. You can give them a sense of the topics that you are going to cover at the event and you can let them know which influencers will be participating in your event. Before you know it, the people whom you are following will be all a buzz about your event and they will be telling people they know about it. It will create a very positive frenzy!

  • When it comes to your influencers, you can set up a Q&A before the event for the benefit of your attendees: A Q&A is an excellent way to share valuable information in a clear, concise manner and it will give your attendees the sense that they will be walking into your event armed with valuable information. There are many questions that are probably on the minds of your attendees and the Q&A can answer many of those questions, which will leave room for other important questions to be asked later on.

  • You should encourage all of your event participants to get involved in the interactions: Often, what makes a good event is how active all (or most) of the participants were. If they walk away from the event feeling as though they learned a lot, contributed a lot, and felt that their opinion mattered, that event will be considered successful by that attendee. There is nothing better than that because that means that they will not only tell other people about what a wonderful event you had but they will be also be very excited about attending your future events.

  • Take advantage of testimonials in your marketing materials: Let’s face it, your marketing materials are critical to your success. Those materials need a backbone and your testimonials will serve as that backbone. In fact, you are the only person who can’t blow your own horn. Which means that you need to get other people to believe in what you are doing and in how well you are doing it so that they can tell other people about your accomplishments. Of course, it isn’t enough in this situation to get verbal feedback. You really need it in writing so that other people perceive it as being credible.

  • Fill your event with influencers: Influencers are one of the many keys to becoming successful. Influencers give you credibility and they introduce new and interesting topics, which will generate all sorts of interesting discussions. The more you associate with influencers, the better you will look and the more positively other people will perceive you and your business. It is an absolute must if you want to get anywhere professionally.

Conclusion

Events are great tools to use when you are on your way to the top. You will have an opportunity to be really creative when you organize and run an event and you may be surprised at how much business comes from just one event. At the very least, it will give you an opportunity to solidify relationships that you have been working on and establish new ones as well. Remember to engage your attendees as much as possible and make them walk away feeling that they are better off for having attended your event. If you do it right, your event will start to make something happen in positive direction. It will allow you to interact in new ways with your target audience members. It will also bring a new dimension to your relationships. 

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Author

  • Carolyn Cohn

    Carolyn Cohn is the Co-Founder & Chief Creative Services of CompuKol Communications. Carolyn manages CompuKol’s creative and editorial department, which consists of writers and editors. Her weekly blogs are syndicated globally. She has decades of editorial experience in online editing, and editing books, journal articles, abstracts, and promotional and educational materials. Carolyn earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in English from the State University of New York (SUNY) at Buffalo.