This is a guest post by Keri Calhoun from Batchbook (makers of follow-up tools for Eventbrite).
The benefits of hosting a killer event doesn’t need to end when the event does. Preparing beforehand to follow-up after your event, lays the foundation for a great relationship and makes your event and organisation stand out from the rest.
Here are 6 important things you can do now to guarantee that your event follow-up is easy and rewarding long after the party’s over.
1. Don’t go it alone
Running a successful event is a team effort, so start by figuring out who’s responsible for what, and set up task systems and regular check-ins to encourage collaboration and keep your finger on the pulse of where everyone’s at.
Try expanding outside of your own team or company to help other event participants to follow-up as well. For example, make it easy for speakers to follow up by having an attendee check-in station, where there’s an option to leave a name and email address to receive post-event info, like resources referenced during the talk or email newsletters.
Be sure to tell speakers beforehand that you’ll be doing this for them, so they can prepare accordingly! You can also assign board members follow-up tasks to send hand-written notes to speakers. Who sends hand-written notes these days? You do, and you’ll be remembered for it.
2. Cover the social media basics
Plan ahead to deliver amazing social coverage that wows, keeps participants informed, and encourages engagement and conversation long after your event’s over.
Creating a Facebook event page is a great way to keep a pre- and post-event eye out on questions, ideas and the general conversation surrounding your event. Facebook is where you can encourage attendees to engage and follow-up with other registrants and attendees they met or may have missed meeting.
It’s also a great way to get any post-event resources to people quickly and encourage social sharing, which can in turn get you new followers, future attendees, sponsors, and speakers.
Use Twitter to provide attendees with real-time coverage of event highlights and to keep them notified of any last-minute changes. Select and promote one or two key hashtags so that attendees can find relevant and timely tweets quickly.
Make it easy to spread the word by using Click to Tweet, which lets you highlight key phrases in your publications, like blog posts or press releases, so that readers can re-tweet them in a single click.
Being prepared to cover your event via social media makes using a summary program like Storify worth the effort. Storify lets you combine social event coverage from various platforms into a single storyline that can be published on your blog or Facebook page, post-event. It’s a super-fun follow-up resource to send to registrants.
3. Hire a photographer and videographer
A professional or volunteer photographer and videographer will give you lots of material for following up with all your event attendees. Make sure they get a nice shot of each speaker during the presentation as well, so you can send a 5×7 print as a speaker thank you gift.
You can also upload the best photos to that Facebook event page you created, to keep people interested and to keep the networking going post-event. Turn the video into a highlights reel to promote your next event and to give folks a great idea of your amazing event-hosting powers.
4. Plan to collect attendee info
Think about what you’d like to know about your event attendees, and ask for that information during the registration process.
If you plan on posting photos and videos of the event afterward, ask your attendees for a photo release. If your event is open to both members and non-members, ask non-members if they’d like info on joining. This is also a great time to get permission for newsletter sign-ups.
Preparing to gather useful info beforehand will prepare you for following up on those aims in a timely manner later.
5. Plan a post-event give-away promotion
A giveaway promotion is a great conversation starter, a way to include folks who couldn’t make it to the event, a good reason for a few post-event follow-ups, and it extends the online life of your event.
Give away an hour-long phone call with your keynote speaker, or two nights at the event hotel so the winner can bring their family back. Don’t forget to mention the giveaway on your Facebook page!
6. Prepare to say thanks
It sounds simple: you want to send a virtual, thanks-for-coming follow-up note to everyone who attended your event and helped make it a smashing success. This thank you should be short, sweet and useful. Think of the impression you’d like to leave. Is it a list of resources? A special offer? A striking image?
Whatever you choose to say, make sure that it gets said well and promptly by writing it ahead of time and creating a list of recipients. All you’ll have left to do after the event is add finishing touches, last-minute additions, give it a quick once-over and then hit send.
Trust us, you’ll be so happy to have that much less work to do post-event, that this may be your favorite follow-up task yet!
Conclusion
This list was inspired by the events we’ve planned and the ones we’ve attended.
It’s a work in progress, and we encourage you to likewise find inspiration from creative places and people around you: the wedding planners, retreat organizers, bloggers, schools and neighborhoods all doing amazing and novel things to bring groups of people together to engage, connect, and inspire them.
The next time you’re at an event, take note of what makes you smile or leaves a positive, lasting impression, and see if you can work an element like it into your next event.
Good luck & happy planning!
