Confession time. I’ve gone to a search engine and typed in my name. That’s right, and I know I’m not alone in this. You’ve done it too. Why? Because we’re all curious about what we might find.
Right after you’re done searching for your own name, take a moment and search for your event. Let’s look at a couple of reasons why searching for your event is important.
Search Ranking
Knowing where your event ranks in search engine results is very important. When I do a search, I don’t normally go past the first page of results. Having your event higher on that list of results is important.
Don’t confuse this with people only searching for your event. This applies to keywords as well. For instance, if your event is geared on leadership, then your event needs to be high on that keyword search results.
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is a learned skill…and it changes every week (at least it seems like it does!) depending on the search engine. My suggestion would be to work with your website designer on finding the right keywords to embed for your event.
Buying search results is also a possibility, and how much you spend would depend on your budget.
What Others Are Saying About Your Event?
Remember the old adage “any publicity, is good publicity”? I don’t think that’s true in the viral world in which we live. People are going to talk about your event. It could be as easy as a Facebook post or Tweet, but that little piece of information, whether positive or negative, is going to stay on the Internet forever.
Doing a simple search on your event could help you answer objectives to your event as soon as the negative ones appear.
If a negative post appears, reach out to the person and try to correct it. Getting this post removed probably won’t happen, but you could ask that person to amend their negative post if their issue was resolved.
The same is true for a positive post. Tell that person “thank you” for the positive review. Showing gratitude will only buy you future goodwill.
One other tip: some search engines allow you to setup emails for keywords. I’ve done this in the past, and it works great. These emails are free, and will help you see what others are saying about your event in a more timely fashion.
Have you searched for your event? What results did you find?