Getting Great Photos To Promote Your Event

May 8, 2013 By Leave a Comment

Photos can communicate buckets of information to your potential attendees.  Plus, crisp, bright, engaging photos will appeal to your guests and help them imagine themselves attending your event.  So how do you get these incredible photos?

  1. Hire (or barter for) a professional.  A professional photographer will have the equipment and knowledge needed to get you the best shots.  Potential attendees generally want to see photos of: the main event hall, the facility, people attending and an approximation of the accommodations.  Ask the photographer to give you a list of shots they’ll be trying for and add anything you particularly desire. If you’re hosting an event that will include more than a handful of people, consider reaching out to those already enrolled to see if someone would like a free ticket in return for photography services.
  2. Enlist the crowd.  I recently attended a wedding where the bride and groom posted signs that said “mark your photos with #custerweddingbells.”  Browsing Instagram later that evening I typed “custerweddingbells” into the search bar, and up came all the photos that had been so marked.  The wedding from the perspective of many guests!  What if you harnessed your attendees’ photos?  You’ll need to create a unique hashtag and advertise it.  You could even have a feed set up onto several screens that showed those photos during your event.  Fun!
  3. Take ‘em yourself.  Honestly, this is the least desirable option. You have a zillion things to do.  But, sometimes it happens.  Find or purchase a very small, high quality pocket camera.  Take some photos, and don’t be afraid to stage a few shots of laughing/smiling attendees if you need to. (You may not have time to wait for the perfect shot). Some photos taken by you are much better than no photos at all.

Great photos are worth the trouble!  They’ll be an important part of your marketing next year, so err on the side of “too many” incredible shots.  You won’t be sorry you have them.  Find a professional, enlist the crowd and have a small camera available for the shots you spot- I recommend doing all three!

Filed Under: Marketing and Promotion, Post-Event Follow-up Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Creating An Effective Communications Strategy

March 27, 2013 By 1 Comment

My church, ClearView Baptist in Franklin, TN, is in the middle of writing a communications strategy for events from the different ministries in the church.  Our goal with this policy is to “balance the church’s need to speak with the audience’s ability to listen.”

We started by making a list of communication tools that our ministries are using to get the word out.  Those tools were divided into five categories:

  1. Worship Related Tools: Sunday Morning Paper, bulletin inserts, video annoucements.
  2. Campus-Wide Promotion: hallway TV slides, roadside banners, hallway posters.
  3. Off-Campus Promotions: news release, custom mailer.
  4. Website: front page feature, announcement, video story, video announcement.
  5. Email: church-wide eblast, ministry eblast, monthly ministry eblast.
  6. Social Networks: Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, etc.

We added a timeline for ministries to use when planning their event.  This strategy was not designed to add stress to the different ministries, but to help them clearly assembly a plan for communicating their events.

Walking through this exercise has helped us identify what we’re doing correctly and what areas need improvement.

Communications and marketing go hand-in-hand.  Marketing is communicating your message.  In the case of the readers of this blog, your message is about your event.  Sitting down and spelling out your strategy for communicating your message before you start is the first step to having a successful marketing plan.  Now that you have this strategy down, add the timeline.  I’m always forgetting to put calendar dates down for this timeline, and then the event is a month away, and I’m scrambling to communicate that message.  Don’t forget to add the calendar dates!

The list of tools your event uses maybe different than what ClearView has.  You may also find different areas have better results, and therefore require time, energy and money spent on them.

What tools have been the most effective for communicating your message?

Filed Under: Meeting Set-Up, Post-Event Follow-up, Pre-Event Planning Tagged With: , ,

Christian Meeting Planning Resources – December Update

December 28, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Here is what we’ve added in December by category

Marketing/Promotion

Site Selection

Retreats/Meetings

Meeting Planners

I hope you find these helpful and remember we have many more than might interest you  in the Meeting Planner Resources section of the blog.

 

Filed Under: Cost Saving Ideas, Post-Event Follow-up, Pre-Event Planning Tagged With: , , , , ,

Communicating With Your Attendees

December 19, 2012 By 1 Comment

Putting systems into place to communicate with your group during an event is wonderfully useful tool for leaders.  Don’t wait until you have an emergency or schedule change notification to set up a group communication system.  In today’s world, you have multiple options: email, texting, twitter, Facebook, even walkie talkies.  Think about your group, and decide what plan takes advantage of the “low hanging fruit.”  Meaning, what does most of your group already use to communicate?  Does everyone respond to your emails within minutes, or is it a group more comfortable with texting?  If you don’t know, ask- and if a clear winner emerges, choose that.  Notify your group how you plan to communicate with them and what method you will use.

Setting up a group within your email or cell phone contacts will save you lots of time.   Include everyone you would want to contact and title it something you can remember like “retreat 2012”.  Then, when you need to send a message, you can pull up the group and quickly send an update without wondering who you have forgotten!

What might you send out updates for?  Information about group-specific gatherings like meal times and meeting places, free time group activities, or even questions about what speakers people are particularly enjoying.  Unless you have a group that truly enjoy lots of updates, don’t pepper your group with messages every hour.

If you have a group that doesn’t use cell phones or you’re going to a location without cell service- consider walkie talkies.  These can also be useful between cars or vans while traveling.  Using walkie talkies means you will need to designate a user and know that the group will remain fairly close together so that the information can be disseminated.

If you have a large group, more than twenty people, it might benefit you to break your group into smaller subsets and assign a leader for each.  Then you can communicate with your leaders and have them pass the information to their group.

With your group communication plan in place you’ll be able to quickly and efficiently notify your circle during the ups and downs of your event experience.  Decide on a method of communication, create contact groups to make it fast and simple, and notify your group of the plan. Ready, set, go!

Filed Under: Leadership Helps, Post-Event Follow-up, Pre-Event Planning Tagged With: , , , , , ,

3 Questions to Guide Evaluation and Planning

December 14, 2012 By Leave a Comment

As Seth Godin recently wrote, the sentiment  “You Can’t Argue With Success…” is a faulty one.  Our summer camp ministry is going very well and impacting many lives for God’s glory, and yet lately we’ve felt burdened that perhaps God is calling us to increase our impact in various ways.  As a result, we recently spent several days in evaluation and strategic planning for our summer camps.  We were blessed with a beautiful, relaxed off-site meeting location, and an effective outside consultant who guided the process before, during, and after the actual retreat.

Perhaps you don’t have the need or resources for such an extensive process (we’re certainly in that boat most of the time), but you can still use the following three simple questions to spur improvements for your event:

What should we KEEP doing?  Think about what your event does well.  Does it satisfy a significant need for your tribe (another Godin term)?  Are you doing/providing something of value that isn’t readily available elsewhere?  Does the format of your event encourage the primary goals for the event?  In what ways are you “wowing” attendees?  By all means, recognize what you’re doing well, and keep it up!

What should we STOP doing?  Think about what isn’t working.  Or, just as important, think about what works well but isn’t perhaps of significant value for attendees.  In order to have the resources and energy to implement your answers to the next question, you’ll likely need to identify some activities you’ll need to stop.  Call it “sacrificing the good for the best”, or “emphasizing effectiveness over efficiency”, but identify aspects of your event that need to go.

What should we START doing?  Often this is the most fun question to consider.  What have you always wanted to do with your event?  What can help your event be more effective due to the changes in your industry or attendees over the years?  While input from your attendees can be useful in answering all three questions, it can be especially helpful when exploring options to initiate.

Whether your event is flying high, battling with inconsistency from year to year, or in a steady decline you wish to reverse, careful reflection on these three questions can provide invaluable information that will improve your event and provide greater value for your attendees.

Filed Under: Post-Event Follow-up, Pre-Event Planning Tagged With: ,

Christian Meeting Planning Resources – November Update

November 30, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Here are some great articles we’ve read in November, I hope you find something useful as your making plans for your upcoming meetings and events.

I hope you find these helpful and remember we have many more that might interest you  in the Meeting Planner Resources section of the blog.

 

Filed Under: Budget and Pricing, Christian Retreat Ideas, Cost Saving Ideas, Food and Beverage, Marketing and Promotion, Meeting Set-Up, Post-Event Follow-up, Pre-Event Planning, Site Selection Tagged With: , ,
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