Events University

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We've all been there. It's 48 hours before your event and someone mentions that you need a liquor license and event insurance. What the what? Are those real things that you need to worry about? Yes, they are and yes you need them. Stop panicking, we've got everything you need to know right here.

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The Hashtag (number sign, pound key, or octothorpe) is a powerful tool that can be used to share and search the social web. Being able to pick the right one could make all the difference in your pre-event, event, and post-event success. Sarah explains. And dances. Multiple times. 

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Well, well, well. You want to start using discounts on your event tickets. How do you make sure they are effective? Watch this video, of course. We'll explain different strategies to get people to buy more tickets or buy their tickets earlier, without lowering the perceived value of your event.

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"Just A Tip" Tumblr

Want short, actionable tips to make your event a success? Click the above image and check out our #justatip video series. Go ahead. It's just a tip, just for a second. 

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You’re going to want to make a habit out of this whole “events” thing. How do you price tickets so people will buy them AND you'll be able to continue putting on events? Tim explains everything you need to know.

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File this tip under things that are completely obvious: You can't have an event without a venue. Here are some tips to help you navigate what is important about your event venue, what doesn't matter and how to find something for free. Do you have another tip for finding the perfect venue? Let us know!

Here's a list of questions to ask when working with a dedicated event space.

And here's some quick info to consider when estimating venue size:

COCKTAIL PARTY: 8 sq ft/person  ROUND TABLES: 14 sq ft/person  CLASSROOM: 24 sq ft/person  THEATER: 14 sq ft/person

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When you are organizing an event, there's nothing better than having all of your tickets sell out. If you think the only thing you can do to sell out is to lower your ticket price, watch on. We're sharing some secrets compiled for thousands of sold out events to see what they have in common. 

What sold out events have in common

We took a look at thousands of sold out events on  Ticketleap to figure out what they have in common. Using some science...or at least some numbers, here’s what we discovered.

There is no magic number for ticket price.

The median ticket price for sold out events is $20. People are totally willing to give up their Andrew Jacksons. But guess what? That’s close to the median for all events and ticket prices vary dramatically. You don’t need to make your event super cheap to sell out, but you DO need to give people a good reason to come.

If you’re an established brand, that reason is apparent. If you are trying to build your brand, you just need to stack the value of your event more heavily on the side of food, drink, known guests, novelty or fun.

The median size of sold out events is only 35 people.

Yes, obviously it’s easier to sell out when you’re selling fewer tickets, but the point is: that’s OK! A 35 person event can be really effective.

For one thing, most of these sold out events COULD have sold more but CHOSE to keep it small. They’re onto something; smaller events are simply great for building connections with people, and growing that community of yours.

Second, selling out is good! It feels good, the space you booked will feel full, and with a sold out event under your belt, it will be easier to sell tickets next time.

It’s harder to sell out during prime time.

There’s probably a natural time for your event to take place. This intel shouldn’t change that, but know this: a higher % of events sell out during the day, than in the early evening (6-8pm). if you’re planning your event during “prime time,” you’re going to have to work a little harder to sell out.

The best way to market your event is through word of mouth.

This chart shows data from a brand that regularly sells out events through Ticketleap. Yes, that says 47% of all tickets sold were directly influenced by comments on Facebook.

If you want to sell out, give people a really easy way to share your event with their networks, and, make sure there is enough time for the word to spread. How much time? Sold out events sold their first ticket 32 days before the event compared to 20 days for events that didn’t sell out!

Put these tips from sold out events into practice and it won’t be long before you’re consistently selling out your events too. And the great thing about events, unlike an ad, is you don’t have to start from scratch each time. As more people come to your events and your community grows, you have a bigger base of people interested in what you’re up to next.

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You know events are a good way to grow your community, but you haven't started yet. Why not? 

Excuses for NOT Organizing an Event (Transcript)

Here are a couple of excuses we’ve heard for not throwing an event and why we we’re (buzzer) marking them as false.

“Throwing an event won’t help me unless hundreds of people show up.”(buzzer)

Au contraire, friends. If size matters, it does in the opposite way.

Starting small is a good thing because it’s easier to create a meaningful connection with a handful of people than it is a large group all at once.

Besides, what feels better, selling 60 tickets to a 750 person event, or selling out a 50 person event and having 10 people on the waitlist? Yayyyyyyy, you.

Throwing an event won’t help me get my name out to the right people (buzzer)

Events make it easier to get your name out.

A local reporter will be much more likely to write about you after attending your event. Press releases only get you so far.

On top of that, events are a good way to get introduced to your 2nd degree connections.

Your friends bring their friend and their friends become your friends….

Once you’ve met someone in person, rather than just over email, it is far easier to ask them for help.

I can’t waste time focusing on one location because my community is all over the country (buzzer)

We get it, the Internet is everywhere. But you aren’t. If you already have fans all over, maybe an event will prompt them to make a trip to you. If you don’t have fans all over, why not build your fan club one city at a time, starting with your city.   

I need to reach influencers (buzzer)

The people that come to your early, small events? Yeah, those ARE your influencers. Everybody has the potential to be your champion word-of-mouth marketer. So put on the kid gloves, roll out the red carpet and treat them so well they cannot help but talk about you for the following week.

Think about it, if all 50 attendees tell 3 of their friends about you, wouldn’t you call that a win?

Chalk it up to keeping up with the Joneses, but once people start talking about the great time they had at your event, it won’t be long before people will be asking about your next event.

“The event needs to be directly related to what we do”(buzzer)

There’s really only a handful of companies that can pull this off, because who wants to go to a party about a cloud-based enterprise Sales CRM solution? (no one).

Stop thinking about what you do and start thinking about fun. You’re trying to create some memories here!

We’ve noticed a bunch of events mashing two things together that you normally wouldn’t think of. Think black tie beer pong, yoga in a museum or lobster in sweatpants...you get the idea.

What have we learned today?

Small events can yield big results.

Events can accomplish some of the more difficult marketing goals (like getting press).

Building a community starts by connecting with people one-on-one.

Make people feel special and they’ll be your best influencers.

Events are supposed to be an experience, not a sales pitch. Have fun with it!

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Congratulations! Your event is just around the corner, but how are you going to get everyone through that door on event day? Ticketleap's Technical Operations Specialist, Jake, gives you the rundown on event check-in options and the method that works best for us. Take it away, Jake...

The 4 Methods of Check-In (Transcript)

So you’ve planned your event, but how are you getting everyone inside? There are 4 tried-and-true methods for event check-in:

One: Check them off of an attendee list.

Two: Collect their ticket.

Three:  Scan their barcoded ticket.

Or four: Glance at their photo.

You can use these methods separately or in combination with each other. We'll walk you through it.

Attendee lists are a great option for smaller events and don’t require you to have anything more than the list, a clipboard (optional), and a pen. No smartphones? No internet? No problem.

If you have a longer list and want to get really fancy, check-out this snazzy scissor work:

[IMAGE]

If you do have a device and internet, many ticketing companies allow you to manage your list using their app [VIDEO OF TL APP IN ACTION]. This is handy for 3 big reasons: New ticket sales appear in the list in real-time -- so there’s no need to stop sales and print the list -- you can search the list by name, and you’ll know exactly how many people showed up.

Your second option is collecting paper tickets. This is just what it sounds like: event-goers bring their ticket and you take it from them. This method is quick, and doesn’t rely on additional resources, however, it’s hard to fish out duplicates. If that’s a major concern then you should go with:

Option 3: scanning the tickets. You’ve seen this guy before → [QR CODE]. To ensure that a ticket is used once and only once, your best bet is scanning. Ticketing companies have different ways to do this, but most scan the barcode using an app and the device’s camera. If a ticket is scanned twice, you’ll know. With this method the ticket can be presented either in paper or digital form (app, email, passbook).

Things to consider with this method: scanning is secure, but could slow down a big line - especially with a shoddy internet connection. Test before it’s showtime!

Looking for a method that a bit more “human?” Selfie Ticket’s your answer. Using our customers’ feedback, we designed a new, quicker, and more friendly way to check in patrons. The way it works is your event-goers get an email the day before the event with instructions to download the app. Once in the app they snap a selfie to generate their secure ticket.

All that’s left is to simply show their ticket, make sure it’s a match, and they’re in!

When we throw events, our favorite combination is: Selfie Ticket with an attendee list on the app as backup. But each event is unique, so pick the one that suits you best!

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Building a community: Try events instead of blog posts

The democratization of the web sounded great until everyone had a voice and now you can’t hear anything.

SARAH'S HISTORY OF BLOGGING

When I started regularly reading blogs, I worked at a very small startup. I was alone most of the day, in a basement office, with no windows and not much to do. It was very glamourous.

Reading blog posts was a way to connect with people that were similar to me, regardless of my windowless situation. I read of my friends’ travel adventures on blogger.com and dreamed of my next vacation. I read blog posts from people that were in similar work situations. Reading Dooce was on my daily to-do list. What she said about her coworkers? Yeah, I felt that way too, sometimes. I read blog posts from my community, making friends working at other startups and peers working in community management.

Of course, I started my own blog as well. I wrote about the things that mattered to me. Music, top five lists, my love of red peppers and Kylie Minogue. All very deep, I assure you.

BLOGGING FOR COMMUNITIES

Over time, I started writing about work stuff: a few posts about community management and startups. Soon, I was blogging for work, but kept up posting to my own blog. My blog became a home for half-baked ideas I wanted to bounce off people, and for cool things I’d discovered through travel and work.

When I posted stuff, people would comment on it. We had discussions. Ideas for work that I hadn’t quite wrapped my head around were improved upon. I was a part of an amazing community. I was convinced that blogging was the future.

Fast forward several years. My life changed, I moved around several times and landed in Philadelphia. Of course, the Internet is everywhere, so my blogging continued. But something had changed. My community was gone. I began to realize that the people that interacted with my blog posts were people that I spent a good deal of time with in person. I regularly saw them at events, around town or when traveling to conferences together. When I landed in Philadelphia, those three things stopped.

MY STUPID BLOG IS COMPETING FOR YOUR CUSTOMERS' ATTENTION

Why does the story of my tiny blogging history matter to someone planning their marketing strategy? Because your company blog is struggling with the same issues that I am. In fact, people are more likely to read my personal blog, because it’s pretty obvious that I won’t be trying to close a sale by the end of the post. And I post pictures of gin.

With a limited number of eyeballs and an unlimited number of blogs, I’m declaring 2014 the year we were officially overwhelmed by content. Readers already have favorite blogs for every category you can imagine. For example, I regularly read three fashion blogs and I am by no means a stylish person. People don’t have room in their lives for more blogs.

WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?

The Internet has gone from a place where you can really get to know people, to a place that only captures the best version of ourselves. People no longer use the Internet to share their deepest, darkest secrets, or to toss out half-baked ideas and ask for feedback before pursuing them. Instead, everything is high gloss, shiny and one click away from getting your money.

Basically, marketers have ruined everything.*

Building a community involves really getting to know people. And the most effective way to do this is to meet with people, face-to-face.

This isn’t as arduous as it might seem. True, getting a group of 10 people together isn’t as easy as posting something on the Internet, but the return on investment is far greater. How many tweets would I have to post before I can get 10 people to share them? Compare that to creating a 10 person event and asking all event goers to share their experience (a free drink as incentive never hurts). Events seem like a great idea now, right?

By starting with a small event, it’s easy to level up. A small, 10 person event, can build a community of 1 (hi mom!) to 10 in a matter of hours.  That’s an amazing return on investment. From there, a 100 person event is another 10x return. Can you think of another marketing tool that can do that? If you can, you should blog about it.

*sorry?

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One of the most stressful parts of creating an event is worrying about ticket sales. Having powered thousands of events, we have some solid data around this. Watch Tim discuss when and how many tickets will sell in the weeks leading up to your event.

            When Do Event Ticket Sales Happen? (Transcript)

If you’ve held your event before, or, if you've got a guy like Len who is really good at predicting things, you probably have a good idea what to expect from your ticket sales.

But for the rest of us, how many tickets you will sell and WHEN you will sell them is a pretty big unknown.

We have a lot of ticket sales data from powering thousands of events. So, we put as many tickets as we could fit into Excel to try to shed some light.

The results are in and I've got good news and bad news. The good news; there's a pretty reliable pattern for when tickets are sold. The bad news; it comes with a fair amount of stress.

OK, the grand reveal: on average, a whopping 27% of tickets are sold the day of your event and 45% in the final 3 days combined. Half of your sales don't come until the week of the event, and I can speak from personal experience: that's stressful!

We tried to slice and dice to see if ALL types of events share this pattern and most of them do. Some interesting sub-stats:

People plan more for the weekends and procrastinate during the week:

Weekend events sell “only” 40% in the final 3 days

Weekday events sell 49% in the final 3 days

Morning weekday events are the worst for procrastination: 62% in the final 3 days

Right after work we tend to plan more for: 40% in the final 3 days.

When during the day do people buy them?

When they’re at work. 10AM is the most popular time to purchase a ticket online, but sales stay strong until 4PM. After dinner isn't bad either.

SO WHAT DOES THIS ALL MEAN?

Well, I think you'll find smart ways to use this information. Maybe, schedule your tweets around 10AM, and, really push hard on getting the word out during the week of the event. If you can't beat procrastination, join it!

One final tip: If you're throwing an event that you think will mimic this pattern, when you're 2 weeks out, multiply your ticket sales by 2.5. That's a rough guess for total attendance.

But the absolute best way to know how many tickets you will sell? Create that event you’ve been thinking about and find out!

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Setting your Ticket Price with an Event Budget

How to decide what ticket prices to an event should be

The thing about setting prices for online products is you can easily change the price of a product from one day to the next. Changing the price allows ecommerce retailers determine the perfect point on the supply and demand curve for everything they sell. Unfortunately, setting ticket prices isn’t as easy. Can you imagine what would happen if you drastically reduced the price of tickets before your event happened? Everyone that bought at the higher price would want a refund!

Where to start

The best place to start is working out a budget. If you know how much the event will cost in total, it is easier to determine and justify the cost of an individual ticket price. As a bonus, having a budget will help you, the event organizer, sleep at night. You won’t need to worry about money, because you’ll be prepared before the invoices start rolling in.

How to create an initial budget

If you already have an idea of what you want your event will look like, map out a budget. You can start by budgeting for your dream event, or figuring out your minimum requirements to make the day successful.  

Call potential vendors and ask for advice. They’ll be happy to help if they know you’ll be working with them in the future. As industry experts, vendor can give you an estimate on costs. They can also tell you the most efficient way of doing things, no need for you to reinvent the wheel here! Once you’ve estimated all of your costs, you’ll start to get a clear picture of how much you’ll need to charge people.

After creating an initial budget, do some research to get an idea of what people are willing to pay for similar events. This doesn’t have to be an onerous task. A quick search online for comparable events, or a survey over beers with a few friends. Just be careful when asking people you know for their opinion, you want honest feedback. Let them know that you will be asking strangers for money, so this is not the time to spare your feelings.

How to align your budget, ticket prices and expectations

If it seems like your budget is completely out of line with what people are willing to pay, what should you do?

Cut back on expenses - Some of the things in your budget can have a drastic effect on the price of a ticket. The cost of food and drinks, as well as how much you are paying for a venue are the easiest things in your budget to change.

Decide if the additional cost is a line item in your marketing budget - No one wants to lose money on an event, but if you are hosting an event to build connections with your brand, how much is that worth to your marketing department? Think about the event just as you would any other marketing campaign.

Get sponsors - If you are sure your event will be a success, but don’t want to charge too much for tickets, you can enlist sponsors to help you cover the cost. Adding sponsors takes a whole new level of organizing when it comes to event planning, so be prepared for more work. If a company or organization is giving you money to sponsor your event, you’ll want to make sure you detail exactly what they will get for the sponsorship, and make sure you can follow through on what you’ve promised. Note: There's so much to think about with sponsors, we'll write more about 

No matter how big or how small your event is, it’s wise to get very comfortable with your budget before you start selling tickets. There’s nothing worse than getting close to the big day and realizing you won’t have enough money to pay for everything.

The exception to the rule: Sometimes, the overall stakes are low. If you're starting something small and scrappy, go with your gut! You can refine your budget and worry about ticket prices as your event gets bigger.

Follow up after an event

After the event, make sure to collect feedback from attendees. This won’t be difficult if people aren’t happy - they’ll definitely let you know! Even if attendees loved your event, specific feedback will help you determine what to keep the same and what to do even better next time.  Because now you know how easy it is to host a great event, you’re going to do it again, right?

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The greatest part about creating your event is that your imagination is the limit. You don’t need to have a background in event planning, you just need an idea. The more it matches your personality, the more everything will easily fall into place. Watch Lansie, our friend and guest contributor from Philly Give and Get, to hear some great ideas on events that fit you.

(event footage contributed by Adriano Martino, Eventcut)

          Making Your Fundraiser More You (Transcript)

You know the best part about your event? It’s yours

And that’s great news because when you’re making something that’s yours, there’s no mold to follow, there are no lines to stay in. In other words, you don’t have to know what you’re doing.

What a relief -- because I sure didn’t.

This is my biggest piece of advice after creating my event, called Philly Give & Get: Make the personality of your event match the personality of YOU, the people creating the event.

Philly Give and Get is a charity auction. I know what you’re thinking: Nice cause, good for you, but kinda boring. Sit down dinner, white table cloths, little socialization. This is what a successful charity event is supposed to be like, right?

It can be. There are lots of good ones that look like that, but that wasn’t US.

When we started Philly Give & Get, we knew that creating a great event meant taking a risk and doing something completely new. We took an event that had been done to death - a silent auction for charity - and reinvented it to be more accessible to young patrons. It was very interactive and fun, and an evening that was more concerned about getting new people excited than raising money from the same old stalwart supporters.

Get out of the event box! Instead of a sit-down gala, 5k fun run, pancake breakfast, or silent auction, why not have an original event that really represents your organization? If you’re a youth arts organization, what about a finger painting party or a drink-and-draw night sponsored by a local brewery? A charter school could host a murder-mystery dinner or a back-to-school night using its building. I love the idea of a community or rec center having an old-school Field Day, complete with three-legged races and toss-the-egg.

Whatever it is, pick a theme and stick with it! Remember, it’s always easier to get attendees and press coverage when your event has a very specific look, feel, and target audience. When it represents YOU!

This has led us to two sold-out auctions and activating more than 500 new philanthropists and really making a difference and having fun at the same time.

One last tip that worked for us and may work for you: We got a photobooth and made sure all the photos were watermarked with our logo. People shared them on facebook and it really made a difference to help the word spread!

OK, happy event creating. If you’re looking for more great ways to support great causes, send us an email at [email protected] or tweet me at @PhillyGiveGet and @FancyLansie!

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Why We Crave Shared Experiences

Here at Ticketleap we have a really strong belief in something. We believe it so damn hard that it basically fuels everything we do. We say it all the time:

Experiences are greater than things.

For us, it’s a truth. It’s so easy for us to say, but quite frankly, it’s hard to explain. We love events. And events are planned experiences. But why are experiences so great? What is an experience? What do they mean??

My god, are we even here right now?!?

Whoa. Reign it in.

Clearly it’s a lofty concept to grasp. But, for an event creator, understanding the meaning of experiences could help you turn a forgettable event into a transforming one. And in terms of just, you know, being a person, experiences are what make up our lives. So being able to understand them? Well, that could bring meaning to your life. Maybe that sounds overly dramatic to you, but to us, that’s something worth exploring.

Victor Turner  —  Anthropologist, timeless stud, and eyebrow enthusiast

Taking a look back into what’s now referred to as Event Studies, we find anthropological research into human rituals. In 1969 an anthropologist named Victor Turner took an existing ritual theory and described something he observed as “Communitas”. You see, there are stages to a ritual. It begins with being separated from the normal, then there’s a transition into another realm of being, and ends with the reincorporation into everyday life. Turner found that when people are together, and they make that transition into this “new realm” then they suddenly have something very unique and special in common. A togetherness is formed and this is called “Communitas”. People experiencing the same event, at the same time and in the same space, are in that sense “equals”. This has tremendous binding power.

There’s been a lot of research that supports the existence of these “Communitas”, but you already know that they are real. They’re experienced all the time. High-fiving the stranger next to you at your team’s sporting event. Soldiers returning from war that feel closer than brothers. The entire Breakfast Club for God’s sake!

Greatest scientific example of Communitas

Shared experiences have the ability to fuse people together, sometimes people who wouldn’t have even made sense together outside of that context. Simply put, that’s powerful.

The final stage of this process is called Reversion. When a ritual, or an event, comes to a close the participants must revert back to normal life. An individual goes from a special state to an ordinary one. For a planned event experience, you want people to feel a sense of change here. If there isn’t one then the experience was neither special nor memorable. These feelings can range from accomplishment to renewal to even loss. Imagine the feeling of missing colleagues and friends after a conference. That’s the loss of “communitas” and is what drives people to attend future events. These feelings are what bring meaning to the experience. They enrich our lives and the feeling is addictive. It’s the reason planned events exist. We seek to escape the ordinary and we crave unique experiences with others. As humans, we always have.

Sure, social experiences can happen whenever and wherever people are, but…

planned events exist solely to facilitate these types of experiences. A planned event is a way to control them. Perhaps it sounds ridiculous to try and invoke scientific theory in order for you to improve your class at the local rec center on the art of pickling vegetables. But meaning can be found in every event. How meaningful depends on the manner in which people are involved and engaged. No matter how small, an event experience has the power to engage people, let them escape the ordinary, and build relationships.

Meaningful experiences are what make up a meaningful life. And we see no reason why at least one of them can’t be that class at the local rec center on the art of pickling vegetables.

Getz, Houser. Event Studies. Routledge, 2012. Print.

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We always hear about the months of planning it takes to host an event, but does it always have to be that way? Watch Beah describe how she put together an event in just one week, without breaking the bank or her will to live.

            Planning an Event in One Week (Transcript)

When you think of an “event,” what does it look like?

Hundreds of people?

Thousands?

At a conference center?

A Stadium?

It doesn’t have to look like that. Even a small, low overhead event can be a very effective way to build your community.

But is any event reaaaaally low overhead? Events are hard, right?

I didn’t know the answer. So I set up an experiment!

I wanted to test if I could create and produce an event in one week (OK, in 8 days -- but, that’s just cause bob was busy on Wednesday). What’s the absolute minimum I could spend, in terms of time and money? With no marketing, would anyone show up?

Luckily I had a free venue: Ticketleap HQ. You probably have a free venue too. Be scrappy. Your house? A friend’s place? A public park? Once you have a place, you can craft details around it.

This brings me to the first rule of creating an event in 1 week

(Don’t worry. There are only 2 rules):

Rule #1: Work with what you got

Alright, planning...

Event size.

I capped it at 20. The lounge can handle 20 and it felt like a good number for a beer tasting. I figured if I sold at least 10 tickets, I’d be happy.

Ticket cost.

I had no clue. I knew that beer would be our only expense, so I just set it at $5. There was no math. No spreadsheet. I looked it up in my gut.

Marketing.

Here’s the good thing: you don’t have to market a 20 person event that hard.

I got the event online, tweeted about it, and invited our upstairs neighbors. Done.

That first day I sold 1 ticket. To my husband.

That’s OK.

Most events don’t go gangbusters that first day.

NOW, time for

Rule #2: Identify TWO friends who can give you feedback and a hand

I recruited my esteemed colleagues: Bob and Alex. This was the smartest thing I did. 6 days before the event, we sat down and talked through how the event would go. Their feedback plugged some holes and really brought the event to life.   

That’s about it.

OK. So how’d the event go?

I sold 14 tickets

I lost $22 dollars (but gained a fridge full of left over beer)

I spent a grand total of 3 hrs and 17 mins planning and prepping

Most importantly… it was a success. People had a great time. They even wanted to know when the next event would be.

I had a great time too. I met some new friends and I felt pretty awesome about the whole thing. Going to a good event is rewarding; creating a good event is even better.

And this stuff only gets easier. Next time. I bet I could fly in under 3 hours and keep the whole thing in the black.

So what’s your idea? Grab a couple of friends and turn it into an event!

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Event Spotlights

Not sure where to start? Check out some of the cool things happening through Ticketleap and find some inspiration for your event.

What happens when you mix salsa dancing, live music, and the longest day of the year? The Morris Arboretum of the University of Pennsylvania's Summer Solstice Salsa party, that's what. We were lucky enough to be invited by our friends at the Philly arboretum to capture the sweet summer party for our first ever video event spotlight. Check it out.

It’s as simple as it sounds… a festival with smoked beers from around the world paired with some of the best local BBQ and smoked food Philadelphia has to offer. Yards Brewery President Tom Kehoe and his team hosted the 5th Annual “Smoke ‘Em If Yous Got ‘Em” event this past September, and good times were had by all involved. Mouth watering yet? Us too.

Back in November, we hosted our first event, Create! Talks were had, drinks were drank, and songs were sung. Good times were had by all- and man, did we learn a lot about the event creation process. Check out the video above to see how it all went down. 

  For more of our event spotlights check out our blog here.

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Using Photos To Help Sell Your Event

If you’ve ever flipped through a Facebook photo album, or, gasp, an envelope of pictures you can actually touch with your hands, you know that photos have the unique ability to bring you back to a special moment in time.

As time passes and other experiences fight for our attention, past events become difficult to remember without photographs. Do you remember your last day of high school, your sister’s wedding or your first concert? What about New Year’s Eve 2003, or the marathon you ran when you were 21? Those fading moments can feel like just yesterday once again through the power of pictures. Revisiting an image can encourage fans to go to that music festival, attend that convention year after year, or sign up for that next marathon.

HIRING A PHOTOGRAPHER OR SHOOTING IT YOURSELF

There are a number of good reasons to spend money on a professional photographer. First, if your event is more than 15 people, you will probably be too busy to take very many photos. Second, a professional photographer is…a professional! Their experience gives them a leg up on capturing moments that us regular folks just wouldn’t think of. Finally, event photographers often have a fan base of their own. If you are trying to grow your event, allowing the event photographer to share event photos on their website or social networks will give your event even more exposure.*

If you can’t afford a photographer, it’s okay- you can make it work. Taking some basic, quality photos that will showcase your special event is easier than you might think. With the flick of an iPhone or digital camera, you can capture fabulous photos.

GEARING UP

Cell Phone Camera

It’s hard to believe, but there are 8 megapixels packed into your iPhone 4 or 5. Cell phone cameras are ideal for quick snapshots because they slip right into your pocket, can be edited with the press of a button, and shared on various social media platforms in seconds. There are also tons of affordable iPhone camera add-ons and special Instagram editing apps to make your pictures look even more impressive.

Point-and-Shoot

Pros to ye olde point-and-shoot: you can buy a great quality camera for little money, and easily upload photos to your computer. For about $100, you can stop by your local Costco, Target, or Radioshack and pick up your new pocket-sized toy. Multiple settings and video recording options make it easy to capture the highlights of your event. Learn how to get the most out of your point-and-shoot here.

Digital SLR

Definitely the priciest DIY option, but there’s a good chance a friend of family member has one you can borrow. After a quick online tutorial, you can take some seriously pro-quality photos. If you’re looking for a short-term solution, it just might be time to call in a favor or crowdsource via social media for a photographer. Free admission, drinks, and food are all usually pretty good bartering tools.

WHAT TO SHOOT

Everything! The live band, people dancing, laughing, or mingling, kids and their parents, the beautiful scenery. Take pictures of what you think best represents your event. Use in-the-moment shots to generate hype with a call to action: “You don’t want to miss out on this!” Remember: 60% of consumers are more likely to consider or contact a business when an image shows up in local search results.

Think about how you feel when you see yourself in a photo from an event you enjoyed. The feeling of, “That’s me!” is powerful, play into that by taking as many attendee shots as possible.  

NOW WHAT?

You’ve got your photographs, now it’s time to share them. Create a Flickr or Photobucket account for easy cut-and-paste HTML codes that will make beautifying your webpage a breeze. If you really want to show off the photos from your event, try making a visual story with exposure.so.

Upload photos to your Facebook business page or Instagram account and start interacting with attendees. Take the time to Tweet at attendees to share photos that include them. You’ll be rewarded by having those attendees share the photos with their social networks.

EVENT HASN’T HAPPENED YET?

You can invoke the same feelings in people by using carefully selected stock photos. Look for ones that take your breath away, no room for women-smiling-eating-salad photos here. They should accurately capture the feelings you are hoping to inspire with your event. Dustin Senos

keeps a great, ongoing list of free stock photography sites, if you need some inspiration.

*Exposure, get it? This is a photography joke.