There’s no real right or wrong answer here. Creating a Facebook event for your conference, meeting, or gathering might be just the thing your marketing strategy needs. Let’s take a look at why you’d want to do this, and how to create one if you decide it’s a great idea.
How a Facebook Event Can Benefit Your Gathering
If your event is a private one, a Facebook Event may simply be unnecessary. But for larger public events? It can help you out with your promotion, making your marketing job so much easier! Here are some ways a Facebook Event can help:
- Potential attendees can help you promote: When someone clicks “Interested” or “Going” on your Facebook Event page, that information is seen by their connections. This is free advertising, friends.
- Facebook will remind contacts to take an action: After clicking “Interested” or “Going,” a potential attendee is then nudged by Facebook on occasion to buy their ticket or to view an update. For all the ways Facebook has caught heat over the years, it’s still a platform that can do some work for you!
- People who follow your page may be looking at the Events tab: Say someone follows your club’s or venue’s Facebook page. They may regularly check the Events tab on your page, and seeing none, take no other action. Make it easy for them to sign up or register by creating that Event page.
- You can send out invitations: Anyone who follows your page can be invited to an event your group is hosting, and Facebook Event pages make this easy.
- You have the ability to boost your event: You can boost (that means pay for) a promotional post or even create an ad to get your event seen by the most people in the demographic you’re going after.
- People can interact on your Event page, creating pre-event buzz: They can “like” or comment on an update or respond to pre-event questions or info you post, as well as create a post of their own. This is a great way to get people talking beforehand, creating a community in the process.
How to Create a Facebook Event
First, your organization needs to have a Facebook page or group. If you don’t (and don’t want to do that), a Facebook Event can still be created using the personal profile of someone (likely the program manager) in your group.
For the sake of argument, let’s say your venue or gathering has a Facebook page. Here’s what you do:
1. Navigate to your page, then click “Event” right underneath the “Create post” option.
2. Choose whether your event is “Online” or “In Person.” We’ll go with “In Person” for this example.
3. Now you can fill out all the details of your event — location, date, time, description, pics (pick a good one to draw people in!), and link to register or buy tickets. Just follow the prompts and fill in the information cells.
Don’t worry about making a mistake. Nothing is seen by the public until you hit “Publish” and even then, any update or error can be corrected in the “Edit Event” option on your page.
We’re curious to know if your venue or club uses this Facebook feature. How has it worked for you? Have you experienced an increase in registrations as a result? Do you feel it creates the community you’re aiming for?
