Event planning is still hard no matter what advancements in technology seem to come along it never seems to make the job a breeze, however there are ways you can use technology to your advantage when putting together your event. These can be used to help with planning, management and tracking and can make it that little bit easier, even if it doesn’t do the job for you. These event planning tips from Aspect Event Planners should help you get the most out of modern technology.
Iphones, qr codes.
You can use smart-phones in so many ways these days it hard to think of a job that they don’t cover! You can use them to generate e-tickets for the event. You can send programmes to the guests phones, you can give them an interactive map layout of the venue. You can even use QR codes around the event to let people load up new content related to the event. How about QR codes that load the stands website and a download of a sample of their work. The more creative you get with it the better.
Calendar apps
Use your calender apps to not only remind you when the event is and where it is, but also what time talks start. You can get the calendars to sync to your main calender and make sure all guests have up to date programs of events and the times of everything they might want to see. These can also be used to get people to register their interest in an event and gauge how popular it might be and how many tickets you might sell. Remember that the numbers of yeses and maybes will never be the same as the actual interest and the number will end up somewhat inflated, but it can still be used to build up a target list.
Special website
Set up a specific website for the event. These days website domains are as little as $10 and most hosting packages will allow you to host more than one site at no additional cost. You can also set up the website as an extension of your current website such as eventname.domain.com or domain.com/event name. This will easily allow you to see that traffic is coming to that page, and will also give your guests a great place to see all your event related content in one place.
Analytics
On the note of analytics make sure you have analytics installed on your website. It is free and easy to set up especially on most content management systems especially WordPress. This will allow you to track great things like visitor location, keyword used to find the page, which pages they visited, how long they spent on the site and where they were refereed from. All this data is going to be great and useful to measure your event’s success and even better its free. So if you don’t already – make sure you have analytics installed on your website.
Socialmention
Check socialmention.com to see how and where your site, brand, and event are being mentioned and in what context (positive or negative). Its a free service to use and while its not 100% perfect it is a great tool to have in your aresonal. You can check it every day. You should also set up Google alerts for your brand name and event name so that you get an e-mail whenever they are mentioned on the web.
Hashtags
Pick a hashtag for your event and get the word out. You can then check Twitter (And sometimes Facebook when people use it) to see who is talking about your event before, during and after the event. This can also be a great way for guests to connect with each other as they can look for people tweeting about the event who are there at the same time as them.