South Africa Event Planning

Facebook has enabled a kind of social networking that has never before been accomplished. This is the ideal platform on which to advertise almost any kind of event, since its members range from young to old, schoolchildren to top business personalities, and everything in-between.

Creating a successful Facebook event may take some preparation and the cooperation of friends and colleagues, but can be very effective. First of all, ensure that your event page is properly populated with all the correct information, so that invitees are not frustrated and confused before they even RSVP. Include images (if applicable), venue, times, dress code, contact details and a blurb on the exciting features of your event. The next step is to invite your friends. However, to get the best response, here are some tricks:

• Ask your friends and colleagues to RSVP that they will be coming, even if they cannot make it. The event will then appear on their walls and their wider scope of friends will be able to see it. It is also more tempting to attend an event to which a lot of people are going, so these friends will bulk up your numbers, especially in the beginning phases of your Facebook marketing.
• Ask that a group of your well-connected friends that have plenty of mutual friends all RSVP at the same time. This will populate the mutual friends’ walls with positive RSVP’s to the same event, piquing their interest and, perhaps, convincing them to go too.
• Facebook has a brilliant feature that allows attendees’ photographs that they upload to be automatically tagged to your event. Facebook is, in effect, assuming that all of the photographs added by attendees (those that RSVP’s positively) during or soon after your event must be of your event. So, it asks the uploader if they want to add your event tag to their photographs. With very little effort, you can have a fabulous album of pictures from a number of different guests.
• Ask friends and colleagues (if it is a work event) to tag your event in their statuses, so that their Facebook contacts can simply click on the name of the event in the status and be taken directly to your page.
• Whenever you add a new friend or contact onto your Facebook account, direct them to your event and invite them to tell their contacts about it too.
• Create a very targeted group of VIP’s to invite to your event. Do not exceed about 20% of the number of people coming to the event for this esteem. They should be people that others want to meet. You would not charge these ones to attend your event and, as a token of their appreciation, they may invite some of their contacts to the festivities. Publicise the guest speakers and other special guests so that invitees can look forward to their presence and contribution.
• Attend any other relevant events that can expose you and your function to the right target group. This involves sending positive RSVP’s to these other events. You can then write on their wall about your function and invite those belonging to that particular group or following that page.