9 Social Media Tips to Promote Your Next Event

Alon Alroy of bizzabo.com

Social Media is everywhere. Every audience from tweens to grannies uses social- so make sure you're present in order to reach your conference's target audience! Platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn can be excellent ways to promote your next conference. Use these 9 Social Media Tips to Promote your Next Event provided by our friends from Bizzabo.

1. Create a Hashtag

A specialized hashtag for your event can enhance social buzz, increase participation and even boost attendance. When creating your twitter hashtag try to keep it relevant, unique, short, and sweet. Sounds simple, but don't forget - not everything sounds good as a hashtag. For example, Susan Boyle's album release party used the hashtag #susanalbumparty. Whoops!

2. Use It!

Your hashtag means nothing if you don't used it! Promote it everywhere including your event website, dedicated emails, social networks, and the event's mobile app. The hashtag is a great way for your attendees to engage with the event content, speakers, and each other. You'll be able to watch what is trending around your event in real-time and get relevant feedback in the process.

3. Time is of the Essence

Get started now! The earlier you promote the event and dedicated hashtag, the greater your chances are for success. Promote early to create momentum and reach a larger audience. Your goal is to saturate the social mediasphere with word of your event, which is best done by promoting a few months in advance to ensure a wider reach.

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10 Website Mistakes that Kill Your Art Sales

Carolyn Edlund

I frequently review artist websites and take a close look at the experience they are providing for their visitors and potential customers. Here are 10 common mistakes that can cause your reader to click away, perhaps never to return:

1. Boring Home page - Although your Home page may not always be the first page that visitors see, it must be structured to make a strong visual statement to draw in the visitor. I always recommend that artists wow their website visitors with incredible photos of their work right up front that creates an irresistible draw to see more. A slider can be used as a dynamic way share a series of pieces from your collection.

2. No visual relief - Is your website full of endless text and long paragraphs? Most people surfing the internet have a relatively short attention span. Be concise and considerate of their time. Break up written content into short paragraphs, leaving lots of negative space, so the reader is not overwhelmed. Otherwise, they may find it easier to click away than to read anything - leaving you and your work behind.

3. Confusing navigation bar - A simple menu on your website is best, taking up no more than one line below the header. If you want to break up your Gallery page into categories for instance, use a drop-down list to organize your images. Clear and concise wording on your navigation bar is best - About, Gallery, Press, Shop, FAQ and so forth, so they know what they are clicking. Don't make them guess, or they may decide your site is too confusing to bother with. Then, it's goodbye.

4. Poor images - There is no excuse for using substandard images on your website. This is a real sales killer, making your site look amateurish and sloppy. Blurry photos, poor lighting and glare are unacceptable, and despite how good your skills are, your work will look terrible. Don't do this. Is your artwork incredible? Share that fact with amazing photographs and plenty of them, including detail shots and in-situ images, too. Your competition has a professional presentation. If you want to compete, you need the same.

5. Content not customer-focused - What interests people most? Themselves. So when your website is full of "I, me, my" it does not interest them nearly as much as when you address your website visitor, and talk about their needs. Invite them in. Share why your work makes an amazing impact in an office or residential environment. If you want to sell, think like your customer. What do they want to know?

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The Value of Your Work is NOT the Price of Your Work

Harriete Estel Berman

The VALUE of your work is not determined solely by the price of your work, or by the work that sells the best. In other words, do not confuse your best selling item with your best work.

Price, in my mind, is NOT a demarcation of value. As an artist and maker, developing a distinctive personal voice, signature style, or repertoire of technical skills is so much more important.

Your best selling item rarely leads to better work. It only places the pressures of the marketplace foremost in your thoughts. With the Internet, there is a huge rush to sell everything we make. The numerous online markets drive everything to have a retail price attached. This could be a big mistake.

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Recruiting Volunteers for Your Event

The Writing Team of YourVolunteers

One of the most common questions we receive is how to recruit volunteers for an upcoming event. A lot of big events travel, meaning that they take place in a different city each year, and it's up to a local host committee to enlist an army of dedicated volunteers to help make the event a success. But where to start?

Online Recruiting

• Craigslist
• This is our first recommendation to our event organizers and many have reported great success using the service. Every regional Craigslist has a "Volunteers" section that will allow you to post for free.
• idealist.org
• There are a lot of websites now that allow you to post volunteer opportunities, but idealist.org is our favorite and receives a lot of traffic from those looking to help. As of today, there are 13,337 volunteer opportunities on the site.
• Tweet about It on Twitter
• It really works! There are Tweeple who have ongoing Twitter searches for terms such as, "Volunteer [your city]." They'll see your tweet as soon as you post it even if they aren't one of your followers. Just be sure to include the terms, "volunteer," your city, and a website where they can get more information.
• Create a Meetup Group
• This service already has a database of people of people right in your city who may have indicated that they are looking for volunteer opportunities. It does cost a little money to create a group, but you can seek out sponsors to cover the small cost.

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6 Ways to Influence Customers

Do you know why your customers are buying from you? Is it your products - the style and quality of your handmade work? Look deeper and you will find that there are many other factors in making a sale that you can use in building your sales volume.

It's no secret that emotions are powerful factors that move people into action and cause them to make a purchase. To increase your sales, you must understand and appeal to them emotionally. There are many other artists and craftspeople out there with wonderful offerings.

Why will that customer choose you?

1. Make them feel uniquely special. Smile and truly welcome your customer. Exchange pleasantries without going to a hard sell first. Your attitude must be one of friendly service and interest in them.
2. Offer lots of information. Consumers look for trustworthy, knowledgeable individuals to educate them on a purchase. Trust is the most important factor leading to long-term relationships and repeat sales.

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10 Steps to Getting Corporate Sponsorship for Your Event

Ron Strand

This article provides some guidelines for determining the value of a sponsorship, finding prospects, writing a proposal, selling the sponsorship and fulfilling the agreement after the sponsorship is sold. I have broken down this process into the following ten steps:

1. Plan the Event with Sponsors in Mind

When doing your event planning, recognize that corporate sponsorship is a form of brand advertising. The basic intention of sponsorship is to conjure up positive associations between the corporate brand and sports, arts or charity brands (or similar activities) in the mind of the consumer. This is done by naming events or by displaying corporate logos at events or venues and in the media that advertise the event.

Events are often planned and venues are chosen solely based on the needs of the participants and spectators. If possible, chose a venue with the sponsor's needs in mind. You may even go a step further and plan the event with potential sponsors. Ask them how you can accommodate their needs.

2. Identify Your Assets

Walk through the venue and identify all the potential places that a sponsor might advertise their brand name and/or logo. Typical places are banners over entrances, signs visible by passing traffic, backs of spectator seats, booths erected on the site, programs that are used by participants, t-shirts for participants, etc. The potential for logo placement can be just about anything so use your imagination.

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9 Things To Consider When Choosing A Music Venue

Ari Herstand

So many musicians that You know where to play locally. You've been to most clubs and have made mental lists of the venues you'd like to play. Some of them are venues you want to pursue now and some you set as ones to work for when your fan base is a bit bigger. Some you've played and have vowed never to play again and some you can't wait to get back in at. But what about booking a tour where you don't know the town, have never seen the venues and don't have people on the ground to report back?

 Here are 9 things to consider when choosing a music venue either at home or when booking a tour:

 1) Capacity

Every booker wants to know what your draw is. If you have no history in the area (and no online buzz) then your draw is 50. Well, that's what you'll say. You can get 50 people out to any show if you're smart about promo (and team up with great local openers). Locally, once you're experienced and have a name around town, when you book your big shows every 6-8 weeks you'll have a pretty good idea of how many you can bring.

 When you can, always book a venue with a capacity one person smaller than your draw. Meaning, if you can draw 500, book a 499 cap room. If you can draw 50, look for 49 cap rooms. It's better to sellout a 200 cap room than play a 500 cap venue and have it two-thirds empty. Sure, it's cool to put well-known venues on your tour calendar, but it's better for your overall career to pack people in and give the best possible show to a full house - regardless of the size. Those who get in will be buzzing with excitement that they can experience an exclusive (to ticket holders) event and those who get turned away will know your next time through they'll need to get tickets quickly.

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Not Getting Responses From Events You've Contacted? We're Here to Help!

Michelle Morrison of the FestivalNet Staff

• Make sure you are contacting the right events for your product/service. Our Pro Search can help you with that. For example, selecting categories from the "Allowed" drop down in the "Exhibitors" box will find events that allow what you do. For more search tips, there's a help link in the top left corner of Pro Search

• Be sure the deadline date has not passed. Contact each event well in advance of their application deadline, otherwise emails & calls will not likely be returned. Use our handy "Deadline Reminder Newsletter" and the "Deadlines" option in Pro search to get ahead of the game.

Important note about deadlines:

Keep in mind that a posted deadline doesn't mean applications will always be accepted up until that date. Festivals will frequently fill all open slots before their posted deadline. That's due to no fault of your information source, it's simply the way the business works.

• Check out each event's website for additional application info and specific instructions. Always follow each event's requirements exactly as indicated for successful application acceptance. Promoters usually post tons of specific requirements for their event so read them carefully!

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Organic Food on the Festival Circuit

by: Robert Berman

After many years of experimentation, organic food has finally arrived in the food concession industry.

 Throughout North America more and more festivals and fairs had food concessions that were hustling organic products.

 Why has it taken so long? Food concession operators are notorious for being slow off the starting block. Many believe that a food concession is designed to provide greasy and messy products. They have a tendency to model their operations after others around them, and while looking at the success of others can be a valid way to enter a business, it does not leap frog you ahead of them. You become an industry follower rather than an industry leader.

But, there are other reasons why organic foods took so long to make a firm entry into the food concession industry. The manufacturers were slow to make the products available in bulk form. This was primarily due to the fact that most of the organic foods were being processed by small, local companies, who were having problems keeping up with producing enough products for supermarkets and specialty health food stores.

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5 Aspects to Consider Before Signing on to an Art Festival

by Niki Hilsabeck

As summer winds down, there are still plenty of art festivals on the horizon for fall and winter. Perhaps you're looking to dip your toe in the water and try one; maybe you've tried a few but aren't sure if you want to continue putting the effort into showing at festivals.

While sharing your art with festival-goers can bring great rewards, it's also an investment of time, money, and energy. Here is a list of factors to consider before signing on to an upcoming festival.

1. Cost

The first thing I look at when signing up for a festival is cost. In addition to the fee to participate, I know that I'm going to be spending money on gas, food, frames, and any other packaging and display items to bring to the event.

Some events will offer perks for artists, such as a meal, snacks, or drinks, which helps. And, keep in mind that if your artwork isn't priced appropriately for high-end festivals, the cost to attend the festival might mean that you're going to lose money.

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Security Management in Events

The Writing Team of eventeducation.com

1. Fire

In case of fire at the event venue, use fire extinguishers to
 put out the fire. In the mean time take everyone out of the venue safely. Develop a separate emergency exit plan for this. If fire is uncontrollable then call the fire brigade.

Follow fire code and safety regulations to prevent the fire as specified below:

1. Don't place any combustible or inflammable material in the venue esp. near green rooms, guest rooms or seating area.
2. All materials including prop must be properly treated with fire retardant solution.
3. Make sure that the entrance and exit ways are not blocked by any material or by any means.
4. Make sure that the event venue must have separate entrance and exit ways, fire alarm system and fire extinguishers.
5. Use only those electrical equipments which are branded and which use three core wires.
6. At least one doctor with first aid box along with the ambulance must be there at the venue to handle medical emergency.
7. Your staff must be well trained about giving first aid like CPR and must be able to handle fire extinguishers and crowd in case of fire.

2. Power Failure

If you are organizing event at a place where power failure is common, then you should have adequate power backup.

In case of a power failure, switch on the emergency lights and then turn on the generators. If you have a UPS (uninterrupted power supply) system, then it is the best. If you can't arrange such types of power backups, then at least you should have flashlight or candles.

Create a separate emergency plan to handle crowd and guests in case of a power failure.

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The Pursuit Of The Record Deal

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Two Big Questions to Ask Before Donating Art to a Charity

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Event Evaluation

Outsource These 5 Things Now And Focus On Your Music

1. Blog research.
   You can spend a good amount of time looking through blogs to find relevant sites looking for authors who accept your kind of music and have enough traffic to warrant some effort. Having a team member do this research will give you the upper hand in this equation. Be sure to collect the site name, URL, contact info, Twitter handle, Compete traffic data and Google PR so you can sort both their relevance and the priority you give each site.

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3 Questions Every Artist Should Ask before Launching their Art Business

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How Important is Signage?

Hands down, one of my favorite times of the day is after the booth is closed when I trot off to the camper, crack open my favorite snack (chocolate), and get down to counting the money. That is, unless sales were poor. Then, I can't wait to finish the day so I can slink away to scrub the big capital "L" off my forehead in private.

There are hundreds of principles and variations of principles that influence the success of a food booth at any given event. Many are controlled by the coordinator, such as booth location, booth/attendance ratio, duplication of menus, and overall organization and promotion of the event. There are many more principles that are controlled by the vendor, such as; your menu, how well you promote your menu, booth presentation, quality of service and product, efficiency, pricing, and expanding your customer base by consistently returning to the same event. There are still other principles that are out of everyone's hands, such as the weather and local economy. It's my opinion that, in this business, the four most important factors that influence sales are: signage, booth location, menu, and operational efficiency. Of those four, three (signage, menu, and operational efficiency) are entirely within your control.

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Dealing with Fear and Uncertainty

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Record Keeping for Crafters

Keeping up with your business records is like craftswork. Only the grade may be more important now than it was then. The grade is whether you have enough money to pay your bills and feed your family.

The key activity is to record and analyze your expenses and sales on a regular basis.

You should start keeping records from the day you start planning your crafts business. Begin by gathering all business related receipts and enter them into a software program or write them down in a general accounting journal purchased at an office supply store.

The important point is to have a system you can follow up with regular entries. You can then extract meaningful reports from the information. Since Uncle Sam requires accurate records, you are legally responsible to do so anyway.

Should you hire an accountant or C.P.A.?

For most self-employed, the expense of hiring an in-house bookkeeper or accountant can only be justified when the business becomes so large that the owner can’t handle it alone anymore.

Whether you hire an accountant or not, you should know basic bookkeeping skills. You don’t have to have a degree or even formal training to learn accounting.

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The Real Reason You Procrastinate.. and How to STOP!