The Event Planning Cycle

The Event Planning Cycle

Event planning isn’t a one-off exercise. Although the gear-up to an event doesn’t necessarily always fit into a neat linear progression, Eventbrite have illustrated many aspect of event planning into a handy event planning cycle:

It’s roughly divided into four quarters: Planning, Promotion, At-Event and Post-Event.

Here we break these sections down for you and offer you further resources to nail each quadrant of your own event cycle.

Community Building
First and foremost is community building; which is followed by a continuous cycle of data capture, analytics, feedback and refinement or improvement.

Communities are inherently different from networking organisations. Communities are networks who share ideals or demographics, in which people concentrate on building relationships rather than using each other.

As Tim Flannery explains;

“When your biggest take away from an event is some combination of forced conversation, boredom, and pizza, all you’ve found is exasperation and carbs. You have little to no chance of finding a co-founder, business partner, or otherwise helpful contact. At best, you’ll exchange transactional value quid pro quo with a new LinkedIn connection. That’s why I’ve focused on building communities”

If your networks don’t sound like a community, it might be time to start building your own and his article can help you do it.

Planning
When you have a great new idea or concept for an event or session topic you can hit the web for a bout of planning and market research.

But remember, it’s 2016! Don’t just grab a piece of paper and a pen – there are a multitude of digital tools out there to help you with your investigations and keep your notes organised and easily retrievable.

Eventbrite state “With our smartphones in our hands and the internet at our fingertips we’re better equipped than ever before to conceive, organise and promote successful events.”

Here’s their super useful collection of 8 useful tools for your event planning.

Promotion
With an ever-increasing array of social media tools literally available at our fingertips – it’s never been easier or cheaper to promote an event. That said, the amount of technology out there can sometimes feel overwhelming.

This great Eventstag article highlights 10 of the most effective ways technology can be utilised for event marketing.

“The average event planner may be able to handle two tasks, but the best planners can handle ten. Why is this? You could chalk it up to variances in skill, education, passion or drive but there is one constant among all the most efficient event planners: they embrace new technology and understand that it can improve their event. It can also save enormous amounts of time and energy, and as an event planner, you know how valuable that can be.”

At-Event
After all the prep, don’t forget the actual event itself! Corporate events will always add value in terms of promoting your business internally and externally, as well as reinforcing brand values and corporate messages.

Planning smooth entry management, delivering your planned experience, capturing and sharing the highlights and noting what works and what doesn’t for future events are all integral!

This article by Eventologists has some further tips to ensure your event goes smoothly and wows those in attendance!

Post-Event
You can’t quite relax just yet! Following up after your event is integral to cement all of that hard work you’ve put in already.

As Attendly put it;

“Making plans to change your approach for next time is an important step in the process of improving your work, so treat this one seriously and use it to your advantage”

Read the rest of their article here to ensure your post-event follow up maximises the potential of the event you have curated.