Event Planning can be quite a tedious and daunting task and hence it requires proper planning and execution. It is important to analyze and leverage the necessary resources that it takes for planning a successful event.
Undoubtedly, planning an event is a prolonged process, and sometimes it may waste time unnecessarily. Hence, it is crucial to understand and have knowledge about the strategies that can be used for planning as well as saving time.
In this post, we have made a list of the best practices and tips that can be used by you for planning a super successful event.
Let’s get started!
1. Always Start The Planning Early
Don’t be a procrastinator! The more you delay things, the more likely you are to not put in your best. The same goes for events. For hosting a virtual event, you need to make sure that you are starting the preparations well in advance.
The earlier you begin with the preparations, the better it would be for you and your team to determine the situations that may arise during the virtual event.
2. Set Deadlines For Team Members & Sponsors
Make sure that you mutually decide on a deadline for tasks with your team members and sponsors. Setting deadlines will lead to a sense of urgency amongst them and they will complete the tasks well in time and will be able to take time out for increasing work productivity.
3. Shift Focus On The Priority
One main thing to keep in mind while planning a virtual event is to prioritize your objectives. The more your focus would be, the more you will be able to prioritize your time and efforts.
Most importantly, prioritize your to-do list based on important tasks.
4. Hire The Correct Set Of Volunteers
For virtual events, you need to ensure that you are hiring the right people for event management. You can conduct a proper recruitment process including a situational analysis for judging the efficiency of the candidates and hire them accordingly.
5. Collaborate With An Agency
As mentioned above, since virtual event planning can be quite a tedious and time-consuming task, we would highly recommend you to work with an event agency and by collaborating with them.
This way the work can be distributed between the agency and your team which would lead to more effective planning and execution.
6. Invest In Appropriate Software
Including software in your event planning efforts is the ultimate method to simplify the process. For example, a flexible event planning platform can help you easily manage any event format you need. Utilizing software gives advantages like live-streaming capability, attendee engagement tools, and advanced analytics to keep up with your event’s ROI.
Research options and select a platform that fits your needs.
7. Use Artificial Intelligence For Communication With Attendees
It takes a lot of time and manpower to address all the queries of the event attendees. Instead, leveraging artificial intelligence can be your best bet. Using chatbots, you will save a lot of time and redirect your team members to something more productive.
8. Integrate Social Media Feeds In The Form Of A Social Wall
Social media is a vast pool of brilliant content that can be used by events to showcase their promotional content and the content created by your potential attendees.
Instead of showing content from different platforms, this can be achieved by displaying a social media for virtual events. A social wall is a collection of aggregated feeds from various social media platforms. Furthermore, embedding such content on your event can effectively help in not just saving time but also increasing the engagement of your audience.
9. Organize! Organize! Organize!
We have mentioned this thrice and that reflects how important this point is. None of the aforementioned points can be achieved till the time you are not organized.
A well-organized approach to your event planning will make the process easier and faster.
10. Create A Proper Schedule For Your Day
This again falls under the category of staying organized. Make sure that you have a detailed and timely schedule planned for your day so you know exactly what to do when.
If you do your tasks impromptu, then you may get clueless and invest a lot of time and effort unnecessarily.
11. Utilize Templates For Creating Surveys
Quite often, event planning involves survey form creation that is quite a prolonged process. You can ask your team to use readily available templates rather than wasting time creating a new survey.
12. Make A List Of Potential Speakers Beforehand
Rather than wasting time going through various platforms like LinkedIn to look for the appropriate speakers during the event preparation process, do this before you begin the preparations.
Make a list of your speakers who you feel have the potential to take the sessions.
13. Brief All The Speakers In One Go
Once you have the list of speakers and have contacted them, make sure that you brief them all together instead of giving them a look into the event separately.
You can create a presentation and give your speakers a glimpse into your event and your objectives.
14. Have Backup Options For Everything
You must have alternative options if things go out of hand. Analyze the best substitutes for last-minute cruises always.
15. Train Your Event Workers Using Training Videos
A team of effective team members can work together to run a successful event. However, to make them more productive, quick, and efficient at their work, you need to train your employees well.
Instead of individual drills, you can make use of videos and play them in one go for training them collectively. This would make the process quicker.
16. Make The Check-In Process Simpler Using Automation
Instead of asking your team to assist the attendees in the event, you can make the check-in process simpler and quicker by using technology. You can leverage QR codes for enabling users to scan the code and join the event.
17. Use An Existing Website Instead Of Creating A New One
Quite often, event planners create registration websites for the users to register and get a glimpse of the event. This can be quite a long process.
Save time by using your existing website for the registration process. Of course, you can create a special webpage for the same that would be less time-consuming.
18. Go Through Event Strategy Guides
The era of events would never end. Events have been going on and will continue to go on. It is always a good idea to learn and leverage from the strategies of other event planners.
Do go through these guides and you will get to know of more situations and possibilities during events.
19. Be Prepared For The Worst
Lastly, always be mentally prepared for any situation in between the event. Everything right from the back end support, volunteering, sessions, etc should be smooth and you must have a Plan B if situations get out of hand.
Closing Note
This brings us to the end of this blog post and you now know about the best time saving strategies that can be used for planning a never like before event.
Leverage these tips in your next event and you will surely see how smoothly it goes!
