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Tips to ROCK Event Communications

You secured the dates. Locked-in the venue or technology. Signed contracts and secured speakers. But have you thought about how you’re going to communicate with people before, during, and after the event?

At The Rock It! Co., we find that a well thought out communications plan can be a last minute thought in the event planning process. But it’s one of the most important! You can give attendees an amazing live event experience complete with bull riding, ski performers, and a live marching band (yes, we’ve done all those!), but how you communicate with attendees is what makes or breaks an event, even a virtual event.

Here are some tips to help you rock your event communications.

#1: Plan your content
Look at your master schedule, and plan your content around big events. For example, if you are locking-in the keynote speaker on February 1, plan on announcing this to your audiences within a week. You want to get people excited! Developing a communications timeline and planning your content ahead of time helps you avoid the unneeded stress of scrambling last-minute. Also, consider the entirety of the event and how you will communicate with audiences before, during, and even after the event. And plan for it all! Lastly, remember that event communications are not just limited to attendees. Include internal audiences like employees, sponsors and speakers in your overall plan.

#2: Use multiple channels
When creating the communications timeline and organizing content, consider every channel: the event website, social media, email, and even the event mobile app. We are huge advocates for using the event mobile app during an event to remind people where there need to be at specific times. You can never communicate too much, especially because you don’t know if someone reads email or browses social media more. Also, using several channels allows you to reach multiple people like existing followers and even new ones at once. Win!

#3: The success is the follow-up
How you communicate with attendees post-event can make the difference between short-term wins and long-term results. One of our favorite ways to follow-up after the event is to send a thank you email with photos and a survey asking for feedback of the event. If you can, include the date and venue for the next event with a discount code for early registration. Lock attendees in early! Use post-event communications to encourage people to share how much they enjoyed the event. Use feedback to plan and make adjustments for the next one. You can use 500 attendees to reach thousands of their friends and followers! Ah, the power of communications.