Using Facebook To Organize An Event

You’ll notice that big companies organize events to launch products, campaigns, or charity events. Some organizations do so simply to connect to their customers. In a way, you can say that doing so helps businesses establish a relationship with their followers. You would do well to follow this and set up an event of your own.

You’ll find that there are a lot of social media tools out there to help you set things up. Take Facebook, for example. A big chunk of the population have their own Facebook accounts and may even be following your brand’s Facebook page. Why not use it to organize your event?

The question, though, is how to organize an event.

Facebook has an events listing application that anybody with an upcoming event can use to send out invites for or publicly announce it on. How do you use it? Here are some simple steps:

Create an events listing

You don’t even have to install anything anymore. Everybody’s Facebook page has it as a default application that cannot be removed. If you’re having problems locating it, typing the word “Events” on the search box located at the upper right-hand corner of the page will display the application.

Once you’re on the Facebook Events page, you’ll be able to see past events that you or your friends have attended, as well as upcoming events that you or another individual/group are hosting.

To add a new event, click on the “Create an Event” button. The next page will show you a form for you to fill in the details of your event at (event name, location, start and end time, etc.) You have to make sure to specify the privacy option of your event. You have 3 options to choose from:

Open – this is a publicly posted event that can be seen by anybody. Everybody can attend the function and can pass invites for.

Closed – this is also a publicly posted event. However, the details can only be seen by people who have been invited to attend the said function. Guests who want to attend the gathering may request to be sent an invitation for the event.

Secret – this is not a publicly posted event. Only the invitees can view the event listing and the details. The listing will not appear on the invitee’s friend’s news feed as well.

Once the preliminary details have been settled, you’ll be asked to add additional information, such as event banners, category, description, and guidelines for the event to name a few. Some options are enabled by default to it is best to run through these options to be safe.

Some of these options include:

Enable the event wall – this option allows you to add a message wall to your event listing, allowing people to ask questions or share their reasons why they can’t go.
Allow guests to bring frients to the event – this is a pretty useful option since you may want to keep the guest list limited.
Show the guest list – you can choose to show the entire guest list, restrict it to show only those who have confirmed attendance, or not show the list at all.

Inviting attendees

You close the events listing off by inviting people you’d like to see in the actual function. Click on the names of the people on your friends list who you want to attend the event. By default, they’ll receive an email message saying that you’ve invited them to attend the event at this date and time. You can also send them personal notes to tell them that they’re invited.

Promote it

Nobody will notice your event unless you start promoting it. You may want to tell invitees to send out invites to their friends and spread the word about the event. You can also follow up on invitees who haven’t confirmed attendance by sharing with them reasons why they might want to go to the function on your note.

You may even want to get Facebook to post ads of the event. This option has a fee, though. So unless it’s a really big event, I’d suggest sticking to free promotions by word-of-mouth.

The downside

You’ll find that there are two functions that Facebook’s Events application doesn’t support: recurring events and ticket selling. Unless you’re willing to repost the same details and update the time and date manually, it’s not a problem. For ticket sales, you’ll need to integrate your Facebook account with a 3^rd party ticket sales application to manage.

Now it’s your turn to talk. Have you used Facebook’s Events app recently? How did it fair on your end?