Facebook bills its Events feature as a tool to “connect to your audience and empower them to spend time together in the real world.” The feature draws over 650 million every month, that’s 100 million people use Facebook events every day. Now, Facebook has built a standalone app specifically for discovering and joining events, with integrations to pull in data from the user’s personal calendar – to limit scheduling conflicts.
The Events from Facebook app was “for event seekers who are passionate about keeping up with nearby events and finding things to do with their friends.” But you can also leverage the app while planning conferences and events.
Check and Prepare for Potential Conflicts
A common mistake in event planning is forgetting to check for competing events. Are there other similar events happening on the same day or in the same area? Are there other events taking place that could somehow inconvenience your event’s attendees? If so, you might find yourself competing for resources, vendors, or even the same event participants.
The majority of events (including concerts, large sports events, etc.) can often be found on Facebook Events. Use the Facebook for Events app to check for conflicts by doing a search in prospective cities on your prospective dates to ensure that there aren’t any competing events taking place.
Create a Discoverable Facebook Event
Perhaps your event is meant to cater to a more general or local audience. If your event is one that can be attended by anyone (the app, after all, is targeted to users who are making last minute or weekend plans), then you can make your event public and it will show up automatically in the app for those who are searching the city of the event’s location and within the event’s date range.
Encourage Attendance to Ancillary Events or Local Exploration
You can create multiple events that relate to your event. Perhaps you’re planning a conference that includes an early morning fun run and a late night party. By creating Facebook events for each activity, your event attendees can indicate that they’ll be attending and send invites to their friends or coworkers to join. This way, instead of simply grouping all related activities in a single event, you’re creating more opportunities for attendees to find individual activities that they might not have been aware of otherwise.
You might also encourage attendees to use the Facebook for Events app to find and attend events in the area, outside of your event’s hours, so as to explore and better appreciate the venue’s locale. (And perhaps even create goodwill with local businesses who will no doubt appreciate the increased traffic from your event’s attendees).
Learn How to Create Great Event Listings on Facebook
The Facebook for Events app does allow users to create events, however, we recommend using the browser version of Facebook to create your event listings. Doing so gives you greater control and more options. Learn how to create a Facebook event and find out how easy it is to create buzz!
Kaylynne Hatch
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