Sign in Subscribe
2 min read COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT

Community Special Event Planning Checklist: Ensure a Successful and Memorable In-person Occasion

Your event is on the horizon, but you've only got a handful of RSVPs from friends, and the silence from others is deafening. Feeling the pre-event jitters? Don't worry, we've got you covered with some ingenious ideas to turn the tide!
Community Special Event Planning Checklist: Ensure a Successful and Memorable In-person Occasion
Recently asked the question - how do I get more people to RSVP to my in-person event?

Some suggestions (in no particular order).

  1. Organise a date & time - work with presenters and sponsorship as early as possible to settle on a date, time, and venue.
  2. Encourage engagement now - make a place where people can start engaging now and others can see the excitement about the event, this could be as simple as a social media post asking for comments.
  3. Make the event special - get a special person to present at the event.
  4. Encourage leadership - start doing weekly leadership meetings leading up to the event. In meetings provide opportunities for sharing ideas and encourage those joining to help promote the event.
  5. Encourage personal DMs - with people that are starting to attend the weekly leadership meeting, ask them to start sending personal DMs to friends and connections that will be interested.
  6. Post, and then repost on social media - every couple of days post on social media something that the audience can reshare.
  7. Email weekly updates - start doing a weekly email to chapter members with links and sharing how excited you are about the event.
  8. Engage with new connections - with people that are engaging with posts, connect with them on and ask about why they would like to engage.
  9. Make sure the event is hybrid - not everyone can attend in person.
  10. Make sure the event is recorded - make sure you have a YouTube where you can share recordings because not everyone can attend at the time of the event.
  11. Most importantly do personal DMs - for people to turn up YOU must send personal DMs. When you connect ask for a reshare of a post, ask for an RSVP to the event and most importantly make it personal.
  12. 100+ RSVPs = 50 people in the room - not everyone that RSVPed will turn up, so if you want 50 people in the room then make sure you have 100+ confirmed RSVPs.
  13. Share a comment - what would you like to add to the checklist for ensuring that an in-person event is successful and memorable?
💡
These work just as well for online-only events too.
For more thoughts on community engagement ...
COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT - influencerTips
Posts with a focus on community engagement. Engage with a comment, share with a friend and reach out if you would like to organise any of these topics to be shared in a workshop with your community group.
influencerTipsTag - COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT

Share a comment, what would you add to the list to help make a community event special?