Think you know what it takes to make an event successful? Well, here are a couple of tips that can be used to freshen up your event planning skills. Some of you may already know these pieces of advice, however, it’s always good to have reminders. Even the most basic tasks can be forgotten when we are over consumed with our work.

From making phone calls, to prepare decorations to fill up a pile of paperwork, there are plenty of requirements to ensure that an event is well prepped and ready to be launched. Once it is launched, the real hassle is to maintain consistent work and not forgo the most important tasks. Listed are the tips that were most frequently used when organizing an event:

Set goals. By doing so, you are able to focus on what is truly important to be accomplished. It will also help in the decision process when preparing items for the logistics. From setting the number of tickets to preparing the number of VIP packages, all these numbers will set more easily with goals. From financial, to marketing to general goals. They will become the guidelines for you to plan your course of action.   

Time matters. The sooner you start, the better prepared you’ll be. For smaller events, it is recommended to start organizing at least one month in advance. For a larger event, the planning process could take as little as three months to as long as a year. The planning process varies based on the goals you have set and the scale of your event. If you are trying to get the best venue in the market that is known to be always booked, the booking should be done way in advance. Overall if one task is delayed after another, it can lead to a domino effect of incomplete tasks. By allocating extra time to the planning,  a race against time won’t be necessary.  

Get volunteers! The best people are the ones willing to spare their free time to help. They can make a huge difference to your event. Especially with a tight budget to hire people, by giving them experience in exchange to get manpower is a great trade-off.

Be a social butterfly. Nowadays, it is to your advantage to use social media platforms to strengthen your event promotion. Don’t be a late adopter, but be an innovator! With social media, you can share your posts and even do a live shooting of your event. All these platforms can even help improve your user engagement.

Location is key. It can either help drive traffic to your event or be detrimental.  This is why your event location plays a major role. Generally, the best locations are the one easily accessible by walk or public transportation. If the location is extremely far, you might need to provide shuttle buses to help with the traveling process. Another important point is parking. If the event is in a venue that is a little bit further and more than 80% of participants will be coming by car. You would need space to park their car, so parking is important as well.  All in all, when it comes to picking a final spot, remember to think of convenience and accessibility.

Plan your budget. All the money coming in and out must be sorted out. A common mistake is to think of all the revenue from tickets or the sponsors, but we forget all the small expenses that add up to a big sum.

Always be informed. Ensure that all the team of planners involved knows what is going on. Often times, mistakes may occur due to miscommunication. At most, we can try to avoid that. Before any events, it’s important to hold meetings to debrief every member from A to Z. It might be time-consuming to do so, however it does make a major difference when people know what they are doing. Run-throughs are perfect for getting rid of misunderstandings.

Be proactive. One thing you must constantly do is follow-up with the people you have booked, whether it is a performer, a speaker, a venue provider or a sponsor, you have sealed the deal. Until then you cannot take any break.

Be automatic. Instead of doing things with pen and paper, it’s time to digitize your work and remove all the manual and repeat processes. Using an event management system or a ticket registration can avoid manually having to track or monitor all your planning process.

Listen. Nobody likes to be criticized. However, it is good to know what went well in your event and what went wrong. Getting the most feedback from your volunteers, from your staffs, from audience/participants/guests is the way you can drastically improve the next time if you plan on doing an event.

Sending out surveys or even chit-chatting with people right after your event can be helpful.