10 Best Event Planning Resources

If you’re thinking about hosting an event, the first step is to start planning for it. It helps to have high-quality event planning resources at your disposal.

Ideally, you want to plan ahead so that when it’s time to host the event, you and your staff members know exactly what to do. This also helps keep all the important timelines of the event in place and ensures you’re able to effectively manage your event.

In this article, we’ll go over various event planning resources that will help you easily plan your event and effectively execute it.

#1. Keep up-to-date with news

When you’re ready to plan your event or you’re in the event planning phase, you always want to make sure you stay up-to-date with the industry’s news. This is important for the success of your event and helps you increase attendance.

Staying up-to-date with the news is also a great way to keep up with your competitors. This way, you can see their progress and get a better idea of where your brand stands. This is useful for researching your competitors and making sure you bring something unique and different to the table. It’s also a great way to keep up to date with suppliers and service providers in your industry.

If you’re fully informed and up-to-date with the news, it eliminates the chances of any rumors or fake news getting to you and impacting your decisions. This means that you will be able to validate any FUD (fear, uncertainty, and doubt) and rumors and you won’t have to worry about making reactive decisions based on that.

Additionally, you always want to keep yourself up to date with the news as it can help you create a better, more efficient content strategy for your next event.

Event Manager Blog is the place to be if you want to keep yourself informed with the latest industry news.

#2. Research content ideas

During the planning phase of your event or even well before that, you constantly want to be researching new content ideas. This is the best way to come up with new content and event ideas that your audience might be interested in.

It’s crucial to make sure you offer unique, fresh content every day to your audience. This way, they will find more value in attending your event. Instead of repurposing old content, consider researching new content ideas to keep your event blog, downloadables, and handouts fresh.

Here are some of the resources that can help you research content ideas for your next event:

Convene

EventPlanning.com

#3. Engage your audience

One of the most important factors for planning and hosting a successful event is to make sure your audience is engaged with your content. You want to engage your audience by offering them unique, fresh content regularly.

This gets them excited about your upcoming events. As a result, you can increase event attendance and boost ticket sales as well as maximize revenue generated from your next event.

Endless Entertainment offers unique, freshly generated content every day that’s worth checking out for inspiration.

#4. Choosing the right event planning software for your business

It’s important to thoroughly research and choose the right event planning software for your business.

You want to consider robust event planning software that can help you efficiently plan and manage your events according to your content needs and your business goals.

Capterra is a great service that can help you pick out the event planning software that’s best for you.

#5. Plan your meetings

Meetings are an essential part of successful event planning. Since you’re working with a lot of different people, getting your message across can be challenging.

Hosting and planning meetings can help teams decide and settle on mutual goals through better communication. It’s an efficient way of communicating with your staff members so you can provide clear direction and assign tasks to them while also hearing their opinions and ideas along the way.

Here are some resources that can make it easier for you to plan your meetings:

Successful Meetings

MeetingsNet 

Plan Your Meetings 

Smart Meetings

#6. Get an expert opinion

Getting an expert opinion can help you refine your content ideas and make execution that much easier.

It also helps you evaluate multiple strategies and select the best one for executing your event. It’s a great way to ensure your next event is successful.

Some resources that can help you get an expert opinion on your content ideas:

Gallus Events

#7. Create an event planning questionnaire

Planning your event can be quite hectic and chaotic, especially if you don’t have an event planning questionnaire to guide you.

Questions for event planning make sure you think through different scenarios. This helps you prioritize, no matter how big or small, are completed in order and, most importantly, on time. It’s also a great way to keep things organized so everyone knows what they’re supposed to do.

You can use Event Espresso’s Event Planning Questionnaire to jump-start planning your next event. Simply step through each question with your team members.

#8. Manage your event budget

Managing your event budget is important for successfully hosting an event and making sure it’s profitable. This way, you don’t have to worry about overspending during the planning phase of your event.

It also makes sure all event activities are carried out before you burn through your event budget. And by doing so, your audience will find value in attending your events and will look forward to attending upcoming ones, as well.

Airtable’s Event Planning Template lets you easily manage your next event’s budget.

#9. Use an event planning template

One of the simplest and easiest ways to plan your event, without having to do all of the work, is by using an event planning template. It lets you efficiently plan your next event without you worrying about creating checklists, planners, or spreadsheets.

Everything is laid out in the event planning template. All you need to do is fill in the blanks.

Airtable’s Event Planning Template offers an easy way to get started with planning your event.

#10. Setup event registration

Now that you’re done planning your event, you need to think about setting up event registrations. The best way to do this is by using a plugin like Event Espresso.

Event Espresso is an event registration plugin for WordPress that lets you set up event registration forms and sell tickets directly through your website. It makes it easy for attendees to learn about your events and register for the ones they’re interested in attending. As a result, you can effectively boost event registrations.

Here’s what one of Event Espresso’s users has to say about the plugin:

“Easy to get started with, but detailed enough for almost all event planners. Lots of options, professional-looking, reliable, complete.” – Bruce Maples

You can get the Event Espresso plugin and install it on your site to make it easy for attendees to register for your event.

Conclusion

Event planning can be tough which is exactly why you need the right tools and technologies to get started. We shared some event planning resources that can help you plan and execute a successful event for your brand. And, when you’re done with the planning phase, you can set up event registration forms on your event website using Event Espresso.

Ready to set up a simple and professional registration process for your event? Try the Event Espresso demo today!