Questions to consider before creating an event

Gaining mastery of your subject area, being organized, and exhibiting passion are all essential for creating successful events. With the right skills, you are then ready to move on to the actual planning and execution stages of your events. This is where you will want to consider the logistical aspects of running events to help ensure that everything goes smoothly for you and your attendees.

Here are seven important considerations to think about as you plan to create an event:

1. What location will you choose for your event(s)?

Physical In-Person Events

If you offer traditional classes or courses, the location will usually be set by the institution you are affiliated with.

For example, group tutoring sessions for students or staff training for faculty at your school, whether that be elementary, secondary, or any other educational institution.

If you are already a business owner and have your own space, such as a yoga or art studio, then you will likely want to run most of your events there.

If you are a solo entrepreneur or someone who is not affiliated with any specific event location or wish to branch out into other locations, then you will need to give this question some thought. Just like in real estate, the location can make it or break it. So, when it comes to your event, the location you choose will greatly determine the success of the event and the overall experience for both you and your attendees.

Important factors to consider here would be the cost of renting an event space, the accessibility of the event space, including the availability of parking and public transport, the size of the space, date availability, technology, and teaching tools you will have access to, and so on.

Virtual Online Events

In certain cases, you may prefer or be forced to conduct your event(s) online virtually. To host a virtual event, you need to choose a technology platform that can facilitate your online event.

Important factors to consider here would be how effective the chosen service is for you and your audience in terms of its functionality, reliability, support, and cost.

You can easily set up virtual events on Corsizio and receive registrations while hosting the event on the virtual event platform of your choice.

2. How will you attract the right audience?

Depending on the nature of your event, this may be very easy or very challenging to do. You may already have an audience eagerly awaiting your events, or you may be trying to break through in your area of expertise or community. In whatever situation you find yourself in, one thing is certain: you must have a way to announce your event effectively to others and draw attention to it.

Things to consider here would be any necessary marketing or advertising, use of social media, use of community news outlets, bulletin boards, etc.

Given that most people today use the Internet to obtain most of their information, you will likely want to ensure that you and your business have a good online presence and use an email list to communicate quickly with your audience.

Corsizio provides links, embed codes, and QR codes that can be easily used to share your event(s) information publicly and have people register for the events.

3. What resource materials should you make available to your audience?

Many resource materials and props can strengthen your presentation as a speaker or teacher and may be ones that your audience would need or greatly benefit from. For example:

If your events deal with any training, you may wish to provide a book or a training publication at your event.
If your events deal with music, you may need to provide specific musical instruments, music sheets, or music files.
If you teach classes or workshops that deal with any tactile topics, resource materials for consideration could be anything from yoga mats to drawing tools.

Here again, the right preparation is the key to success. Your audience may not be able to get the things required for your event easily, so making them available as part of the event cost will go a long way.

Alternatively, while people can take notes during or after your event, providing them with something that will summarize or reinforce the concepts presented can boost audience morale, help them focus on what is being presented, enhance comprehension and feeling of success, and, in turn, boost your event's success.

You can use the add-on feature to sell a product or resource as part of your event registration on Corsizio. To include any downloadable course materials or resources on Corsizio, you will need to do so by providing or adding links to external files and images. You cannot upload or attach any files directly to Corsizio.

4. What obstacles or unexpected circumstances may you have to plan for or deal with?

A positive mindset is an integral asset for successful and desirable outcomes. However, being prepared by considering possible challenges that may arise before, during, or after your event is equally important. Being ill-prepared, naive, or ignorant does not bode well for life in general, never mind when it comes to running a successful business or event. Therefore, consider this question as fully as you can while keeping fear and anxiety at bay to decrease the likelihood of finding yourself in an uncomfortable or unpleasant situation.

Here are some examples of circumstances that may arise and require your consideration:

Will you have to factor in any inclement weather potential? If so, how will you deal with it?
If your event offers or deals with food in any way, are you ready for any allergies or specific dietary requirements that may be needed?
If your event is associated with the outdoors, how prepared will you be to handle any medical emergencies that may arise?
If your event is online and uses a third-party service, how will you prepare for any technical issues that may arise?
How will you ensure you don't run out of room or materials at your event?
How will you handle any refunds? And so on.

Running an event can be stressful enough, so the aim is not to add any extra unnecessary stress. For the smoothest, seamless, and most enjoyable events, it pays to be prepared and have a backup plan or solutions, as needed, to cover any potential challenges that may arise.

5. How will you collect registrations for your event?

How you collect registrations for your event will greatly depend on the nature of your event and your target audience. Even though most events today will use online registration services like Corsizio, if your event is for seniors at a nursing home or a remote community with limited internet access, this will not be an effective way to collect registrations. Consider:

For some events, you may not need to collect registrations; simply leave the event open for anyone to show up. This can work well for events in very small communities or certain predictable situations where a small turnout is expected.
For most events, you need to prepare in advance and use an online registration service to know how many people to expect, their names, contact info, and other important factors to successfully run your event. Otherwise, you may have too few people show up (wasting your time and efforts) or too many people (unprepared to handle the large volume).

The good news is that there are numerous online registration software service options today. There is something out there for every event, budget, user, and audience type. At Corsizio, we pride ourselves on offering an easy-to-use, modern, effective, and affordable online registration solution on which you can quickly and easily create events and accept registrations.

6. How will you collect payments for your event?

Next to collecting registrations, collecting payments for your events is one of the most important considerations. That is, of course, assuming you are holding paid events. If your events have no cost and are free, then you can bypass this consideration.

In the past, payments for events could only be collected in physical and often tedious ways. Sometimes, it meant chasing people down to get your payment before or even after the event. Even if you collected payment at the door, this would increase administrative work, time, and preparation and could easily become a hassle for you and your attendees when it came to having the right change, offering the right payment methods, and so on.

These days, payment for events can be collected quickly, easily, and securely via numerous online payment options that satisfy your needs and those of your potential attendees. On Corsizio, we allow you to collect the entire payment at registration or just a deposit payment to secure a commitment from your potential attendees. Additionally, you can discount your event price in various ways, using coupons, early-bird discounts, or volume discounts to generate more interest and sales for your events.

Getting attendees to pay for your event during their registration provides many other benefits. Collecting registrations and payments before a certain date can help you plan for the right-sized location. It can help you fund the event and deal with any up-front event costs, such as the purchase of resource materials, etc. Ultimately, it provides peace of mind and removes the stress of one of the biggest aspects of running events.

7. How will you collect feedback about your event?

Although it can be intimidating, at times, to hear what other people think about our speaking, teaching, presentation skills, method of delivery, or content presented, getting feedback is one of the most important things to help you gauge your effectiveness and plan accordingly for next time. This applies to nearly all areas of our personal and professional lives. While we can never satisfy everyone, and some people are just overly critical by nature, getting feedback allows you to know your strengths and weaknesses better and those of your events.

In your own mind, you will have a lot of thoughts about your performance, be they positive or negative. However, these thoughts may be anywhere from slightly to greatly removed from reality. This is where the more feedback you can get, the more you can observe patterns and learn about what is working and what isn't when it comes to your teaching style, content, event characteristics, and more.

As with the previous two areas, you can collect feedback manually or automatically.

Manual feedback collection could include handing out physical paper forms for your audience to fill in after your event and then collecting and compiling that information.
Automated feedback collection would include using a web-based technology where feedback requests are quickly and easily disseminated to all participants and submitted back to you for analysis.

Corsizio allows you to automatically collect ratings and feedback from your attendees once your event has ended to gain valuable insight into their experience with your events.