How To Host Your First Event

After helping to create Crypto Current to educate people on cryptocurrency and blockchain, I was curious on how to build an engaged community. I discovered that providing quality content not only brings value to others, but establishes credibility as a thought leader. However, some people enjoy the human interaction of conversation and learning in person. This influenced me to start hosting events to bring people together, which taught me important lessons in community building. Using these lessons, I am going to give you a step-by-step process of how to host your first event to start building your community today.

1) Decide Who is Your Audience  

Who do you want to attend your event? What is there age, background, knowledge level, etc? Knowing this is crucial so that you can formulate the right message to deliver during your event. You can create the greatest presentation ever, but if it is not received by your audience then what is the point. Take the time to crucially think through who your audience is so that you can create an event tailored to them so that they will want to return to future events and bring more people with them.

2) Make an Agenda

Make an overview of what you want to discuss at your event. I recommend creating bullet points of main topics of discussion you want to have. This is extremely helpful because if you have open discussions at your event, it becomes extremely easy to get off topic. These bullet points will help you bring you back on track to discuss all the topics that you planned for.

3) Find a Place to Host Your Event

This should be a major consideration when hosting your event. People will make a choice on whether are not to go to an event purely based on it’s location. They also take into consideration if the option of food, drinks, or coffee will be accessible as well.

Before choosing to pay for a venue, explore every free option that you have available. Go through your contacts and reach out to people who may let you use their office or building. If all else fails, find a local coffeeshop or brewery and talk to the owners about hosting your event there for free.

4) Promote Your Event

Once you have a venue and date secured, it is time to start promoting your event. You can create an event on Eventbrite for free so that you can get people to RSVP to your event. This will also give you more exposure because the platform will make your event searchable on the platform. Additionally, you can use the ticket link from Eventbrite to share on all of your social media.

Creating a MeetUp event is another way to get more exposure to your event. This is not free, but will get your event in front of a more engaged and targeted audience. Going to local events and MeetUp’s is a great way to meet people in your niche and let them know about your upcoming event as well.

5) Create Marketing Materials for Your Event

It is absolutely crucial that you have something to put in your attendees hands before they leave your event. Whether it is a printout of your powerpoint, agenda of the meeting, or your business cards, that material leaves a lasting impression on your audience. It let’s them know you are prepared, professional, and legitimate. Take the time to make the extra effort to have something prepared to leave with your audience because it makes a huge difference in the long run.

6) Host Your Event 

You have put in the preparation, invited the masses, prepared excellent content and now it is time to deliver! I would recommend showing up to the venue of the meeting at least an hour before the actual meeting to ensure everything is properly setup and working correctly. Also, if you have content prepared you can do a final walkthrough to make sure you are feeling comfortable and confident in the room.

Most likely you are going to have several people show up late to your first event, which is ok. Do not be afraid to start 5-15 minutes late for this meeting to allow for more people to show up. Even if you have one person show up, do not freak out. That is one more person then you had from the outset.

Also, make sure at some point during your event, either in the beginning or at the end (or both), you get everyone who attended to leave their contact information.

7) Follow Up 

You just threw an absolutely amazing event, but you are not finished yet! You need to follow up with everyone who showed up. You collected information on all of the attendees and now you can choose how you want to follow up with them. I recommend by email and by adding them to a newsletter that sends more information about what you discussed and links back to additional information you want to have.

Host Your First Event Today!

Need help hosting your first event? I can help! Contact me so that we can get started on your event today.