16 Tools to Coordinate an Event

This past week myself and other staff members met with our wonderful Education Foundation group for planning of the annual Spring Stampede 5k Fun Run. I always enjoy working with parent and community groups that help raise monies for the many educational programs we offer to students. During our meeting we were trying to brainstorm ways to communicate information, streamline the registration process, and leverage the power of social media for promotional purposes. I shared with the group a number of resources that have been successfully used by various education event organizers. Here is the list......

1. Website: Major events need a website to serve as their virtual hub for important information. Weebly is a great service that allows users to easily create a website. 

2. Facebook: Create an event page that serves as a way for participants to post and receive timely information. 

3. Twitter: The cool thing to do now at live and virtual events is for participants to tweet out messages, photos, and information. Event organizers are more and more beginning to understand the importance that social media and hashtags to engage participants virtually and in person.

4. Blog: Generating excitement for an upcoming event is very easy when utilizing a blogging service such as Wordpress. Guest blog posts by keynote speakers, presenters, and participants provides everyone with insight on the theme and topic.

5. Smore: Tremendous web tool that enables users to create an interactive digital flyer that can be disseminated over the World Wide Web.

6. Remind 101: A great way to text message large amounts of people at one time. Registration and directions are very easy.

7. Ticket Leap:A free and efficient way to sell tickets for your event online.

8. Google Drive: Collaborate and create in real time on documents, presentations, and spreadsheets for your event. 

9. Zello: Turn your Smartphone into a push to talk walkie talkie for free with this terrific app. Great way to communicate with others seamlessly during a big event.

10. Hashtag: Very important to have a simple yet catchy hashtag for your event so that participants can stay on top of what is happening in an organized fashion through social media. A very useful tool to follow a particular hashtag across multiple social media platforms is Tagboard.

11. Animoto: Utilize this free multimedia site to display a group of pictures from an event through variety of templates and background music.

12. Flickr allows users to archive large amounts of pictures from an event for free.

13. Instagram gives your visual event participants a chance to share the experiences through an app on their Smartphone.

14. Google Hangout provides event planners a free way to connect and see each other virtually from all parts if the world. Looking for another service that can handle larger groups of people to plan virtually? Check out BigMarker.

15. Guidebook: Provide event participants with a mobile app experience that they will never forget. Guidebook is not free but well worth the cost.

As you can see there are so many ways for event planners and participants to leverage the power of available web tools to ensure a positive experience that will last a lifetime.