Where are your event dates?
Today, my mother called me. I love talking to her because she's such a positive person. Obviously, I did not receive my mother's super positive disposition. Anyway …
My amazing mother currently lives out of state and returns home over the summer. During today's conversation, she asked, "when is the festival taking place?"
There is a local ethnic festival that takes place every August. My mother loves to go to the festival and catch up with her friends from grade school.
In an attempt to be the helpful son, I used my mobile phone, during our call, and tried to look up the 2019 festival dates.
First stop, a Google search.
I put in the name of the festival and received a bunch of results. The first link is the festival's Facebook page. On their Facebook page, there are lovely photos and posts, but not an iota of information on the 2019 festival dates. So I go back to Google.
On Google, there were several results for the official event website. I clicked on several website links only to be greeted with, "This Account has been suspended." So it's pretty apparent their website is down. Therefore, no date information.
Finally, I grew frustrated at trying to find festival dates and told my mother, "I'm going to have to call you back and let you know the dates, sorry Mama!" With Mother's Day approaching, I failed to help my mother!
There have been at least two other instances where I've wanted to attend a festival or annual outdoor event, unable to find the proper dates. On one of those occasions, I found the event date after the event occurred. Not helpful!
The takeaway of the day … if you have an annual event or any event at all, make sure all your online marketing assets: event website, social media pages, online calendars, etc. prominently display the date of your next event. And here's a seemingly silly recommendation … include the year with your event dates! You'd be amazed at the confusion caused by not included the year with event dates.
Here are some additional articles to ratchet up your event web site:
- Simple Tracking of Your Online Event Promotions
- Measuring Your Social Media Event Promotion Efforts
- Shocking Event Web Site Stat
- Simple Event Advertising Tracking with Google Analytics
- Do I Need to Redesign My Event Web Site?
- An Important Event Web Site Statistic for Promoters and Event Planners
- How Big Should My Event Web Site Be?
- What Happens When Your Event Web Site CRASHES?