Event Planning Tips, From the Experts, Your Event Career
Are You Ready For The Seasonal Business Slump?—Part 1
QC tutor Heather Vickery is the Owner and Event Director of Greatest Expectations Special Events and Weddings, one of Chicago’s most celebrated event planning and design firms.
So how do you make the most of the down time? Well, you set some intentions and tackle the items on your to-do list that are constantly being pushed down. What are the items that you know you need to get done but somehow never do to? Below are several tips on staying productive, getting ahead of the curve and setting yourself up for success when the season picks back up.
Update Your Portfolio
This is a great time to organize event photos. Make sure you have received photos from every event. If you are missing any, reach out to the photographer and request the images. Take the time to sift through a year’s worth of event photos, cull them and decide which ones you want to share with the public. Remember, most experts say you should be sharing different media on all platforms—that means you need three or four times more media than you would otherwise.
Step Up Your Social Media
Now that you have your event photos organized, you can get ahead of the game by scheduling out your social media. This is a great opportunity to get your social media platforms in tip-top shape. You can schedule out the next six months’ worth of posts for all platforms, set them and forget them. There are several resources for doing this but Everypost, Hootsuite, and Buffer are a few that several industry friends rave about.
Go ahead and write a bunch of blog posts. If you are anything like me, writing blog posts is something you put off over and over again. Not because you don’t want to share your work or knowledge, but because it is extremely time consuming! The seasonal slump offers you a perfect time to knock several months’ worth of posts out. You can schedule to post when you want them to. This is another ‘set it and forget it’ task.
Build Your Network
The seasonal slump happens to fall during the holidays, so take the time to cultivate relationships with your industry peers. Build up your network, visit venue reps—- make sure you have physically seen any new venues that opened throughout the year. What other new vendors popped up this year? Try reaching out to them. Make them feel welcome and invite them into the community with open arms. Make sales calls. No sale ever happens outside of a conversation. If you want industry professionals to refer business to you and to take extra good care of your clients, then you need to be having conversations with them and building relationships.
Design a Styled Shoot
Use those industry relationships to create beauty! Now is the time to partner with a team of people you respect and admire and design styled shoots. I love styled shoots for so many reasons, primarily because they afford you a unique ability to show creativity. With clients, we are bound to the boundaries they set for us. With styled shoots, you can dream as big as you want and try exciting new things. This is also a great opportunity to show vendors you have never worked with, what you are made of. It is a beautiful way to build new relationships and your portfolio.
Don’t miss Part 2 for more of Heather’s advice on surviving the seasonal business slump!
