Author: Lulu Guan
ABCey Presents: How to Conduct a Site Selection
Location, location, location! A HUGE factor in organizing a successful event is finding the perfect venue. However, the hunt for an event space can actually be a long and exhaustive process. ABCey is here to help with ideas on how you can conduct a site selection for your next event!
1. Needs Assessment
The first step in selecting a venue for your upcoming event is to develop an exhaustive list of selection criteria. You should always start with creating an overall estimated budget for your event that identifies all expenses and offsets. It’s important to know your overall budget BEFORE selecting a venue. Thus, it’s extremely crucial to communicate with your clients and figure out what they need in terms of location, cost, capacity, and so on.
2. Get Organized!
After figuring out what your client wants, it’s time to develop a list of potential venues. You can come up with a list of up to 10 event spaces (anything more than that will be overwhelming), and eventually narrow it down to 3. We suggest creating a google spreadsheet to keep your ideas organized, or any event software of your choice! Make sure to include important details such as location, pricing, capacity, and contact information, and pros and cons!
Many important details such as contact number and pricing can be found on the venue website. Other than that, Google Maps and Yelp are great tools to see the site and acquire information such as location and venue ratings.
3. Create a Visual Presentation
After organizing your spreadsheet, make a visual presentation for each event space. You can put up a few images and talk about why a particular venue is a good fit. You can then go ahead and present the powerpoint to your client and wait for them to narrow down the list for you.
4. Plan Site Visits
Once you have presented your Powerpoint or other presentation to your client, you will then need to go visit the venues. Seeing them in person is much different than anything you can find online. You should offer for your client to join along, but if they can’t you will need to visit them on your own. Be sure to take lots of pics and vids!
5. Time to Make A Final Decision
After visiting all of the venues, you should have a great idea of each event space and be able to picture if your event theme works within the parameters of the space. You can then talk to your clients and show them pictures and videos of each venue to help them make a final decision!
Have you ever conducted a site selection? Is there anything we missed? Let us know what you think in the comments below or on Facebook and Twitter!
If you’re interested in learning more about events we’ve done for otherSan Francisco startups or other fortune 500 companies, click here.
ABCey’s Startup Monday: Oh My Green
Startup Monday is ABCey’s weekly post that showcases some of the most innovative San Francisco startups! These are often selected from a list of companies that we LOVE or have worked with in the past. This week, we are putting the spotlight on Oh My Green. A startup dedicated to deliver healthy and natural foods to companies.
What is Oh My Green?
Founded in 2014, Oh My Green is a California based healthy food and wellness services provider that aims to make healthy eating and good nutrition easy. Oh My Green offers a custom, nutritious office food program for your organization. The company delivers healthy office snacks, kitchen design, and stocking services, to catering, cafe management, and wellness programming.
How it Works?
Regardless of your company size and budget, Oh My Green brings delicious snacks and drinks to your workplace. Its monthly snack box subscription is perfect for offices with 50 or less. All you need to do is sign up and fill out your company’s information and note dietary preferences. Oh My Green also provides a variety of office catering options for corporate events. Its tech-enabled service, which relies on machine learning can give you personalized recommendations for meals and snacks.
Why Do We Love it?
We love Oh My Green because they truly care about people and their health and well-being. Whether you’re vegan or have food allergies, Oh My Green can customize a menu for your company’s needs. When it comes to catering, Oh My Green always sources ingredients from local farms to maximize freshness and nutritional value of the food. Its advanced technology also allows you to manage orders, track your consumption, control your budget and so much more!
Have you heard of Oh My Green? Let us know what you think in the comments below or on Facebook and Twitter!
ABCey Presents: 5 Ways to Use Instagram Stories for Your Next Event
Instagram Stories has opened the door to a new range of possibilities for both users and marketers, making it a great space to promote events. Thus, ABCey has created a list of our top 5 ways that you can use Instagram Stories for your next event!
1. Instagram Live Video
Record and show in real-time! You can shoot live video using Instagram Stories before, during, and after your event. This way, you can showcase your venue and promote event transparency. Backstage content is a great way to drive viewership and keep your audience interested. Filming behind the scenes will give users a sense of involvement/understanding of how event planning actaully works.
2. Q&As
Having a Q&A session is a good way to engage your audience. Your followers might have common questions about your event or are interested in knowing more about the event planning process. In this case, you can collect the most popular questions and answer them in a picture or video format on your stories.
3. Advertisement
There are so many ways you can advertise your event using Instagram Stories. You can promote your brand or upcoming event using appropriate hashtags; you can also place your event page link in your stories. There’s also Instagram Stories ads, which allow you to insert a short advert in between users stories. You can target your ads by reach, video views, traffic, conversions, app installs, and brand awareness.
4. Start A Poll
The good thing about Instagram Stories is that it lets you run quick surveys and take your audience’s pulse. Thus, if you have a dilemma while in the midst of planning an event, you can always ask your audience for their thoughts. This is a nice way to engage with your followers and make them feel that you value their opinion!
5. Influencer Takeover
It’s always good to change things up. Consider letting your event speaker, a performer, a sponsor or an influencer take over your account and engage with your audience. By providing a platform for others to push some of their own content, you’ll also be able to leverage the speaker’s own audience and marketing power, and drive impressions for your event.
What do you think of these ideas? Did we miss any? Let us know in the comments below or on Facebook and Twitter!
If you’re interested in learning more about events we’ve done for other San Francisco startups or Fortune 500 companies, click here.
ABCey’s Tech Tuesday: 5 Best Event Website Templates
Want to build a buzz around your event and wow your registrants? The convenience and customization event websites offer to both event planners and attendees are amazing! Thus, today’s #techTuesday features 5 best event websites to help you create your next event website template.
1. Splash
Pricing Details: Free for personal events and trials, custom pricing for business licenses
From simplifying event asset creation to capturing attendee insights and measuring event impact, Splash is a great event marketing tool.Splash’s content management system makes it super easy to create your event website while maintaining brand consistency. You can also customize your invite, check-in guests, print your event badges, and more with this tool!
2. Squarespace
Pricing Details: Squarespace has 4 price plans, ranging from $12 to $40 per month.
Squarespace is a drag-and-drop website builder with the best quality templates in terms of design and flexibility. With this tool, you can have full customization control without the need for coding. Squarespace also has good SEO, and its pages all follow SEO best practices. It provides you the best tools to promote your brand.
3. EventCreate
Pricing Details: EventCreate has 2 price plans, ranging from $9 to $29 per month.
In addition to website creation, EventCreate is also a ticketing & registration platform. EventCreate uniquely offers fully white-labeled, custom-branded event pages and is the only platform that offers A/B ticket price testing, to help you maximize your event revenue.
4. Planning Pod
Pricing Details: Planning Pod has 4 price plans, ranging from $19 -$69+ per month.
Planning Pod is an online event management software that aims to help people and organizations that manage multiple or complex events and registrations. This tool offers a centralized platform to manage events, clients, staff, venues, vendors, payments and business details. More importantly, the floor plan feature allows event planners to customize designs for the venue, so they can help clients visualize the event.
5. Bookmark
Pricing Details: Free version available; Professional plan: $11.99/month; Business plan: $24.99/month.
Bookmark is one of the most advanced website builders when it comes to web technologies. Its AI software AiDA (Artificial Intelligence Design Assistant) can help you create an exceptional website in less than 90 seconds! The AI can help fill your website with blocks that suits the most, puts on sample content and customizes design colors. And all you need to do after is to change the text and images. This tool is super efficient and is perfect for non-technical professionals and small business owners.
Have you used any of these event website builders before? Did we miss any? Let us know in the comments below or on Facebook and Twitter!
ABCey’s Startup Monday: Crew
Startup Monday is ABCey’s weekly post that showcases some of the most innovative San Francisco startups! These are often selected from a list of companies that we LOVE or have worked with in the past. This week, we are putting the spotlight on Crew. As event planners, it’s extremely important to stay connected and be able to communicate effectively with your team at all times!
What Is Crew?
Founded by entrepreneur Danny Leffel in 2015, Crew is a communication tool that aims to keep everyone on the same page. Many businesses across different industries use this app to streamline communication, drive business results and boost employee engagement.
How it Works
Crew makes team communication and scheduling so much easier! As a manager, you can assign tasks and distribute schedules with a few simple taps on the phone. You can also track performance and manage when employees are available to work. Whereas as an employee, you can request time-off, find shift coverage, share documents and track your wages, all in one app.
Why We Love It
We love it because good communication is an integral element to business success, and Crew is the perfect tool to help achieve that goal. Unlike other messaging apps, Crew respects every user’s privacy – you can network within a team or organization without having to give out your personal information. Overall, it’s a great, easy to use communication platform.
Have you heard of Crew? Let us know what you think in the comments below or on Facebook and Twitter!
If you’re interested in learning more about events we’ve done for otherSan Francisco startups or other fortune 500 companies, click here.
ABCey’s Tech Tuesday: 5 Best Social Media Management Tools
As event planners, we leverage social media as a powerful tool to grow businesses, whether it involves showcasing that we’re on top of all of the latest trends, or promoting and marketing our events to a targeted audience. Thus, today’s #TechTuesday features 5 of the best social media management tools to help you stay organized and efficient from a single interface!
1. Buffer
Buffer is a classic social media management tool aimed at primarily scheduling posts and tracking the performance of your content. With this app, free users can connect up to 3 social accounts, including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and so on.
2. Hootsuite
HootSuite is another popular social media management app. Compared to Buffer, HootSuite supports more services such as WordPress Blogs and YouTube Channels. Besides content scheduling, HootSuite also allows you to review timeline and manage replies, all in one tool.
3. PostPlanner
In addition to scheduling, PostPlanner is the best tool for curating content on your social media accounts. PostPlanner helps you to identify best-performing content that will resonate with your audience, so you’ll never run out of idea! And most importantly, PostPlanner is pretty affordable compared to other alternatives.
4. Sprout Social
Sprout Social is an efficient social media marketing tool for business of all sizes. You can collaborate on items with multiple people in real-time as well as assigning tasks to your teammates. Moreover, Sprout Social has a unique feature called Smart Inbox, so you can review messages from different social accounts in one single spot.
5. eClincher
eClincher is the ultimate social media productivity system. It allows you to manage multiple social media accounts, pages, and groups with just one intuitive platform. This app also has built-in visual marketing tools, so you can edit your posts with Canva, emoji, etc. Lastly, users also have access to unlimited analytics reports for both social media and websites.
Organizing all your social accounts can be extremely stressful and overwhelming, and these tools can simplify every aspect of managing your social media. Have you heard of any of these apps? Which of these social media management tools do you use? Let us know in the comments below or on Facebook and Twitter!
ABCey Presents: 10 Best Events of 2019
Whether you want to meet new people or simply want to have fun and get inspired, attending a conference is a great way to network and learn! Today, ABCey has curated a list of upcoming conferences, big and small in a variety of industries.
1. The GirlBoss Rally 2019
Dates: June 29-30, 2019
Location: Los Angeles, CA
The GirlBoss Rally is one of the most unconventional conferences out there for young businesswomen, creatives, and entrepreneurs. It’s a two-day event filled with business workshops, career advice, inspiring speeches, and more! This year Sophia Amoruso, Paris Hilton, Michelle Phan along with other reputable women, will be sharing their insights as businesswomen and innovators.
2. The Self Care Summit
Date: July 20th, 2019
Location: Los Angeles, CA
The self-care summit by Create and Cultivate will be a vibrant one-day event exploring the topic of self-care, dedicated to educating how modern working women should take care of themselves. It will be a day full of panels, keynotes, pop-ups, meditation sessions, and so much more!
3. VidCon 2019
Dates: July 10-13th, 2019
Location: Anaheim, CA
VidCon is unarguably the world’s biggest annual digital video conference. It has become the most popular gathering of social media creators, fans, and brands that are passionate about content creating and video marketing. Additionally, there will be live performances, panels, fan and creator meet & greets, etc.
4. Like Minds Camp
Dates: September 20-22, 2019
Location: New York
Unlike other traditional conferences, Like Minds Camp is a unique experience. Guests join in on a weekend long, art- driven community building by camping out. With the theme of time this year, it will definitely be a weekend gateway that you do not want to waste any second of.
5. In Good Company
Dates: October 25th, 2019
Location: San Francisco, CA
In Good Company is a conference dedicated to helping women to balance from being entrepreneurs and mothers. From this event, attendees are able to meet other female creatives; exchange ideas and gain inspiration for how they should approach their lives and careers. What’s interesting is that you can even bring your own baby to this conference.
6. TechCrunch Disrupt
Dates: October 2-4, 2019
Location: San Francisco, CA
This large conference allows startups to sign up and present their business ideas on the stage in front of investors, media for exposure and win prize money. In addition, the featured guests this year include Heather Adkins, Michael Rogers, and Evan Spiegel. You sure do not want to miss out on an opportunity like this!
7. Summit LA 2019
Dates: November 8-11, 2019
Location: Los Angeles, California
Summit LA is more like a festival than a traditional conference. Leaders and innovators from a variety of industries are able to come together to connect and share ideas. In addition to networking, there will also be music, live performances, immersive adventures, and so on.
8. Dreamforce 2019
Dates: November 19-22, 2019
Location: San Francisco, CA
Dreamforce is an annual conference hosted by Salesforce in San Francisco. Each year, Dreamforce attracts tens of thousands of professionals and provides thousands of workshops. Because of this, attendees will be able to learn how Salesforce can help take their business to the next level. There will also be plenty of networking opportunities.
9. Extreme Sales Summit 2019
Dates: September 12-13, 2019
Location: Chicago, IL
The Extreme Sales Summit is a two-day event for all the sales professionals out there. Attendees can share ideas, concepts with each other, learn from sales industry leaders as well as the chance to connect with peers from across the country.
10. Brand Manage Camp 2019
Dates: September 17-18, 2019
Location: Las Vegas
This marketing conference covers a wide range of topics such as innovation, advertising, customer behavior, and more. This event helps companies of different sizes to grow their brand through fresh thinking. Not only will there be world class speakers sharing their knowledge, but attendees can also receive consulting services in different areas.
Have you heard of any of these upcoming conferences? If so, which one will you be attending? We’d love to hear from you! Let us know in the comments below or on Facebook and Twitter!
If you’re interested in learning more about events we’ve done for otherSan Francisco startups or other fortune 500 companies, click here.
ABCey’s Startup Monday: Workday
Startup Monday is ABCey’s weekly post that showcases some of the most innovative San Francisco startups! These are selected from a list of companies that we LOVE or have worked with in the past. This week, we are putting the spotlight on Workday!
What is Workday
Workday is a free cloud-based business management platform founded in 2005. It specializes in people resource management and financial management. It is an effective and affordable system for tracking employees and developing a globally manageable company structure.
How it works
Workday caters to two main end users: employers and employees.
As an employer, you can use this app to track expenses and/or assign new tasks to your team. You can also view your employees’ profiles and provide performance feedback.
As an employee, you can complete administrative tasks such as clocking in and out, tracking your pay, and requesting time off, all in one app.
Why we love it
We love Workday because it makes business management within an organization so much easier! Users can have access to work related applications and data on-the-go. What I love the most is that paycheck mistake, scheduling discrepancies can be easily detected and fixed in a timely manner. And, with the touch ID and Face ID features, users don’t need to worry about the safety of the information.
Have you heard of them? Do you like Workday, too? Let us know what you think in the comments below or on Facebook and Twitter!
If you’re interested in learning more about events we’ve done for otherSan Francisco startups or other fortune 500 companies, click here.