Social Media Tip: Creating a Facebook Event

It's AGM season for many not-for-profit organisations - and something I've noticed on social media is an increase in posts reminding followers about the upcoming dates, times and venues.

This is a great, but your organisation or business can raise further awareness of what's coming up by creating an actual Facebook Event - so I thought I'd share how.

Three benefits of creating a Facebook Event:

1. Creating an Event generates an individual (and shareable) link to the Event you want to promote. This means that instead of trying to direct people to an individual Facebook post that may get lost in your feed, the Event has its own location on your page that you can refer back to.

‍2. An Event enables people to 'go to' or show interest. Often, when a follower does click to attend your Event, this may show up in their own Facebook feeds for their connections to see and further increase awareness.

3. You can post in the specific discussion feed for that Event. This is great for sharing any updates, relevant documents, images etc. for that event and it makes sense - rather than being out of context if you were to post through the Page itself.

Here's how to create a Facebook event:

This run down assumes you're already an administrator of your Facebook page, and is written for doing this on your computer. If you are on a phone or tablet, it's the same process, you just have to look in a different area.

Step 1. Log In - Log in to Facebook as you normally would and navigate to your page.

Step 2. Events Tab - On the left hand side of the page should be a tab called "Events". Each page 'type' is a little different, so if you can't see the Events tab or get stuck here, feel free to get in touch.

Step 3. Creating the event - On the Events page, click the blue "+ Create Event"

Step 4. Event information - Enter the primary information for the event, including giving it a name, time and date, as well as selecting a venue in the popup box.

On this page, don't forget to scroll down! It's not immediately obvious, however below the primary information is where you can add the Event details, keywords and even a direct link for people to register.

There are also some 'Options' down the very bottom, which you should review in accordance with your social media or event policy (i.e. around enabling guests to post etc.).

Step 5. Proof - Once you're done inputting your information, proof your content to make sure that the title, date and time - if nothing else - are correct.

Step 6. Publish - If you're happy with all this information, then you can hit "Publish" down the bottom right and your event will be created.

Once completed, it should take you to the specific Event page, where you can get the ball rolling by 'Going' yourself.

How to share the event?

Before sharing, it's important to note that your new Event will be published to your Page's timeline, so there's no need to immediately share this again.

If want to share the Event to your personal timeline, you can use Facebook's inbuilt 'share' feature, found on the right of the Event page, to do this or invite your friends.

If you're doing an email blast, sharing on your Instagram bio, or across other platforms, it's handy to share the Event's specific URL.

To do this: go to the Event page and copy the URL link (a.k.a. the address bar) and you can paste this where required.

Dom's tip: I often make sure that I'm just copying and pasting up until the numbers, sometimes there's some added URL information in there that may or may not be relevant.

And that's the basics of creating a Facebook Event.

As mentioned above, once created you can now post within the event itself any reminders or updates for guests 'going' to the Event.

Hopefully you've found this post useful and it helps raise the exposure of your upcoming Event. If so, head over to Wakeford Digital on Facebook and hit the 'Like' button so you can see more tips and updates like these.

- D.