GUIDE: How to do a Successful Event in Boston

Greenhorn Connect prides itself on having the most comprehensive calendar and filters through the top suggested events to attend each week on our weekly newsletter. The following is a quick guide to help make your event successful.

What works best in Boston:

1.  Entertainment- Even if your event is predominantly educational or professional in nature you should have activities worked in that engage the attendees.

2. Value- What’s the takeaway from the event? Is it knowledge about a subject area or a job opportunity? It’s never enough that you’ll simply “grow your network.”

3. Accessibility- Getting people out to events is difficult even if they live a few T stops away. Consider where your target audience lives and works. If it’s in Boston don’t host events in the suburbs. Vice versa.

Best days of the week:

1.     Monday- Usually has the least events and works best for private get togethers and smaller meet ups with <50 people.

2.     Tuesday- Medium sized meetups work best here with 50-100 people. They often have an education tone as well.

3.     Wednesday- Often when larger meet ups and events occur with 100+ people.

4.     Thursday- Great night for parties and more entertaining events.

5.     Friday- Smaller breakfast or lunch events often work best. Don’t bother organizing anything at night.

6.     Saturday/ Sunday- Hack-a-thons and smaller conferences with 100-250 people are usually scheduled here.

Event Creation:

1.     Concise description- Don’t promise the world by attending your event. Keep the expectations realistic and explain exactly what will happen at your event. If that doesn’t entice them enough then you should rework the format.

2.     Collaboration- It never makes sense when there’s different people organizations organizing events around the same initiatives. Talk with each other to capitalize your networks and knowledge to make one event great.

3.     Pictures- People love pictures. Give them some visuals with logo’s, venue images and other photos that capture the experience.

Promotion:

1.     The 5 week rule- A good rule of thumb is to start promoting your event 5 weeks ahead. *Note: For monthly meetups this should be lessened and for larger events that should be greater.

2.     Pre-promotion- The first week of promotion you should tell all your closest contacts about the event. Get them to register first so that when you release it to the public it already looks fairly popular. No one likes to be the first to a party.

3.     Split up tasks. Most events just need a team of two committed people. When one focuses on promotion the other should be finalizing event logistics so that everything runs smoothly. It can be daunting to handle both.

This quick guide applies best to Boston startup events with 50-300 attendees as we’ve experienced through what Greenhorn Connect and other organizations have done successfully in the past.

Do you have any questions? Anything else you’d recommend to local event organizers?