Keep you Facebook Events calendar full, accurate, and optimized.

If we bring in ONE customer from ONE event post per month….the service is paid for.

Every day, more than 100 million people use Facebook events to discover things they can do with their friends — from festivals and 5Ks to neighborhood fairs and nightlife. With hundreds of millions of events shared on Facebook every year, the fear of missing out is becoming a thing of the past. Facebook’s powerful new Facebook Events app is revolutionizing how people find and save events relevant to them.

Facebook events are the perfect way to get users’ attention and keep it. With Facebook’s calendar connection, most people have their Facebook events connected to their smartphones. This means you can keep your audience in the know without doing much leg work. Also many directory websites like ours are beginning to synch business Facebook page to Events calendars ever expanding you Facebook event reach. Many of our partners who do use Facebook regularly, bypass FB Events and just add events in their Facebook timelines as posts. It’s certainly easier, but not nearly as effective. Taking the next step to create Facebook Events will absolutely broaden your reach and provide great event feedback, but it’s not just about creating great Facebook events, it’s about how to create THE BEST Facebook event.

As many of you know our Upcoming Events pages are populated via a plugin we developed that scans and captures your Facebook Events and drops them 3 different places on our site:

• Our mainpage Upcoming Events list (by date).
• Our All Austin Events Page.
• And on your page on LostinAustin.org

One Event broadcast 4 different places. Because of our dependence upon you, our partners, to build Facebook Events, which provide all of the Events in our calendar, we’re rolling out a new deeply discounted service to help you maintain a steady stream of events that are seen by as many people as possible. Here is our new service…….

• LostinAustin will build and post any or all of your FB Events to your Facebook page for $5 per event.
• We will build all your events using Facebook Event “Best Practices” with quality pictures, detailed descriptives and links.. No more short-cutting FB Event posts, use all the features FB Events have to offer.
• Not just the occasional “big” event, but weekly specials for food and drinks, regular live music. Keeping your upcoming events regular and plentiful.
• At $5 per event, if you offered an event every day of the month, this service would cost you $150 per month. Much cheaper than a full or part-time FB media employee. We estimate most of you will be asking us to post 3-4 events per week, which would be $60 to $80 per month.
• You provide us Editor access to your Facebook page, send us your monthly calendar of events (food & drink specials, happy hours, live music, events) and we knock them all out at once so your events can sit out there in social media land for some time allowing more visitor more time to find them. We schedule your events AHEAD OF TIME. Not everyone can have success with spontaneous events like Beyonce. The earlier you can get your event on your Facebook Events page, the better. Not only will it give you more time to promote, but your followers will be able to look at what you have coming up and plan accordingly. Large venues such as stadiums and amphitheaters often list events months in advance, there is a reason for that.

We’ll go the extra mile in posting your Events. Here’s how you’ll get your $5’s worth:

• We’ll Use an Eye-Catching Event Photo – Facebook Event photos should compel people to want to find out more. That means your photos should be eye-catching and relevant.
• We’ll provide creative and relevant Event Names. First and foremost, your Facebook event should have an official name. If you’re having a happy hour, don’t just use the title “Happy Hour.” Come up with a fun and attention grabbing name like Frappy Hour (in a coffee shop).
• We’ll Write a Clear & Thorough Description – Your description is where you’ll give important details for your event such as pricing, special guests and the schedule. You can also include compelling copywriting to boost the attendance.
• We’ll Use Keywords For Tags – We’ll optimize your Facebook Event by including relevant keywords in your tags section. Don’t limit yourself to just branded keywords. For instance, if you’re hosting live music you should include the genre as a tag.

So $5 for one optimized, thorough, eye-catching event post right on your Facebook page. A post that will get picked up and displayed 3 different places on our site. When we finish a months worth of posts (which may be in a single night) we’ll send you a link to pay $5 by CC for each event we’ve built and posted.

Fill out the form below and let us know if we can help take you FB Events to the next level…….

10 rules for creating effective Facebook Music Events

Facebook pages seem to be less and less useful these days for promoting music, especially when we’re talking about your average independent band that doesn’t want to drop a bunch of cash just to reach fans that have already liked their page.

But one aspect of a Facebook page that IS still useful is the Facebook Events feature. Since Facebook pages are public, you can use your Facebook Events to announce shows, get people excited, and encourage fans to share information about your show with their friends.

Here’s a few things to keep in mind when you create and moderate a Facebook Musical Event:

1. You MUST have an event photo — Peeps love pictures. An awesome picture for the event will help bring the show to life in the imaginations of your fans. Events that don’t have photos or images get ignored. Don’t get ignored.

2. Give them ALL the info — Contrary to conventional web wisdom, less is NOT more when it comes to the description of your event. Why is this show important? What are you looking forward to most? How will your fans be able to help make this a really special concert? Any new songs you’ll be introducing? New merch? Let us know!

3. Get your dates, times, and places straight — It’s easy to mis-click something when Facebook auto-suggests a time or a venue or a city. For my most recent gig, I accidentally extended the event over two days. My friend who was sitting in on bass for a few songs called and said, “So,… I see we’re playing for 23 hours. I only learned 6 songs for this set.” Lesson: be sure to double-check all the details.

4. Link to the venue and/or ticketing site — Even though you’ll have already tagged the venue and Facebook usually knows the address to properly fill in the event details, it’s a good idea to include in your event description the venue’s URL and the URL where fans can purchase tickets. Fans might want to see the venue’s site and check out pictures, see what other bands have played there, etc. And, of course, they might want to buy tickets!

5. Include ALL the bands’ URLs — If you’re sharing the bill with other acts, give them some promo love too. That will help your fans get excited about the show as a whole, not just your set — and that will help ensure that they actually come to your show. Which brings us to…

6. RSVPs aren’t solid — If 120 people say they’re going to your show on Facebook, you can usually count on half of them flaking. It’s just the law of Facebook Events. BUT, it’s still a benefit to you that those people initially RSVP’d, because Facebook is a social environment; it’s all about what seems to be buzzing. The more people that say they’re going to attend your show, the more people will get excited about the event, increasing the chances that they’ll share it, or RSVP themselves. Some of the “maybes” might turn into confirmed guests through this tumbling process. Ah, perception!

7. Make sure every band is promoting the same Facebook Event — If there are multiple bands on the bill, don’t double or triple your efforts with multiple Facebook listings for the same concert. Instead, get the venue to create the event and add the others as administrators for the event. Not only will you save time and energy, but that momentum I mentioned above will be easier to build, because all the people “going” to the show will be added up on one page.

8. Give ’em time to think about the show — You don’t want to create a Facebook Event the night before a show. People need to plan, hire babysitters, take time off of work, have their noses pierced, get their leisure suits out of storage. On the other hand, you don’t want to create an Event so far in advance of the show that people have forgotten all about it by the time the concert date nears. I’d say three weeks out is good enough warning.

9. Send out the invites when people are most likely to be sitting at their computers — Don’t send out your Facebook Event invites at 4am on Wednesday night. Time your Event-creation/updates for when people will actually SEE them! Sunday evenings are good. Similarly, if you use your personal profile to invite friends to your band event, time those invites according to THEIR schedules (or your best guess at their schedules, at least).

10. Update your Event regularly — Your Facebook Event is a living organism and it needs to be fed. It has its very own wall with activity, comments, invite info, etc. Your invited guests get notified when you make updates, so don’t treat the Event page like a static thing. Share videos or links to music from all the various bands on the bill; talk about your show preparations; converse with your fans who’ve confirmed they’re “going” so they’ll be more likely to actually go. You get the point. Be active! Then again, don’t be hyperactive. You don’t want to annoy your fans with constant reminders and updates. Maybe shoot for two or three updates a week at most.