Post Event Considerations Regarding Your Stage(s)
Once your event has closed you will want to ensure that you wrap up necessary stage elements.
Physical Stage
You’ve created that beautiful backdrop for your stage….roll it up and store it for your next event.
If you missed S(t)AGE ADVICE (Part II for DURING your event) you can catch it here. As with exhibit booths, we recommend you storing your stage items cleanly and organized to ensure use for years to come. Check out this article by the industry's experts, Skyline, for more Trade Show tips.
Make sure you label your backdrop-- keeping you from having to unroll it each time you want to know the contents. Store it in the tube it came in at room temperature, in your storage space, off the floor so it doesn’t come in contact with water.
Between your decorator and your venue the risers and carpet will be removed. Your A/V company will collect their items: monitor, wiring, laptop, mouse, etc.
If you secured a furniture store to decorate your stage they will need to pick up their items. Or better yet---they were willing to increase their publicity at your event by promoting it as a give-away. If that is the case, the winner should have been notified of the deadline to pick up their winnings.
All give-aways from each presenter should have left with their winner and you have record of each winner’s name. Follow up and showcase these winners in your post-event report. Everyone wants to hear about who won and what they won!
Communications
We haven’t talked about this before, but your photographer for your event should have taken pictures of the winners—pictures always make those dry post-event reports come to life. Use them!
All information you include about your stages in your post-event report will solidify and reinforce the success. Have your Post-Event Reports on hand as you secure presenters for your next event. Let celebrities know you are a viable event, that they want to be a part of, as you will ensure they are promoted and their following will grow. (wiift?)
A nice touch is to send a thank you note to all those that presented on the stage along with a post-event report. Reinforce the fact you were thankful they gave their time, thank them for contributing to the success of the event, and to thank them if they included a give-away.
Ask for referrals. Your presenters most likely know of other great speakers that will make your job of finding talent for your next event easier.
#makingiteasier
Communicate with your emcee. They are a MOST valuable source of what went right (or not so right) on your stage during the event. Ask for their advice of what you could do to make it easier for the emcee or the presenters. Take notes! Make sure you refer to and make these changes before your next event.
Secure your emcee for the next event! Or get referrals of who would enhance your event.
Communicate with your PR team to receive stats and data on how many times each presenter was liked, shared or followed on social media. These numbers are very important to presenters. They should be important to you too as you select speakers for your next event.
For your headliner talent collect stats on how many interviews they were a part of on each radio or tv station. Send them copies of articles written in newspapers or magazines.
These are ALL great tasks for your INTERN. Interns learning about event management will benefit from learning how things work behind the scenes and how to build good relationships with people involved in all steps of running an event. Show those up-and-comers how to treat celebs and presenters rightly.
And lastly—after getting feedback from your emcee go ahead and contract with those presenters that related well to your audience, worked well with your event, and are gaining in celebrity status. Secure them before you lose them!
As you analyze which presentations worked well, try to eliminate those that lost your audience and increase the demonstrations that packed the house.
Do some quick research, and again #referrals, to obtain other great speakers similar to those that were successful in your event.
It is never too early to book speakers for your next event! These are the tasks that can be accomplished early in your planning year, so it’s all set up before crunch time.
The sooner you have your presenters booked, and schedule set, the more you can utilize it in articles and interviews leading up to the show. This makes for better content than just saying “so and so” will be with us. If you have the days and times already set (and their topic!) you will obtain that much more publicity for not only your stage but for your event.
Bonus note: when you can share your presenters AND their topics with media they will relate to it instantly and begin planning ways to promote that ties in with their station. These are the PROS. They know what and how to promote successfully. Give them something to work with and give it to them early!
Good luck and HaVE FUn!!