Delighted to be a guest blogger for Get Invited on the topic of organising events and why it’s a good idea to outsource admin tasks to a Virtual Assistant. Article published here. 

The ticketing platform Get Invited helps you make money from your events by offering flexible ticketing, beautiful customised event pages, ticket scanning app, and so much more.

Content here:

Are you organising an event?

Are you feeling overwhelmed with the administrative tasks you’ve to complete?

Are you having nightmares that the venue double books you?

Are you afraid that our exhibitors or speakers cancel last moment?

Are you anxious that people turn up who haven’t registered or worse of all no-one turns up at all? If so don’t fear VirtuAli is here!

With every event, comes a lot of admin! There is the back and forth with the venue, the exchange and negotiations with participants on the night, drawing up email lists, collating information for marketing material, getting information out to the public and pulling the agenda for the night together; so you need someone with strong organisational skills to coordinate it all.

In my work as a Virtual PA and in my own community, I’ve been involved behind the scenes in organising a wide variety of events. You name it I’ve done it! Everything from Strictly dancing fundraisers, to the launch of new networks, anniversary events, bake-offs between community leaders, helping at farmers markets and chairing monthly meetings.

Whether it be inaugurating a new building or making sure people know the difference between the Argentina tango or the Viennese waltz, there are a number of factors common to the management of all events.

Delegation
You may think you can, but the simple truth is you CAN’T DO everything! You can’t be on top of the marketing, the administration and have the headspace to plan what it is you really want to do. Focus on the things that you are good at and OUTSOURCE the rest.

Communication
Make sure you have a system in place that no matter how many people are involved with the planning of an event that you ALL have ACCESS to the same information so that means not saving essential updates to your Desktop!

You can share documents in Google Drive or have a shared Dropbox or use or a collaborative tool such as Trello, Asana or Slack. Regular updates to whomever you are collaborating with are also important so you are all on the same page.

Have regular meetings with all players either face-to-face or via one of many online video conferencing platforms that exist such as Zoom,  Skype for Business  or GoToMeeting.

Preparation
Think of all eventualities! Have a backup plan in case your speakers don’t turn up on the night, in case there is an emergency fire drill, in case the next storm arrives in full force. By hiring a Virtual Assistant (VA) you can outsource the time consuming nitty gritty admin work to someone else leaving you the time to concentrate on the tasks that you are good at.

5 Reasons to budget for a Virtual Assistant for the organisation of your next
event:

1. You can ask a VA to research availability and rates of venues and liaise with providers over contract details, catering, special requests and final numbers

2. You can rely on a VA to streamline the way you are selling tickets for your event –by suggesting ticketing platforms such as Get Invited which simplifies how you sell tickets and interact with your customers

3. You can task a VA with the marketing and advertising of the event, helping you to write a description of the event, create flyers, source advertising streams and schedule posts on social media channels such as Facebook, Twitter etc.

4. You can leave the time-consuming task of coordinating people, organising meetings and gathering all necessary information to someone else.

5. Communication after the event is as important as before and during, and a VA can also help you send out a satisfaction survey or collate the results of surveys taken during the event.

What Skills can a Virtual Assistant bring to your event?

By hiring a Virtual Assistant, you are assured that you will have someone on board, who:

• quickly gets up to speed with what is happening
• has the experience to know what questions to ask in advance and is able to predict problems
• you can bounce ideas off
• you can hire for a pre-set number of hours or days a month to help with the planning

The beauty of being a Virtual Assistant is that all this can be done remotely with a laptop anywhere in world but flexibility and added customer value is also very important.

Hiring a ‘virtual’ assistant doesn’t mean that you can’t also have someone to be physically present on the night or before the event.  In the run-up to events, I’ve taken minutes at coordination meetings. On the day of the event itself, I’ve often helped on the registration desk or with room set up. Sometimes as an event organiser to calm your nerves, you just need the simple reassurance that there is an extra set of hands on the night, right?

So, for your next event when working out the scope and the resources make sure you budget in the cost of hiring a VA to save your precious priceless mental energy along the way. You won’t regret it!

About The Author

Alison owns VirtuAli and has over 15 years experience helping businesses and entrepreneurs with everything from administration to sales and event organisation.