Show Outline:
- Here’s the run-down on how I threw the FB Party:
- What is a Facebook party?
- How do You prepare?
- How did you promote?
- What prizes did you use?
- How to you run a Facebook party. (Jim)
- I had a core group of people (~30) on a launch team who committed to attending and invited others. When the event went live (about 2 weeks before the party) they spread the word very effectively and we ended up having 4,000 people invited. 316 attended.
- I’d previously attended about four FB parties and took a lot of notes on what I liked, didn’t like, etc. I then pre-planned the party, down to what I would post at what time, what I’d be giving away, videos I’d be sharing, etc. I posted every 10 minutes.
- Posts included 5 giveaways, three 2-minute long video interviews, Q&A for the audience, small scene clips from the book, a few blog posts, and then some fun random pictures of snacks or Pinterest inspiration. (I can give a much more detailed list of things to include in posts if you need it.)
- I announced the FB party via blog, social media, and newsletter one week prior, one day prior, and then the day of.
- On the day of the party, I had another person (hubby) come in to help with behind-the-scenes. He was in charge of taking down names and drawing winners for prizes. My job was to interact with the attendees and to post the main pictures and giveaways.
- The party ran for two hours (though, in hindsight, I think it should have been longer. Maybe 3 or 4.)
- Nadine where can we find out more about you?
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Great episode!
Terrific ideas and advice. I’ve shared this podcast with author friends, and will implement the advice here for my own FB party!
Nadine, how do you handle capturing all those who enter the giveaways? With 300 attending, that’s a lot of names to track, though I realize not all 300 would do the required entry, e.g. follow me on Twitter.
Hi Debra! Sorry I missed your comment until now.
I made sure to stress that to enter the giveaway, people had to comment on the specific giveaway post. So, if the action was to “follow me on Twitter” I said, “Comment that you did!” And I went mostly by the honor system. I’ve found that people don’t really try to “cheat” the system. And if they do, it’s not that big of a deal.
The entries all came down to commenting. š That also kept them interacting on the page.
My right-hand-man (aka. hubby) would keep track on his own computer of every entry. He’d either write down the names and then draw one randomly, or he’d count the entries, put the number in a randomizer (like random.org) and then draw the winner by comment number (this was significantly easier once we figured out to do it this way.)
Does that answer your question?
Yes, that’s helps, Nadine. You also mentioned creating the event from one’s personal page and to connect it to your FB fan page. By connect did you mean “link” or simply to put info in the event about your fan page? Thanks!
I meant sharing a link on my fan page. I tried to share the link to the event at least three or four times leading up to it. There’s a specific “share” button inside the event itself, and when you use that, the event comes up on your fan page with a button to “join” in it. This is especially successful because then people don’t even need to follow the link. They can just join with a single click.