How to Create Facebook Events + 3 Tips to Promote Your Event

Facebook events are a dedicated space on Facebook that “let you organize and respond to gatherings in the real world with people on Facebook.”

As a business owner, you can create events for both in-person or online gatherings, and use Facebook events to drum up:

• attendees,
• engagement,
• brand awareness,
• maybe some new Facebook page likes or website visits,
• and of course, RSVPs. 

So if your company throws events that you need more of your target audience to know about…

…read till the end of this post because we’re showing you how to create Facebook events and promote them effectively.  

Today, we’re going to walk you through Facebook events from A to Z. Let’s get started!

What Facebook Events Look Like

We’ve got this one pulled up just as an example, this is a Facebook event for the Atlanta Brunch Festival.

And it’s important to note that we’re looking at this event as a regular Facebook user, a possible attendee.

This is not an event we’ve created or that we’re hosting, so the way we’re viewing this page is what your customers will see when they look at an event you create. 

So first thing’s first, they’ve got the name of the event as well as the date and time of the event here.

It says here Saturday because this event is happening this week at the time we’re writing this post.

But if it were several weeks away, it would show the actual date here like March 5, 2022.

We can RSVP if we’re interested or going, as well as invite our Facebook friends to RSVP. 

If we click the arrow, it allows us to copy the link to this event page if we want to share it elsewhere.

And clicking the 3 dots allows us to save the event, add it to a page, or report it. 

From there, the rest of the page breaks down into two sections: About and Discussion. 

On the About tab, we get all the event details including:

• How many people have responded?
• Who the event is by? (aka who is hosting it)
• Where is it happening?
• Where can you get tickets?
• Is it public or private?
• The description of the event written by the host.

To the right of that, we have a CTA button of where to get tickets as well as a map of where the event will be located.

Below this, we have the Meet Your Hosts section where you can scroll through and see who is hosting this event.

And then to the right, we have Guests where you can invite your friends.

Click “See All” to see if any of your friends have marked themselves as going or interested.

Now, this is a huge part of what makes Facebook events successful because seeing how many people are going…

…and specifically how many of your friends are going is social proof all in itself. Thus, making other people want to go. 

Now if we click on the Discussion tab, we have the same Details section and get tickets CTA from before on the righthand side.

As well as all the recent activity going down the left. This will usually consist of things the host has posted.

But as you can see, there are some attendees posting as well tagging their friends to let them know about the event and so on.

And just to give you a quick look, here is what this event page looks like from a mobile phone.

All the same sections and information is there, it’s just formatted a little differently.

So now that you have an idea of what Facebook events look like, let’s walk through the steps on how to create Facebook events.

How To Create Facebook Events + Best Practices

Now, you can create an event from your Facebook business page or from your personal profile.

We would advise creating one from your business page.

But if for whatever reason you have more leverage with your personal profile, like if you’re a beauty consultant or real estate agent or something…

…where you’ve built your business using your personal profile’s friend list, this is how you create Facebook events from your personal profile.

a. From your Facebook personal profile

Step 1: Click the menu grid icon, and under Create, click Event. And it will start prompting you.

Step 2: And you can see on the left side under “Create Event”, it has our name and next to Host, it says Your Profile. 

That’s a good way to check and see if you’re creating an event correctly or not if you get kind of turned around.

Seeing that tells us we’re not creating this event from our business page. 

Now we’re going back out of this in a second to show you how to create an event from your business page because it’s all the same prompts except one.

Step 3: Here under privacy, it allows us to choose between Private, Public, and Friends.

You only get this option if you create an event from your personal profile. 

You’ll see in a minute that if you create an event from your business page, it’s automatically public. 

b. From your Facebook business page

Now let’s go back to the LYFE Marketing business page to walk through creating an event from your business page. 

Step 1: Click the More tab, and click Events.

Here you will see if you have any upcoming events your business has created, or any past events it hosted in the past. 

Step 2: To create a new event, click “Create New Event.”

Or, if you didn’t have the Events button under your More tab, you can also click Event under the Create section from the home tab.

Either method will bring you to this screen where it will walk you through the prompts of everything you need to fill out to create an event.

Step 3: The first choice is to select if this event is online or in person. 

An online event it says could be a “video chat with Messenger Rooms, broadcast with Facebook Live,” or an external link such as a Zoom link, for example. 

For this tutorial, we’re going to click the in-person event. 

Step 4: This screen is where you fill out a lot of the event details, starting with the event name. 

The name can be up to 100 characters, though we wouldn’t advise it being that long as it will run off the screen on mobile. 

If it has to be on the lengthier side though, please make sure you put important information at the front:

• so it’s not cut off, and
• because that’s likely what most people will read. 

Step 5: Below the name, you can set a start and end date, as well as the time for the event.

You can also make it a recurring event if that make sense for your business.

For instance, if you own a bookstore and want to have a recurring weekly book club event…

…this makes it a lot easier to do that because you just have to set up the event once and make it recurring instead of setting up a new event every week.

Step 6: Below that, we see the Privacy tab.

But like we mentioned earlier, it won’t let you select anything but Public when you’re creating an event from your business page.

And while we’re talking about that, just quickly note the LYFE Marketing name and profile icon at the top where it says Host – Your Page. 

Again, this is a good spot to double-check yourself that you’re creating this event from your business page and not from your personal profile. 

Step 7: Next, we have your description.

It doesn’t give us the character limit here but these can usually be pretty long if you want them to. 

These are our 3 main tips on what to include in the description:

1. Put the name of the event, the date, and location here too because you don’t want people to miss that.
2. Include a short and sweet sentence of what the event is all about or what people can expect from it.

Then after that sentence, you can get into any more detailed information you want to share

3. Put the most important information in the first 2 lines of the description, especially if it’s a longer description.

That’s because most people won’t read the whole thing. 

So whatever you want them to take away from the description needs to be at the top in the first 2 lines.

And you can see on the right the preview of what this event will look like updates in real-time as we’re adding this information in.

And you can toggle at any point to see what the mobile preview looks like as well. 

Step 8: Next is the category- just choose whichever is the most closely related to what your event is about.

It’s okay if it’s not 100% spot on. 

Once you’ve got everything on this screen the way you want it, click the blue Next button. 

Step 9: Here you will add the address of where this event is going to be hosted and then click the blue Next button.

Step 10: On this screen, you can change the cover photo. 

You can see that it automatically pulls the cover photo of your business page.

But we would recommend switching it out to a photo that’s specific to your event. 

Now a lot of people just insert their event flyer as the cover photo, and we’re not opposed to that.

But you just want to make sure it fits and that there aren’t words being cut off on either the desktop or mobile preview. 

If you’re not using an event flyer, we would recommend using a photo from a past event if you’ve hosted this event before.

Or if not, you could use a photo of the people throwing the event doing something in relation to the event.

So running with the book club example, maybe it’s your first book club and you don’t have a photo from a previous book club to use…

…we would take a photo of the bookstore owner and some employees sitting around a table with books smiling at one another.

Or maybe one taking notes to emulate what people will be doing at the event.

And if all else fails, you can still rely on stock photography, but we would utilize that as a last resort.

You can also drag the image to reposition here if need be. 

Step 11: If your event costs tickets to attend, you can add the ticket link here. 

Step 12: Under Event Settings, we have the option to add a co-host.

So for example, maybe a bakery down the street from your bookstore wants to provide cookies for the book club…

…you could add them as a cohost if that made sense and if they wanted to be active with the Facebook event.

Just be a little bit cautious about adding cohosts.

That’s because it does give that person or business permission to edit and change things on your event, so you want it to be someone you trust. 

Step 13: Under Event options, we see the option to toggle off or on these settings:

• Showing the guest list
• Only allowing admins to post in the event
• Making it so when the public posts in the event, it has to be reviewed and approved by a host or cohost before it officially publishes
• And allowing people to ask questions about this event via Messenger

Now you can set these settings to be whatever you want, whatever is most manageable for you as a small business owner.

But the one thing we would definitely recommend is that you show the guest list. Keep that option toggled on. 

Because like we alluded to earlier, that’s really the magic in Facebook events.

Once you start getting RSVPs, they’ll appear here showing how many are interested and going.

And that helps create a snowball effect where other people start RSVPing…

…because they see other people are, and they specifically see if any of their friends are.

Now if you’re worried, thinking, “What if I don’t get any RSVPs? And it just looks like a lame event that nobody is going to?” 

Don’t worry, we’re sharing a couple of promotion tips for your Facebook events after this, so keep reading. 

Step 14: Once you’ve got these settings the way you want them, click the blue Save button. 

After that, you can give your event one more look over on both the desktop and mobile preview to make sure everything is right before you publish it. 

You can see it automatically added a map based on the location that we entered. 

Step 15: Once you’ve got it all looking the way you want it, click the blue Publish button.

Or if you want to save your work and revisit it later, you can hit “Save as a draft.”

And that’s it! That’s how you create Facebook events. 

3 Tips To Promote Your Facebook Events & Get Those RSVPs

Tip #1: Take advantage of the invite button. 

Looking back at the Atlanta Brunch Festival event page, if we click the Invite button, it allows us to invite up to 500 of our friends. 

Sending those invites will send them a Facebook prompt to RSVP to this event. 

And remember, we’re not a host for this event or anything,

We’re just a regular public person viewing this event, which means anybody can send these invites. 

So not only can you and your co-hosts invite 500 people each to RSVP to your event…

…but you can and should get all of your close friends and family to also use their 500 invites each to invite people to RSVP to this event.

And this is an organic method that doesn’t cost you any money to promote it! 

Tip #2: Share the event on your business page.

This can also apply to any other platform that you have a decent following with. 

When you click the arrow on an event page, it gives you a link you can copy and share anywhere…

…and that link will direct people back to this event page.

So first and foremost, share it to your business page where your existing Facebook page followers can see it.

But if you have a lot of Instagram followers, share this link to your Instagram Story too. Or post it on LinkedIn- wherever you have a following.

Speaking of stories, check out this post next if you want to learn more tips on how to use Instagram Stories for business.

Tip #3: Use the Events ad campaign

This will require a social media budget to do.

When you go into Facebook Ads Manager and click Create Campaign, click the Engagement campaign and scroll down to click Event Responses.

This will show your ad to people within your target audience who are most likely to RSVP…

…directing them to your event page and specifically optimizing for event responses.

Now our pro tip here is when you’re selecting your target audience in the ad set level…

…make sure you click Show More Options, edit Connections and select the option that excludes people who have already responded to your event.

Just select the event you’re referencing. This ensures you don’t waste money promoting your event to people who have already RSVPd. 

Now if you’re a little lost here or have never run a Facebook ad before, you can check out our step-by-step tutorial on how to create Facebook ads here.

Otherwise, that about wraps up our tutorial for you today! So now you know how to create a Facebook event and promote it successfully.

And if you’re looking for a Facebook marketing company that you can work with, look no further! We got you covered.

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