Our most popular articles of 2022: Expo fan favs!

We do our best to bring you the most up-to-date news, predictions, and happenings in the event world. 

But our favorite way to find out what’s going on with events is by looking at which Expo articles people are reading the most! 

This year in-person events were in full swing, along with ways to increase attendance and make events more exciting. People were ready to be face to face, away from their computer screens, and connect with other meeting professionals. 2022 was the catalyst for bigger and better in-person events this year. 

Keep reading for our most popular articles of 2022. All the Expo fan favs!

Man banging head again computer keyboard.

1) Zoom fatigue was getting the best of us.

Our fan favorite article in 2022 was the top 5 things to stop doing in meetings (and what to do instead): Please stop using these phrases in meetings. 

Virtual meetings are here to stay and they make it incredibly easy to meet and connect with teams, clients, business partners, and anyone we work with, at any time. With it being a new year, you’ve set new goals for yourself and your team. Take a look at our tips when scheduling new meetings this year! 

Start to limit meetings to only those who absolutely need to share information, give feedback or make decisions. If you don’t want people to feel left out, let them know that the meeting is optional for them. They are more than welcome to be there and contribute.  Remember every meeting should have a topic to discuss, a problem to solve, a decision to be made, and a framework to get that done. The exception might be for brainstorming meetings, but even then, it’s not a bad idea to give people some ideas to get the creative juices flowing. 

As you close the meeting, make sure everyone knows the specific areas they are to explore for more ideas or tasks to complete. Try not to leave anything open-ended. If there’s one takeaway from this article, make sure that when meetings do happen, everyone knows it’s an important event. 

women talking about brand awareness.

2) A new year brings lots of opportunities to plan creative and engaging events.

We reviewed event marketing basics, and shared how to pump up your attendance with a top-notch event marketing strategy.

There are tons of ways to market your event. Using the right channels and media for your brand can be tricky. Testing these channels with your content is a great place to start and to see where you’re getting the most engagement. To promote your event you will need a marketing plan, why? 

Event marketing is key to reaching your event goals, building your brand, and creating a better experience for attendees, vendors, and even yourself – the organizer! Plus it helps to increase attendance, capture the right audience, increase revenue, and build your event brand. And who doesn’t want those things? 

Make sure to start with a message that attendees will get behind and you can use to make tons of content. Post to all the major social media channels, and try to tailor posts to your target audience. And just stick to your plan! If you keep putting the right content out, to the right people, you’ll hit all your attendance goals, and more. We promise. 

Cartoon depiction of a name badge with the labels "Event name, First name, Last, Name, Company, Attendee", and a QR code

3) Badge design bootcamp: How to create a clear (and fun!) name badge.

The name badge is one of the most essential material pieces at any event. In this article we outlined everything you need to know about creating a clear (and fun!) badge for your event.

There are two big goals for an event name badge that you should keep in mind when beginning your design. The first is to provide information about attendees wearing the badges. The second is to encourage networking opportunities between attendees, speakers, and anyone else at your event. 

Don’t forget to keep the name as the focus. A good quality badge will allow for the attendee’s first name to be visible from a distance (think about 10 feet away). Okay, so the name isn’t the only star of the name badge show. After the attendee’s name, a QR code should be the second most prominent item on the badge. Events that use QR codes give their badges the next level of usefulness. 

When creating remember less is more in many of these designs. You shouldn’t add fancy hard-to-read fonts to attendee’s names or other information. Most importantly, have fun with it! 

Interested in having easy customizable badges at your event? Learn more about Expo’s Check-In and Badge Printing features here, or send us a message at info@expopass.com.

Woman on the Emmy's stage saying "we unfortunately have a bad connection"

4) No event is perfect but there’s ways to prepare. 

The good news is most nightmare scenarios are actually pretty avoidable. To help ease your mind this event season we gathered 5 Nightmare event scenarios (and how to sleep easy). 

Whether your internet is down or your speaker is missing we have tips on how to avoid or handle these mishaps. As for your internet it’s important have multiple internet fail-safes. Here at Expo, for example, we supply all our own routers. That way, we can be confident that your event check-in won’t crash. We are always hardwired to the ethernet and never completely dependent on WiFi. And our devices can fall back on cellular if necessary. 

After a brief moment of panic when your speaker has gone MIA, you click on your event app and fire off a few rapid messages to the other presenters to see if anyone would be available to swap presentation times. You find a generous volunteer and simply need to rearrange the schedule. Score!

Hiccups are inevitable, but many of the things that keep us up at night as organizers are things we can start preparing for today. A little planning will go a long way to a good night’s rest.

Woman talking about podcasts.

5) Event inspiration is all around us.

It sounds cliche, but there’s actually inspiration everywhere! When you feel uninspired or stumped when trying to one up the theme for your next event, use our top 5 tips for finding inspiration when you (the event organizer) need it most! 

Networking is great place to start, meeting and chatting with new friends and work colleagues is one of the best ways to get out of your head and find new ideas. While your at it check with work colleagues or clients about what blogs they follow, or if they have one of their own. It’s a great way to take a pulse on what the people around you are talking about, or want to talk more about. 

If looking to unplug while finding inspiration a book is a nice way to take a break from your various screens and earbuds and get some old-school inspiration. A podcast can be the perfect way to tune out the noise and focus on some quality event planning content (or any type of content that gets your brain going). 

Looking for more inspiration? There’s nothing wrong with checking out some webinars and other events to get your brain back in event mode. It’s our experience that the best ideas happen when we least expect them, so our biggest tip is to try to take in inspiration from everywhere while you wait. 

Attendee printing their own badge.

6) Onsite badge printing simply creates a better experience all around. 

Why would organizers want to think about printing hundreds or even thousands of badges onsite? And how would that make their lives any easier? Answer – onsite badge printing simply creates a better event experience all around. 

We shared the top 10 reasons why you need onsite printing at your next event. With onsite badge printing means attendees simply have to show up, type their name on the check-in kiosk, press print, and they get their badge in seconds. And also means fewer hold-ups in the line. 

Onsite badge printing is essential at events today. It not only helps make the registration process faster and smoother, but it also helps organizers increase sales, keep registration flexible, and easily track attendance. With onsite printing, event staff can focus on helping speakers and engaging with attendees instead of dealing with alphabetizing and searching for badges. It also ensures that only the intended attendees are the ones that ever have access to their badges. Overall, onsite badge printing is cutting edge and what people expect from a top-notch event.

 

Our readers know what’s up. 

If there’s one thing we learned from looking through our most-read articles, it’s that our readers have a good eye for event trends. Being back to in-person events was the excitement of the year and finding event inspiration was top of our mind for our readers’. And most everyone is looking for all the new event technology to come. We couldn’t agree more! 

Thanks for all the reads–we are excited to bring you new content in 2023! 

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