The attendance rate of the Facebook attendance rate

By Luke Lipsky----It's a roughly rough estimate. It's a few clicks away from putting your party invitation on everyone's virtual doorstep and the cheapest and fasted method of getting the word out for your event. But how reliable is it? And when is a Facebook event not the right idea for invitations?

If a Facebook event were to be used for a wedding, there could either be hundreds of empty seats (and dollars) left unused, or not nearly enough for everyone. For your neighborhood's monopoly night it might be the the perfect method, but you might end up with the crazy cat lady from down the street that creeps everyone out. Hopefully this will clear some things up and help guide your online event planning. Before you log in, figure out where your event falls using this guide:

• Are you relying on the "people attending" as your only telling of who shows up?
• As you may already know, people don't use their Facebook calendar as their primary agenda, and can forget or change their plans without getting it through to you. When your expectations are high, this can get you into a lot of trouble. By making your page more serious, detailed and legitimate, your invites will show you the same respect in return and you'll have a more accurate calculation.
• In many cases, the "maybe attending" option is in the majority. The higher the number, the more uncertain you are. This might be an indicator that a Facebook event might be good for PR, but not effective at getting an attendance estimate.

• How many (minimum) do you want to attend?
• If you're shooting low, you definitely want to keep the event private. That way there's no posting on others walls when they RSVP. On smaller, Facebook-private events, people will be more likely to give you the real deal of if they are definitely coming or not, and more likely to post a wall response explaining their situation. The exclusivity of the event will also be a plus for your attendance rate-- people won't be worrying about the surprise crash from an ex-boyfriend and you won't have to worry about strangers popping up out of nowhere. 
• If it's high number, you better be careful. Especially if you're throwing out a big net just to see what happens. You can really lose some credibility if your basically spamming your 1,000+ friends to a dull page with a one-sentence description and a clip-art logo of a beer for the event picture. The who, what, where, when, and why is going to have to be a lot more convincing, and will definitely be reinforced with links to associated parties, entertainers and others involved. 
• You also need to make sure the right audience is getting your invite, and not people you know aren't going to be interested. Facebook now has a button to "Always ignore invites from X" and that first irrelevant invite you send someone might be the last they ever see from you.
• How many (maximum) do you want to attend?
• Again, throwing out a big net gets complicated but pays off when done right. Make your page look as professional and interactive as you can, so that invites can get the whole story up front. Write a detailed description that paints a picture of what you want the event to look like. Incorporate customized tabs that feature different aspects of the event and describe multiple benefits of attending on each page. If you're hosting a pot-luck use tabs for different types of foods that you think would fit well. 
• Include good pictures. If it's an annual event, definitely include pictures from previous years. The discussion on photos will start up and create hype to get the ball rolling. 
• If you don't want more than just a few people, you have the privilege of keeping things simple. Just make certain that it's posted as a private event. With lower numbers, your responses will be far more accurate than a larger, public event and people better come up with a good reason as to why they pulled a no-show the next time you see them in person!

After your event, post a heart-felt genuine thank you on the event page's wall. Include pictures and talk about some of your favorite moments if you can include everyone. For smaller events, it's even nicer if you can write a personal Facebook message Thank-you.

Upon conclusion, try and recap and calculate how many people said they showed up, and actually did. If you're within 90%, you've done a great job. Then take a look at the maybe's. Usually, people might not want to decline right away, and just forget about it. So if your maybe's actually remembered and came out to your event, you've done a great job marketing the benefits to them and they'll be looking forward to marking "attending" next time.