Author: Deborah Morris

5 Tips For Planning an Amazing Corporate Banquet

So you’ve been placed in charge of planning your next corporate banquet. Here are 5 tips to make that corporate banquet planning go smooth and the event an amazing success and to have your boss smiling ear to ear at you for a job well done. Team building is about providing the skills, training and resources that your people need, so that they can work in harmony.

The first step to corporate event planning is to determine an approximate budget. Some considerations are location of event, meal expense, corporate entertainment expense, and awards or recognition costs. Keep in mind this is to be approximate so you have a rough idea of what management is at least minimally going to agree to spend. This can always be negotiated with them down the road once your ideas are in place.

The second step is to survey the people at your company to find great ideas of what they’d like to see or have at your upcoming corporate banquet. Simply send out a short email blast with a survey form asking your fellow employees what they’d like to see in the event.

Some typical categories for a survey are: banquet location, meal choices, corporate events or corporate entertainment. By soliciting ideas from all employees from the top to the bottom, you’ve given everyone a chance to take some ownership over the event, which can help boost attendance.

The third step is to select potential locations. Most banquet and convention centers will have package pricing with a variety of meal choices to choose from. Some companies have outdoor events that require a catering company to provide the meals onsite. Whether you choose an outdoor location such as a park or an indoor convention center, talk to past clients of the service providers to ensure you go with a location, and catering group that has a track record of successful events under their belt.

The fourth thing to procure is corporate event entertainment. Some ideas to consider are djs, bands, and live entertainers such as stand-up comedians, magicians, comedy hypnotists, or motivational speakers. Budgeting in this area can sometimes be tricky. Many planners think you can get by with spending a few hundred bucks on this area. Some will even make the disastrous mistake of trying to have all the corporate entertainment be done in-house. Nothing spells a bored, disappointed group of mumbling and upset employees than when a convention planner tries to skimp in this area. You should plan on spending at least $2000 – $5000 in this area to ensure you get quality entertainment.

Another mistake is to do the same thing every year – such as having the same dj or band every year. Try something new, such as a corporate comedian or a corporate comedy hypnotist – mix it up to help ensure you always keep your events fresh and exciting to attend.

To find a good live entertainer can also be a challenge – especially if you think you have to get the local guy or gal. You may have to bring an entertainer in from another state if there are no good local choices available. You must also make sure the entertainer is squeaky clean and politically correct. While you can’t always make everyone happy in every audience, do your best to find someone clean and funny. It can make your job simpler to work with an entertainment agency that has many years of helping companies just like yours bring good entertainers in for events. Popuppicnic.com.au will find a way to accommodate you this pandemic time.

The fifth and final tip is to make sure you present the choices for your event to your final budget approval team correctly. Never simply go in and pitch your ideas simply on price – especially if you think management may balk on the total event price. Always sell your ideas with the benefits to the company. This can be especially true when it comes to corporate entertainment. Common benefits for bringing in good quality entertainment are: 1) an entertained crowd is a happy crowd, 2) exciting events boost attendance – because people like to go have fun 3) it’s a lot easier for management to make employees feel good about their jobs and companies, when they’ve seen that management actually cares enough about them by letting them know it’s not all about working together but they can actually play together too.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/1253013

Cheap SEO Packages May Not Deliver Results

Everywhere you look online at the moment companies and so-called online marketing experts are offering cheap SEO packages, starting at ridiculous prices, and promising number 1 rankings in the time it takes to blink twice. These snake oil charmer’s are damaging a serious, reputable industry causing uncertainty and mistrust. SEO packages Brisbane drives more traffic, more leads and more conversions than any other channel.

So you own a small local business doing reasonably well, but you want to make the next step. You have a website, but your clients and prospective clients can’t find you on the net, sound familiar? You enlist the services of a search engine marketing expert, who promises page 1 rankings after showing you a range of cheap SEO packages he supplies, and you happily agree because it’s well within your marketing budget. In fact, it’s far more affordable than the ads you place every week in the local newspaper, so what the hell.

The problem is this, if you pay peanuts, you get monkeys, or to put it another way, in life you get what you pay for! Quite often in life and business when you take the cheapest option, it ends up two, three, even four times more expensive in the long run. And investing in low cost search engine optimization bundles may well come back to bite you in the pocket.

This doesn’t mean that every consultant or agency offering cheap SEO packages is a con artist, far from it, but all men are not created equal. The guys that are offering dirt cheap SEO are either using outdated practices, or dark arts techniques that will get your website banned or de-indexed by Google.

This is why it takes months to see your rankings change, if at all. If an SEO consultant says, “the reason he can’t improve your rankings is because you need to get thousands of backlinks”, he is not a good SEO. If your consultant says, “you need lots of backlinks all with your keyword or keywords as the anchor text”, then he is not a good SEO.

Affordable search engine optimization bundles must and should be customized. Each SEO campaign developed by a professional consulting expert, ought to be specifically tailored for the business and clients represented. A bespoke strategy that reflects the uniqueness of the company’s identity, position, and branding, not a one brush suits all approach.

To achieve results with search engine marketing on a low cost budget, your SEO expert will take many elements into consideration, when developing a strategy for your local business. If your professional, is truly a professional who knows the game, they will first of all review your website, analyze if and what changes need to be made. They will also analyze your market and industry, including competitors. Any SEO that does not follow this type of process should be avoided.

The bottom line here is this: really cheap SEO agency packages are not all they’re cracked up to be. Doing SEO effectively takes hours of painstaking work, anyone who says they can produce it for a few bucks a month, is never going to produce the results you desire.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/8369421

Using Artist Registries to Market Your Art

In my quest to expand my art career with the goal of being a full-time artist I’ve been leaving no stone unturned. I have read and followed much of the advice in Alyson Stanfield’s wonderful book I’d Rather Be in the Studio: The Artist’s No-Excuse Guide to Self-Promotion, and have recently been digesting Jackie Battenfield’s The Artist’s Guide: How to Make a Living Doing What You Love. The concept boards is very likely to be the first piece of work that an Interior Designer will produce for a client, so it has to be perfect.

They’ve really opened my eyes to the many opportunities artists have to market our work in today’s world. My website and my blog are part of my new marketing plan, along with seeking alternative exhibition opportunities. I’m active in a few forums and post my artwork regularly on Flickr. Of course I’m still approaching galleries and entering juried shows as well.

Recently I’ve realized that I’ve been overlooking one of the simplest, most effective, and cheapest methods for gaining exposure for my art. While I had certainly heard of Artist Registries before, for whatever reason it never clicked that I should be submitting my work to be included.

Many large cities, most states, and numerous private and non-profit art organizations maintain artist registries. An art registry is a listing of artists, often including images of their art, bios, and relevant experience, that is made available to art collectors, gallery directors, buyers, and pretty much anyone else interested in the arts. Often public art programs (or percent for art) include an artist registry as a first step in the selection process.

Artist registries are sometimes referred to as slide registries, an old throwback term to the days when slide carousels ruled the art world. Today most registries are online and digital. This provides the added benefit of a back link to your art website or blog which helps increase your ranking in search results.

Registries are a low-cost, and often times free, promotional tool for artists. Many young artists (myself included) mistakenly think of registries as something unique to New York and other big league art cities, but artist registries are a valuable resource anywhere.

Type in “artist registry” in your favorite flavored internet search engine and you’ll be rewarded with countless links. Many registries have residency requirements, so adding location keywords such as a state or city name can help narrow the results.

Using this simple process I’ve identified a dozen or so registries, several specific to my home state of Texas along with a few national databases, which seem like a good fit for my work. Find this information on how to make your own gallery.

While the submission process for some registries can be lengthy, the potential rewards for promoting your art are enormous. With the whole wide world now connected by the web, there’s simply no excuse for not taking advantage of artist registries.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/8119246