Hi there.. I am excited about my new Ning platform for my network but have a question about the events as to how others work around this. I want to also have some functionality for guests to register for my events that I run but the Ning events page wants to make people join the network in order to attend events. I don't want this necessarily. How do others manage this? Thanks for any feedback!
I am getting ready to launch my site next week so any help is appreciated. the site right now is at peopleinconnection.ning.com
Marie
Replies
Marie, ning is a social network, so people have to be members in order to post any kind of content in it. This is a good idea, to prevent random spamming of your site by all kinds of kooks online.
To accomplish what you are asking, I'd think you'd have to create an events calendar somewhere else online, not connected to ning. Then you could allow 'non-member' online people to 'register' in that calendar, and you could simply place a LINK to that calendar on your ning site, sending people to it as you like. This requires that you search for and set up an events calendar with registration ability on your own and set it up somewhere else off your ning site.
Keep in mind when you allow online people to register/input for something without joining a site via a member application, you are opening yourself to possible spammers, trolls, and hackers.
thank you George!
Hi Marie, I checked out your site and like the concept a lot. Nice job. George has some excellent points on this.
Looks to me like you are going ahead with the Google calendaring application as a third party integration via a button link. That's not too bad, although will still end up requiring the user to sign in to Google - somewhat of an assumption on their tools / familiarity - and redundant in the sense of possibly being an additional step for your Ning members.
My workaround for this would be to develop a slight promotional campaign across various social channels - LinkedIn and Twitter perhaps for your theme, and Google I guess - but not necessarily to oblige toward any one RSVP. Do the multi-channel promotion and have them RSVP through a direct correspondence.
Now, each channel probably has some manner of event RSVP tool, or public and private messaging tool, and so on. Technically, there are a lot of possibilities out there, but as you can see there is going to be a catch one way or another. To keep things simple and uncomplicated, I personally would not use any of those tools, instead posting some contact email in each of the promotional spots as the RSVP link.
If you are doing a professional in person networking event, and you are looking at a reasonably small group of people say 20 to 30, it's worth suggesting RSVP through direct contact as email addresses get exchanged, updates can be sent out, early networking and side conversations can occur to help the event be an even better success. T
This might not be the native preference for some power users of certain applications, but generally speaking, a mature professional audience could easily appreciate it. You can add value by offering a personal note with the event invitation, emailing that out with the reply to RSVP, incorporating some agenda info, parking info, menu info, and so on.
Hope that was helpful.
Best, Anthony
Yes, thank you Anthony!