Sporting events are one of the best ways to bring together athletes and spectators alike for a day of light-hearted entertainment. A good endurance event should not only provide a safe, appropriate venue for the participants but engaging activities for the spectators to engage in as well. Here is five ways to ensure the spectators of your next sporting event enjoy an experience they won't forget.

Organizing a sporting event or tournament can be a great way to bring people together to enjoy some competition, but the logistics can become overwhelming pretty quickly. We spoke with industry expert Ruth Nicholson founder of GO!, who has worked in youth and semi-professional sports, particularly soccer, for more than 30 years to bring her expertise to this article. In order to ensure you're planning for success make sure you avoid these 4 common pitfalls when organizing your next sports tournament.

Every year, thousands of attendees from all over the world come to the Social Media Examiner's three-day mega-conference, Social Media Marketing World (SMMW). But the event had become so popular, event staff found, old methods of volunteer management were no longer as effective. Today the SMMW conference volunteer program is more connected, efficient, and focused than ever. Read on to discover why the Social Media Examiner invests in their conference's volunteer program each year with InitLive.

Conferences are some of the best places to meet like-minded colleagues within the same industry or creative individuals who share similar interests. In an increasingly interconnected world where relationship is key for business, conferences are a must-have for proper networking. And the company that organizes the conference will have the most prestige and visibility at the event.

But, you already know all that. You also know that planning a conference can be tricky— how do you create a dream conference that will go smoothly and benefit you, the organizer, and all attendees? Try these five tips:

There are many moving parts that go into planning a sports tournament, from the perfect venue to ensuring you have correct number of water stations. Every detail that goes into planning a sporting tournaments will help ensure that you hit your sporting event out of the park  Here are a few tips to consider as your start planning your next sports tournament.

So you are going to hold a sporting event?  Running, swimming, biking, climbing, baseball, football, soccer...whatever your event, chances are there are Facebook users out there who want to know about it.  Statista reports, "As of the first quarter of 2019 Facebook had over 2.38 billion monthly users worldwide." That number represents a great reason to utilize Facebook to create your promotion plan. Below are a few more:

In 2019, LinkedIn has 630 million users, with 303 million monthly active users. In the USA alone, there are 177 million LinkedIn users. When it comes to channel B2B marketing, LinkedIn is the number 1 platform for content distribution. Now, of the 630 million users, only 3 million share their content weekly.

If you're an event planner, you know how important it is to keep in direct contact with your volunteers -- and how much time you lose when you don't. According to a recent case study, the Indy Premier Soccer club tournament event recently saved 88% of the time it usually took to successfully manage volunteers during its major fundraiser, the IPSC Annual Halloween Classic. Read on to see how InitLive made the soccer club's annual fundraising tournament a smashing success.

You probably know that Twitter was the first to use hashtags to promote a topic or event. And now, they're being used throughout all the major social media channels by companies and individuals alike to promote special events. Below you'll find our ultimate guide to promoting your festival event hashtag. 

Conferences are some of the best places to meet like-minded colleagues within the same industry or creative individuals who share similar interests. In an increasingly interconnected world where relationship is key for business, conferences are a must-have for proper networking. And the company that organizes the conference will have the most prestige and visibility at the event.

But, you already know all that. You also know that planning a conference can be tricky— how do you create a dream conference that will go smoothly and benefit you, the organizer, and all attendees? Try these tips:

We've all heard of the Academy of Country Music Awards Weekend -- but not everyone knows that it's run primarily by volunteers. For its April 2019 event, a small ACM events management team, comprised of 75 volunteers and about 25 staff, supervisors, and administrators, covered over 415 shifts and worked 2000 to produce one of its most successful events ever. Their secret? ACM event managers used the mobile event app InitLive to create a polished volunteer management program. 

Most volunteers aren't in it for the recognition; they just want to help. Volunteering can be a thankless role (which is exactly why you should make your volunteers feel appreciated). The tasks that volunteers commonly handle may seem minor, but the assistance of volunteers is vital to any event. 

You've planned your festival to the last detail: every seat's arranged, every ticket booked, each artist knows their start time and every goody bag is filled, tissue paper-fluffed and labeled. And your volunteers are signed in, assigned and accounted for.

Adopted from push and pull marketing, push and pull methods of recruitment and scheduling are two very different but valid ways of going about managing your volunteer teams for your event. Read on to learn more about push versus pull approaches to volunteer recruitment and scheduling. 

How do you manage over 95 staff members, over 415 shifts, and over 2000 working hours for an event? Sheri Piecuch Vyfvinkel, Volunteer Manager for the Academy of Country Music, had this very question for organizing the ACM Awards in 2019. Difficulties in communication had frequently caused her stress; she simply had too much to manage for what tools she had. She described her situation as "a puzzle that the pieces keep moving" - but somehow, she managed to improve communications for the 2019 ACM Awards. How?

Using a spreadsheet software program can serve its purpose in some capacities, but managing and storing your volunteer data is not one of them! Below we'll discuss the inherent risks of using spreadsheets to store your volunteer data. 

You plan for months for the big day. But the real payoff comes afterwards, when your event receives rave reviews, word of your successful event spreads, and everyone looks forward to next year. But whether or not your event gets a positive reputation depends on your volunteers. If you have any doubts, here are five ways volunteers have a direct impact on your event's reputation: 

If you're planning a tournament, you know that winging the prep just doesn't work. Rather than waiting to see who shows up before designating duties, it's important to assign and schedule all volunteers beforehand so that nothing is left undone. To help you out, we've made a list of twelve essential volunteer roles for your next sporting related tournament. 

No matter how much you prepare for your event, the unexpected always happens. But by providing safety procedures, well-trained volunteers, emergency planning, and direct communication, you'll easily reduce risk of an emergency. So, here are five ways to reduce risk at your event using volunteers:

Any organizer knows how important it is to keep volunteer availabilities updated. Because of the role the volunteer workforce plays in calculating a business's ROI, it's essential to keep up with schedules and other important volunteer information every step of the way. Read on to find out why collecting availability from your volunteers is crucial for success.

Your event is all set. The vendors are on time, and the public will be arriving in just a few hours. Suddenly a horrifying thought pierces your brain: What if the volunteers don't show up? Well, if you've made all the key information available to your volunteers, you have nothing to worry about. Here are five things volunteers need on the day of the event so that they can get settled quickly:

Planning an event is an incredibly complicated process that involves making hundreds or even thousands of decisions, each of which has to be right if you don’t want to risk your event falling apart.

However, even the best event management companies know that it’s impossible to completely eliminate risk – the best you can do is get in front of any potential disasters and make sure that they don’t happen.

But how to reduce the risks of your event falling apart?

Even with our busy, digitally-driven lives, we still find the time to volunteer, according to The Corporation for National Community Service: more than a quarter of Americans, nearly 63 million people, give their time to a cause. Worldwide, "voluntourism" is a $173 billion industry, with travellers sometimes paying their own travel and accommodation expenses and spending weeks or months working at events or on humanitarian projects during their vacation time. When eager new volunteers arrive, ready to help, your organization needs a volunteer handbook that meets them halfway with essential information they need.

Today's volunteers look for great experiences and meaningful engagement when they give away their time. So make it clear from the moment you launch your online recruiting campaigns that those are precisely the benefits your volunteers will find. Below we've provided seven specific ways to persuade people to volunteer for your event. And if you follow even some of these suggestions, you'll be able to attract a top-notch pool of highly motivated and dedicated volunteers.