Facebook Event RSVPs creating confusion with online registration

[Colleen Frost]

Like many schools, we build online event registration forms on our Web site for all paid events and most non-paid alumni events. This allows us to track attendance, order food, create name tags, etc.

Recently we've run into some challenges due to volunteers posting events on Facebook, which automatically include the "Do you plan to attend - yes, no, maybe" radio button series. We're finding that many people "RSVP" via Facebook but don't register on our Web site. Has anyone else run into this problem and how did you address it?

We're thinking of reaching out to volunteers and ask them to be clear that the Facebook RSVP only signifies intent and that people must also visit our site to properly register, but since this is a grassroots effort it's very hard to even track all the duplicate RSVP instances. We don't want to squelch the social media side of things either, just hope to find a more efficient solution.

Thanks in advance for your suggestions.

[DJ Turner]

We have not yet run into this, but it is a concern of mine as well. I have encouraged those in our community who create events on Facebook to include the registration link on the Facebook event page, and so far we have had great success with that. We are a pretty small school, though, and most of our events are created by employees, so it's a little bit easier for us to control.

I would think that reaching out to volunteers and approaching it as a "partnership" in the process (instead of command from above) will not only generate positive results in volunteer cooperation with the request, but might also help establish open communications between you and these volunteers for other efforts.

[Toby Keeping]

This may not be specifically related to your challenge, but it might help you in looking for options.

We have a Facebook application allows a school to promote events created in our Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tool. What this does is allow people to RSVP to events in Facebook, but the registration for the event takes place inside the CRM. So, an event can be promoted in Facebook, anywhere on the .edu site, or within the personalized portal and all the registrations are recorded inside a single database (CRM). It will also generate any follow information that you want, and push/pull it to the medium of your readers' choice. From the CRM, you can easily create a custom report to do the nametags, etc.

Let me know if you would like more info.