Events pages are a great way of advertising your events, arming your community with all the information they need to choose the right events for them, plan ahead, register and attend. But as a page type they are frequently under-utilised to their full potential, and with a little creativity your events pages can not only boost engagement, but also improve your events in and of themselves.

Rather than treating your event pages as merely channels to communicate and market your events, think of them as part of the event. For instance, building out your event pages with a few more tools to incorporate your event’s branding, and adding a participation tool or two can transform your event pages and help integrate them into your event.

Here’s an example. Add a quick poll to your event page asking, for instance, what people are looking forward to discussing or asking about at the event, or what they want to get out of the session - networking, skills, ideas etc.

This immediately has the potential to enrich your event twofold: firstly, you’re conducting research on what your audience is most interested in, allowing you to tailor your event accordingly; and secondly you have something interactive that you can bring up at your event, showing your audience how everyone reacted to this question and discussing the results, engaging your audience and closing the loop on the engagement exercise at the same time.

Here’s another example. If you’re holding a large scale event, you may want to give prospective attendees the opportunity to ask questions about the event - about the content, logistics, presenters; there’s all kinds of things people need to know in the lead up to big events. Using the Question and Answer tool, you can set up a one-stop-shop for Q&A, demonstrating transparency, answering burning questions and preventing the need to answer the same question over and over again, as can be the case if you just take questions by email.

Another way the Question and Answer tool can be used on event pages is to source questions for an expert panel or speakers in the lead up to an event. Many events with speakers or panels take questions online, say through Twitter. Why not use your platform to collect these questions? The added bonus of the Question and Answer tool is that you can collect these questions in advance, then post the answers afterwards for a record of the event.

Finally, why not get your community involved before, during and after your event by placing a Conversation tool on your event page, allowing you to host threaded discussions in the lead up to the event (why not ask a question to provoke discussion, such as which areas people are most looking forward to discussing or asking questions about?), capture people’s reactions during the event (this is particularly useful for online events right now, and the Conversation tool’s real time comment loading makes this an even better experience), and generate feedback and discussion of the event afterwards.

Here's an example of a page with all three tools combined: