Facebook Event Setup Issues for Business Pages

[cookingwithlove]

Facebook keeps changing things and I am getting really frustrated. I have a business page. I set up events for my host and then I invite them via their email address. Well, I cannot seem to do this anymore. I just get an error message. Has this changed? I do not want to "friend" everyone in order to set up their FB event.

 

[ChefBeckyD]

Friending them seems to be the only way to do it now that I've found. And now, we can't see who has declined. Even you as the administrator can't see it - unless there's some little secret I haven't found yet.

I've just been giving my hosts the words to use, and letting them create the event themselves. If they want to friend me and invite me, that's fine, but I don't make them do that. It seems to be working. Using my wording, and their event, my attendance at shows has been great, and it's mostly been through FB event invites. My show tomorrow is expecting 15-17 - from FB, and my last two shows were the same. One was $800 and one was $1100.

I've pretty much stopped mailing out invites - and I did it for YEARS. But, I realized that getting an invite list from hosts was stressing me out, and causing a ton of extra work, so now I just host coach them to invite as many ways as they can. Word of Mouth, phone calls, passing out postcards, FB invite...and if they would like, I can also mail invitations for them. I get 1-2 per month now who take me up on the address list, and I can't say that their attendance or sales is really any better than my other shows.


Okay - that went way off topic. Sorry!

 

[Admin Greg]

Unfortunately, Facebook has recently made changes to their events feature and it is no longer possible to invite people via email. You can only invite people who are already friends with you on Facebook or who have liked your page.One workaround for this is to create a private event and add the people you want to invite as co-hosts. This will allow them to invite their own friends to the event. Another option is to share the event on your page and ask people to RSVP in the comments section.It's unclear why Facebook made this change, but it is possible that they are trying to limit spam invitations and encourage more organic interactions between friends and pages.Hopefully, Facebook will address this issue in the future and make it easier for businesses to invite people to their events. In the meantime, you may need to explore alternative methods of promoting your events, such as through email marketing or other social media platforms.