Creating Private Forums for a Music Festival.

Having a forum for music festival fans is a great way increase engagement with existing and potential ticket buyers. Creating an official festival forum can help control the narrative, topics and discussions about the event. What are the benefits of a festival’s own forum and how can organisers get started.  

Whether festival organisers like it or not there can be a plethora of chat forums about their festival where content is not controlled, and moderation is relaxed. Some organisers actively particulate in these independent forums but it can be frustrating when the narrative cannot be controlled, and topics easily wander away to unrelated content. These independent forums can usually be found on platforms like Reddit and in Facebook Groups. 

Ready Made Platforms. 
The most well-known private forums are usually found in Facebook’s Groups and music festivals can have multiple groups associated with an event. It can be difficult for fans to determine which group is an official account against those set up by individuals. A festival organisation should create their own ‘Official Group’ to attract their followers to join. An excellent alternative to Facebook Groups is Discord, which is an App designed specifically for online communities and allows the creation of private chat rooms and channels for different topics or groups of fans. Discord can be integrated with other platforms, such as Twitch or YouTube, to engage with fans during live streams or events.

Content Control and Moderation.
A festival organisation that creates their own forums can control the topics of conversation and moderation can direct participants away from negative content. Any guidelines used for the festival's forum should reflect their own policies regarding what is and is not acceptable behaviour. This can include subjects that relate to diversity and discrimination for example and members can be banned from the group for behaviour deemed offensive or unacceptable. 

Forum Topics for Engagement. 
There is a huge range of topics that can create engagement with fans and this can include any of the following: 

•  Announcements about forthcoming line-ups, dates, ticket information and prices with offers and exclusive discounts for forum members.
• Asking for feedback on artist performances from previous events along with fans suggestions on who they would like to see at the festival.
• Survival tips from seasoned festival-goers covering preparation, what to pack, what to wear, festival etiquette and how to stay safe.
• Suggestions and chat for possible meetups and gatherings of like-minded festival-goers who are keen to make new festival friends.
• Discussions about previous events and the sharing of photos, videos, memories and stories.
• Feedback on festival site facilities, what was good and what needs to be improved.
• Sustainability initiatives from the organisers and suggestions form fans on how improvements can be made. 

The dedicated festival forum or group can be great platforms for increased engagement and also provides an opportunity to obtain valuable feedback on how the festival organisation is performing enabling them to take action to make improvements.

For festival organisers planning their events using a software management platform like Festival Pro gives them all the functionality they need manage every aspect of their event logistics. The guys who are responsible for this software have been in the front line of event management for many years and the features are built from that experience and are performance artists themselves. The Festival Pro platform is easy to use and has comprehensive features with specific modules for managing artists, contractors, venues/stages, vendors, volunteers, sponsors, guestlists, ticketing, cashless payments and contactless ordering.

Image by Ary setyobudi from Pixabay

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