Posters, social media posts and videos play an important role in promoting and marketing your event. These tools are free and easy to use for creatives of all levels. 

• CANVA – An easy to use online tool with drag-and-drop features and professional layouts to design consistently stunning graphics and marketing assets, like posters, invitations, website or social media banners.
• POSTER MY WALL – Online tool allowing anyone to create stunning posters, graphics and videos without requiring any artistic skills.
• KAPWING – Online desktop video editing tool containing heaps of features to make professional video content. And it’s easy to use!

Whether you’re an established creative or just starting your business, a website is the key to help you grow digitally. It’s such an important tool nowadays as it builds credibility, it creates an online presence and shows insight into your audience or users. With a website, you can also sell your products or artwork online, expanding your reach and income.

Here are some website builders for you:

• WORDPRESS – The world’s most popular website builder. Create any kind of website without any coding or manuals, with thousands of easy‑to‑install add‑ons. Collect leads, create contact forms, create subscriptions, automatically backup your site, and a whole lot more.
• WIX.COM – Design and build your own high-quality website, whether you’re promoting your business, showcasing your work, opening your store or starting a blog, you can do it all with the Wix website builder and customise your site, your way!
• SHOPIFY – Create an ecommerce website backed by powerful tools that help you find customers, drive sales, and manage your day-to-day. Turn your retail store into an online store and keep serving customers using one platform to sell products to anyone, anywhere.
• SQAURESPACE – Select from a range of industry-leading website templates, designer fonts, and colour palettes that best fit your personal style and professional needs. Sell anything, explore which tools you want to add and market your business. Stand out in every inbox and social feed with on-brand email campaigns and social tools that make it easy to retain customers and grow your audience.

Events have the unique ability to unite people through shared goals and experiences and can create a major buzz. They can enhance the quality of life and provide economic benefits to a town through visitors coming from outside the area and spending money in our cafes, motels and shops.

Planning an event? Familiarise yourself with the ins and outs of organising and running an event in Northland.

Events big or small bring people together for various reasons, to support and cheer on a sports team, fundraising, for celebrations, to change a town’s city or image and to promote a company’s product or service.  Regardless of size or event type, events have certain factors in common, they all require planning, a lot of commitment, a wide range of skills, energy and enthusiasm.

Here is some useful information for event management and promotion:

• WDC Events Strategy – The Whangārei Events Strategy 2019-2024 provides a five-year framework for how Council can best support Whangārei’s growing events sector.
•  EVENTBRITE – Create a professional, seamless experience for your attendees at every stage of your online or in-person event. Reach new customers, drive demand, and build relationships with a powerful, built-in marketing and communication tools.
• HUMANITIX -An event ticketing service which is a registered charity, not a business. Booking fees cover costs and everything else goes towards education projects. This platform is easy to use and the New Zealand based team is ready to talk if you require assistance. You can customise your event’s unique brand look and feel with Canva design tools in the event builder and add merchandise to your tickets.
• EVENTFINDA – An online cultural events calendar that focuses on what’s on around New Zealand. Events are organised into the categories to help you find what you’re looking for and you are able to list your own events for FREE – perfect for event promoters and marketing managers. Eventfinda supplies event information to some of New Zealand’s biggest and best media and lifestyle sites, including the NZ Herald, Yahoo!, Stuff, Tourism Auckland, Wellington Tourism, TimeOut magazine, and many others.
• FACEBOOK EVENTS – Organise and respond to gatherings in the real world with people on Facebook. It is a calendar-based resource which can be used to notify users of upcoming occasions. Events can be created by anyone, and can be open to anyone or private.

Here is a list of local and national media providers of arts, culture, heritage and general interest:

• THE BIG IDEA – An online hub, providing daily news updates, the latest jobs and opportunities, events as well as ideas and inspiration from across the creative industries to help individuals and organisations create their own success. With over 50,000 members; 1.4 million page views, over 35,000 social media followers and 1.8 million email newsletters sent each year, they are the largest, online resource for the arts in New Zealand.
•  PLAYMARKET – An annual publication about theatre in Aotearoa. Subscribers are playwrights, producers, actors, directors, theatres and schools nationwide. 1500 copies are distributed, 300 of which are overseas.
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