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What you need to do if you're organising an event

Assuming you’ve already booked the room through Estates, and booked catering, put together your speaker and guest list, set up booking and payments, organised parking, there’s still a couple of tasks left.

  • Add your event to the SETU events section
  • Book and plan photography
  • Share on SETU social media
  • Pre-event PR

    Enter details and an image on the submit an event form before you send out an all staff or share details of your booking engine link e.g. Eventbrite. This page can link to a Facebook page or an Eventbrite page for example, but it's important it's the primary link that is shared.

    All upcoming events should be listed on https://www.setu.ie/events section as far in advance as possible so people visiting the SETU Waterford website are impressed by the variety of events taking place, so staff and students can find out what's happening in the SETU Waterford community, and so we can share details on social media.

    What do I write for the event page?

    An event on the website should really give some context as to who it’s for – is it the public, staff, students, etc? You also need to give information about who’s organising it, why it’s taking place, and what it is about. All this information is what we call context and without context a person can't figure out if this is something they'd be interested in attending or are eligible to attend. You can ask us to update it for you when further details are confirmed.

    I have an Eventbrite page or a Facebook event why do we need to do anything else?

    Ideally the link we should be sharing with everyone is a https://www.setu.ie/ link so that people who visit the event page may browse around the SETU Waterford website while they're there - it can help student recruitment, getting other stories in the media, and raising awareness of the breadth of activity and good work being done at WIT.

    I have a poster. Can you use that? No, sorry posters are of no use for website events, news stories, press releases or social media. You need to type everything up into sentences and send that along with an image you have permission to use and doesn’t break copyright law. If you have a graphically designed social media card, the best size is 1200 width x 630 height for LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter.

    Request social media to be scheduled from main SETU  accounts - email Shaun Dowling , Social Media & Digital Advertising Officer, [email protected] . First you will need:

    • An event uploaded to the SETU Waterford website
    • Source a relevant image or logo to be included with the social media post
    • What we should post on social media and when

    What you can do

    If you have a SETU-connected social media account delegate a person from your team to do social media during the event, using relevant hashtags and tagging the SETU social media accounts.

    Use your network internally and externally to share this for you in order to get wider reach.


    Managing expectations

    In the main, it is best that we limit the issuing of press releases to media about conferences to those that are of interest to the general public rather than academic conferences. If there is an international conference drawing hundreds of people from around the world to Waterford that may be of interest to local media. If the topic from the keynote speaker from an academic conference is of wide public interest, we could release that on the day of the event.

    If there is likely to be media interest

    If you need PR to help fill seats, nominate a person available for radio interviews beforehand, and find out their availability in the run up to the event.

    Send details for a press release in a timely fashion (a few weeks ahead) so they have a chance of appearing in relevant press, in time for people to book register.

    Read more: go to the PR, news and stories section

    Managing expectations

    • Be aware that the media want recent and relevant material, not something weeks old.
    • If the conference is online, academic in nature, with no content of interest to the public it is possible that it will not be of interest to media.
    • If there is an international conference drawing hundreds of people from around the world to Waterford that may be of interest to local media.
    • If local people or high profile people are in attendance, some photos of them may be of interest to local media, with an extended caption.

    If there is likely to be media interest

    • In order to issue a timely release after an event, prepare your post-event press release in advance by requesting quotes and details from people involved so the press release is ready to go straight away
    • Have photos that meet the criteria required for regional newspapers as outlined above
    • If you have students from certain areas please include this detail e.g. John Doe, Kilmeadan, Waterford

    Book and plan photography

    • Contact Educational Services, Educational Services provide an internal photography service available to all departments for events or visiting lecturer

    Contact: George Goulding
    Phone: +353 (51) 30 2080 (ext. 2080 internally)
    Email: [email protected]

    Or contact the Marketing & Communications office if you require (and have budget for) a press photographer that issues photographs directly to national media picture desks.

      Photos required before an event

      • If you want coverage of your event beforehand on the SETU Waterford website or in the news we need an image to go with this
      • photo of speakers (high resolution for print newspapers)
      • launch type photo or photo of people involved
      • high quality stock image from the likes of Unsplash.com (web only, not for use with a press release to journalists)

      Photos required from a physical event

      • photo of speaker(s)
      • group photo of 4-5 of main people involved for SETU Waterford website and general PR
      • group photos (5 people max) by county/school of visiting students or by county/area from for SETU Waterford students/award winners. Individual photos of award winners for regional PR.
      • creative shot for national newspaper picture desks


      Supporting the photographer at an event

      Please delegate an individual who is the primary contact at the event for the photographer and will be there to help get people into photographs for a photographer if necessary, and who will help in getting the captions for photos.

      Captions required

      • Name, title and organisation for people from business and other organisations
      • Name, title, department/school for staff
      • Name, course, year, and where from (town/village and county) for students
      • Name, where from (town/village and county) for guests/visitors