Recently, a co-worker came to me and said, “Are you going to attend this?” She had found an event nearby that I hadn’t heard about that was closely aligned with my interests and career goals. Despite consuming an immense amount of information online, I hadn’t been to any websites that promoted the event, and they hadn’t advertised on any sites that I frequent. I almost missed a cool opportunity to network with like-minded people because of two things: lack of advertising and an assumption of knowledge.

My co-worker wasn’t going to tell me about the event. She assumed I had already known all about it and was trying to figure out if she should attend. If she hadn’t asked me, I never would have heard about the event. So my first tip to those out there attending or marketing an event, always assume no one else has any knowledge of it. Just because you see advertising for it everywhere, you can’t assume that your colleagues, friends or family are all seeing the same things both online and offline.

Secondly, if you are running an event, placing advertising regarding a digitally focused event in a local newspaper or just on your own website are not enough to get it in front of industry experts, potential sponsors, and attendees. You might like to think we all frequent your sites, but that isn’t the case, so please take the time to push out some more widespread publicity.

People always joke about the Internet being a series of tubes, but our usage of the Internet can be just as isolated and walled as a tube, with only one direction and no deviating path. I’m lucky to have heard about a few events and conferences in my area thanks to friends and some well placed advertising.

There are far too many marketing, blogging, and technology events in the area I live, but I miss out on most of them because I only hear about them after the event has happened. Unless you are selling out, please double check that you’ve done all you can to promote your event online.