Where to promote it, in order of what works

Every channel guide is written for events with a hundred seats and a budget. For a curated dinner the ranking is almost inverted, because you don't need reach, you need twelve specific people.

Here is the order that actually works, best first.

1. Your own messages, one at a time

Direct, individual, named. The highest-converting channel by a distance and the only one that scales down to the size of your event.

Budget twenty minutes. Ten messages that each say why that person should come will fill most of a table.

2. A co-host's list

Someone else's dedicated email to the right audience outperforms anything you can post. See the piece on borrowing an audience, this is why it's worth the effort of arranging.

3. Your email list, if it's real

A small list of people who asked to hear from you beats a large social following. One clear email, one reminder in the final week.

If your list is bought, imported, or dormant for a year, skip it. You'll get unsubscribes and no attendance.

4. LinkedIn, written as a piece rather than a poster

The announcement post does little. A post that makes an argument and mentions the event at the end does considerably more, because it earns its way into feeds rather than asking to be in them.

Post from your own profile, not a company page. The company page has worse distribution and reads as an advert.

5. The event platform's own discovery

Luma and Eventbrite both surface events to people browsing locally. This is genuinely free traffic and occasionally brings someone excellent, but it is not controllable and it brings people who collect events. Turn approvals on if you use it.

6. Communities and group chats, carefully

The Slack groups and WhatsApp threads your guests are already in. High intent, high annoyance risk. One message, in the channel where it belongs, from a member who actually participates. If you've never posted in there before, don't start with your own event.

7. Paid

Last, and usually not at all. Paid works when you need volume and have a wide audience. A curated dinner is the opposite problem. Money spent here would fill more seats spent on a better venue.

The pattern

Everything near the top of this list has to be done by hand, one guest at a time. Everything near the bottom reaches a lot of people who were never going to come.

That's not an accident. For a room of twelve, effort per guest is the strategy, and the reason most events underfill is that they started at number four.