6 Ways to Lift Event Attendance With Interactive Calendars

In our experience, the most common reason people give for not attending events is pretty simple: they didn’t know about it. Organizations that direct their audience to a basic Google calendar, scheduling system, or blog calendar plug-in, aren’t doing enough to cure the lack of awareness.

If you’re hosting great events, but seeing lackluster attendance, it might be time to brainstorm ways to address these common issues.  Eventbrite integrates with Localist, an interactive calendar technology helping amplify events and engage audiences before the event happens.  Here, Localist offers their calendaring expertise around the top six ways your online event calendar can fix the awareness issue and increase attendance at events.

1. Enable interest-based discovery. It is human nature to seek out ways to explore your interests with other like-minded people. So, when an online event calendar offers a way to sort and display events by interests, people are more likely to successfully find (and attend) the event of their choice. Plus, calendar users can subscribe to feeds and get alerts about events that match their interests. 
2. Increase SEO value.  People often rely on simple searches to find what they’re looking for online.  Dynamic content that is updated frequently, structured correctly, and features key search terms will have a higher search ranking.  Your event calendar can be the dynamic component of your website that lifts your search ranking and helps people discover your organization’s website.
3. Amplify to Facebook.  Online event calendars that integrate with social media sites, such as Facebook, allow event organizers to tap into event attendees’ social network, which can result in that wonderful viral sharing effect. Plus, activating the social component in event calendars can increase buzz around events. The more people are talking about an event, and sharing details with friends, the more likely they are to attend.
4. Feature trending events.  New technology allows for displaying events according to what’s popular, rather than what’s coming up next. By ditching the standard chronological display, your online event calendar can showcase the events that are generating the most discussion, have the most attendees, and are more likely to appeal to people popping over to your site to check out events. Put your best event forward.
5. Fix forgetfulness.  When someone says they’re going to attend an event, they often have the best intentions of going. And while some people have fantastic memories, the rest of us fall under the category of generally forgetful. A simple, automatic, email reminder to event attendees a day or two before the event can dramatically increase attendance, and reduce forehead-slapping forgetful moments. For example, when Localist users click “I’m Going,” they will automatically receive an email reminder.
6. Attract new members or attendees:  An event calendar gives prospective attendees a preview of what your organization has to offer.  At a glance, they can see the types of events your organization holds, from classes, to social events, to conferences.  If your organization has multiple groups or event categories, the calendar can also be an excellent place to increase attendee involvement across events.

Particularly given the short amount of time it takes to set up, an event calendar can easily become one of your most low-effort, high-value marketing channels.  Rather than paging through a long list, attendees can quickly find events that work with their schedules, and discover new activities of interest, increasing event engagement.

Interested in creating your own interactive event calendar?  Check out our easy integration to Localist to boost event attendance and awareness.

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