{"id":3453,"date":"2012-08-16T07:24:07","date_gmt":"2012-08-16T11:24:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/meetcontent.com\/?p=3453"},"modified":"2017-04-20T00:19:12","modified_gmt":"2017-04-20T04:19:12","slug":"a-content-first-approach-to-your-events-calendar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/meetcontent.com\/blog\/a-content-first-approach-to-your-events-calendar\/","title":{"rendered":"A Content-First Approach to Your Events Calendar"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Calendar\"
Treat your events calendar like a CMS.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Ah, the events calendar. One of the most ubiquitous components of a university website, and often one of the most confounding. From wrestling with feeds and technical configurations to simply getting people to use the darned thing, a calendar can be a headache. Time to schedule some Excedrin.<\/p>\n

With the right approach, though, that headache can become a valuable asset. An events calendar is not just a software application, after all\u2014it\u2019s a rich store of purposeful content that, when planned, structured and promoted appropriately, can be helpful, relevant and interesting to your users. But that means we can\u2019t treat it like an afterthought. We have to handle it with the same thoughtfulness that we give to any content platform. <\/p>\n

This is complicated by the fact that there are tons of vendors offering various calendar applications, and it may be hard to decide what best fits our needs. But just like a content management system, the more we couple our technical requirements with a firm sense of how the calendar should serve our communication goals, the more likely we are to arrive at a smarter decision.<\/p>\n

Getting the Most Out of Your Events Calendar<\/h2>\n

Make Sure Your Event Content Is Structured<\/h3>\n

One of the top goals of an events calendar is to promote what\u2019s happening on campus to specific audiences. But we can\u2019t count on those audiences always going to our calendar website to get that information. We may want to display event information on a mobile site or app, via digital signage, as a widget on other websites, or as a feed downloaded to their own personal calendars.<\/p>\n

We need to ensure that our calendar can \u201cchunk\u201d out (as Karen McGrane is fond of saying) the specific content fields as we need them and send them where they need to go. Which devices and contexts need a title? Blurb (versus the full event description)? Time? Date? Building? Room? Campus? Thumbnail? Larger image? If you face the challenge of using a room reservation system as a front-facing events calendar, this may be particularly difficult. So when choosing a calendar system, make sure it has the flexibility you need.<\/p>\n

Organize Your Calendar Content<\/h3>\n

The more you can organize, categorize and tag your events calendar content in a way that makes sense for your school and for your audience\u2014not by org chart, and not by whatever categories comes as default\u2014the more usable the content will be and the more appropriately you can place feeds and widgets across your various digital properties<\/p>\n

In the case of tags, be sure you are enforcing consistency either at the submission level or the moderation level. (After all, you don\u2019t want both \u201creunion2013\u201d and \u201creunion-2013\u201d floating around, do you?)<\/p>\n

Promote The Heck Out of It<\/h3>\n

Great content hidden in a dark closet is great content that no one can find or use. Find smart ways to promote your events calendar both online and off. In a blog post from earlier this year, one calendar vendor, Localist, shared some great ideas for spreading awareness of your calendar<\/a>, including mentions of the calendar in material provided to freshmen, dining hall table tents and empowering student group leaders as contributors.<\/p>\n

You also want to make sure you are appropriately promoting your calendar across your website\u2014for example, your student life page could have a sidebar widget pulling events tagged or categorized around the same topic, or even just a snazzy callout directing students to the calendar to learn what\u2019s happening on campus. And a \u201cFeatured Events\u201d category may be the perfect solution for highlighting top-tier events on your homepage or news site.<\/p>\n

Empower and Support Calendar Users<\/h3>\n

In planning for our calendar\u2019s success, we can\u2019t ignore the system\u2019s most critical component\u2014the people. The gap between your calendar and people on campus is a wide one to bridge, in multiple respects\u2014one, getting event organizers to share their events with a central-level calendar, and two, getting our audiences to reference the calendar to see what\u2019s going on. <\/p>\n

\n
The gap between your calendar and people on campus is a wide one to bridge, in multiple respects.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

When thinking of the target audiences for our calendar content, we need to remind ourselves of the need to plan content that both serves institutional goals and users\u2019 needs. So, what do they need? How do they need it? This should guide how we source content and what functionality we build into the calendar. Can we measure what types of event content is most popular, and what how can that information help us better promote campus events?<\/p>\n

We can\u2019t forget that our users also include those submitting events to the calendar. Is the event submission interface intuitive? Clunky? Are all the fields necessary, or are any necessary fields missing? Are stylistic considerations or other content requirements explained well? Test the form with a select group and make adjustments as needed. Don\u2019t let a crappy form experience be a barrier to your calendar\u2019s success. On the other end of the submission form, make sure there is an established workflow around moderation, editing and approval of event submissions, whether it’s done by an intern or a staffer.<\/p>\n

How do we encourage those submissions in the first place? One approach we used at Tufts was to remind individuals that only events that had been added to the calendar were eligible to be featured on the homepage, digital signage, news site homepage and other high-visibility placements, because the events areas were powered by a feed from the calendar.<\/p>\n

Events on the Homepage<\/h3>\n

According to a scientific study, 100 percent of higher ed homepages feature an events feed. Okay, not really, but it\u2019s probably close to that. With visions of the infamous XKCD cartoon<\/a> dancing in our heads, let\u2019s consider this more closely.<\/p>\n

Our homepage should not be an all-things-to-all-people dumping ground for information and links. It should be strategic and purpose-driven, curating meaningful content for the audience(s) we know to be frequenting that doorstep. That may mean not just showing the next three upcoming events, but the next three events of a particular high-profile nature, or in a specific category. <\/p>\n

Ask yourself: \u201cDoes this content help support our communication goals for this page?\u201d If you\u2019re trying to convey a vibrant, dynamic campus life, does showing an event taking place three weeks from now support that intent or belie it?<\/p>\n

Highlight Event Coverage<\/h3>\n

As we\u2019ve written about before, there are lots of ways to offer live coverage of an event to your audience, from live streaming video to live-tweeting. If you plan on live-streaming an event or promoting a hashtag for use by attendees, consider incorporating those into your event listings. Remember: off-campus audiences such as alumni and prospective students may be perusing your event listings, and they may welcome opportunities to be a part of on-campus events. <\/p>\n

If you raise this idea, someone may protest, \u201cWe can\u2019t do that! No one on campus will come\u201d or \u201cWe don\u2019t want everyone tweeting and not paying attention to the event.\u201d We need to educate stakeholders about our various audiences and the different ways they experience events.<\/p>\n

Make Your Events Social<\/h3>\n

From a small departmental lecture to a VIP speaker, all event organizers crave attendees. Your calendar should make it easy for people to share events to Facebook and Twitter, as well as email or text them to friends and add them to their own personal calendars. But we should also incorporate event calendar content into our social media content calendars, as appropriate. What more, we could link to coverage of select past events (Storify recaps, photo galleries, etc.) from within our calendar site.<\/p>\n

While many of us enjoy the benefit of checking into concerts and movies at certain Foursquare venues, this ability is not yet available to all venue managers. (It will be really cool when we can add events to our campus concert halls and theatres.) In the meantime, though, I would advise against creating event-specific Foursquare listings (e.g. \u201cCollege Theatre Company presents \u2018Into the Woods\u2019\u201d), because in the long run that will simply litter the location database. The one exception may be major, annually recurring events such as Commencement.<\/p>\n

How do you manage your event calendar content?<\/p>\n

Photo by photosteve101<\/a> \/ Flickr Creative Commons<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ah, the events calendar. One of the most ubiquitous components of a university website, and often one of the most confounding. From wrestling with feeds and technical configurations to simply getting people to use the darned thing, a calendar can be a headache. Time to schedule some Excedrin. 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