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We’ve learned a lot about what makes a student respond to a school’s adoption of a unified calendar. Below are some best practices to get your students more engaged around events on campus.
Put a Localist widget on your school’s homepage
Many schools tuck their calendar behind a single “Events Calendar” link on their homepage, requiring that the user click that link exclusively to access the calendar. If a school includes a Localist widget on their homepage, the user is immediately brought up to speed on the trending events happening that day, and provides additional avenues to access the calendar.
Actively send newsletters, leaving students opted-in by default
Many of our partners consistently send out weekly “upcoming events” newsletters, and our student surveys from each have yielded an overwhelmingly positive response. On average, schools that regularly send newsletters are seeing a 10% click-through rate, which is above and beyond typical newsletter engagement of less than 1%.
Use Localist as your unified events calendar
One of the biggest issues universities face when it comes to managing events is that of decentralized calendars. Often, each department in a school has their own calendar; if a staff member in one department wants to share an event they’re organizing to the entire student population, it involves posting the event in several places and sending emails, without any guarantee of who exactly is seeing the event. With a unified calendar like Localist, there’s a single place to find all events happening at any one time, resulting in a more efficient, less confusing workflow.
Actively encourage students to connect their Facebook accounts to Localist
These days, every student is on Facebook. That’s why Localist has advanced tie-ins with it to keep students involved with your school’s events no matter where they are. Our integration allows students to send school events to Facebook, bring the attendee lists of Facebook events into Localist, share event details on their Facebook wall and more.
Create event groups to segment content
Localist’s powerful curation abilities allow your editors to slice and dice content into intuitive presentations. Show individual listings of academic, sports, and social events to highlight segments of events your users look for most often.
Add Foursquare profiles for your on-campus venues and link them in Localist
While Foursquare is a relatively new phenomenon, it’s already being used by many students on college campuses. A great way to keep students engaged is to create Foursquare profiles for all the major venues on your campus. Students can “Check In” and leave tips, which Localist can display on its venue profiles automatically. A great way to centralize information from several platforms.
Encourage student groups to use Localist as their event calendar, with widgets to post on their pages
Many student groups have their own websites, but at the cost of managing a decentralized calendar. Students have to visit the websites of each group to get a good idea of what’s happening. With Localist, groups can easily add their events, ensuring adequate reach, while simultaneously listing their events on the group’s respective website through a Localist widget. It’s the best of both worlds.
Give prizes to students who mark themselves as “Going” on Localist
A little healthy competition never hurts. Keep users coming back by offering incentives to engage.
Post events on Facebook and link them
Our tight integration with Facebook Events allows your administrators to link an event on Facebook to its respective event listing on Localist. This allows for a seamless integration between the two services, presenting more opportunities for information sharing.
Encourage usage on the go
Recommend that students and staff visit your school’s calendar URL on their smart-phones while walking around campus. They’ll be served with a mobile-optimized version of Localist that has all the features and functionality of the regular platform.
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