How to simplify your event management
Did you know only 48.9% of urban and rural residents feel a strong sense of belonging to their local community?*
This number is surprisingly low, in light of the fact that municipalities offer engaging events throughout the year to support citizen engagement.
Perhaps it comes down to how municipalities promote their events. Sometimes with online promotion, information can get lost in a sea of municipal news or be miscommunicated across different channels. When residents become confused or frustrated with incorrect information, they tend to lose interest.
If your administrative staff had a better way of promoting content online, your municipality could make information more accessible and foster in your residents a deeper sense of belonging. Here are some tips for how to simplify your event management to help you get started.
Categorize your events
The average sized municipality organizes and promotes city-led neighbourhood events and festivals throughout the year. On top of these social initiatives, municipalities run regular council meetings that require public transparency. Residents also like to share community led events on municipal calendars.
That’s one busy calendar for your administrators to manage and promote to the public.
To keep your online calendar more organized, consider identifying the different types of events your community promotes to the public. This can allow different administrators to manage different categories to ease the workload. It also allows residents to quickly filter to categories they care about most.
Council meetings, city-run events, community events and festivals are the typical events you’ll find on municipal calendars. Other unique categories to consider are:
- municipal open houses
- committee meetings
- local library information sessions
- activity programs (i.e. swimming, skating etc.)
Maximize your promotion
A big challenge for some municipalities is event attendance, especially when there has been a significant investment of funds, resources and time. What if you could easily promote these on your website, while also cross promoting on your social media channels or email newsletters?
Some digital tools allow your audience to subscribe to specific events or categories so they can be notified as soon as new information is released. There are also tools that give your audience the ability to share your events to their social media.
Standardize your event details
What information does your audience care to know about each event? Is there are way you can customize events and standardize information? Consider creating detailed templates that you can repurpose for events so that information becomes consistent for the audience. The more repetition and consistency, the less confusion and inquiry phone calls you’ll receive.
Automate residents' requests
Juggling multiple calendars on top of one-off requests from residents to promote their initiatives can be a nightmare for administrators. Consider using online forms and automation to streamline the request process.
Have your residents submit their requests using an online form that you promote on your main calendar webpage. Then, set up a workflow in the back end that notifies your administrators when a new request has been submitted. Once the event has been approved, set the automation to notify the requestor so they are kept informed. This is a great way to stay on top of your events, showing that you care about your residents' requests.
Invest in a tool that fits your needs
If your municipality isn’t using the right tools, you are missing out on developing stronger connections with your residents. Plus, your administrators may be stuck with manual or repetitive tasks that take valuable time out of their day.
That's why we built Govstack Events, a management tool built for the public sector. With robust filtering, automation and workflows, categories, unique calendars for council meetings and community events, your administrators can simplify your process and strengthen your residents' sense of belonging.
Transform the way you manage your events. Get started today.
*Statistics Canada: Sense of belonging to local community by gender and other selected sociodemographic characteristics.