I saw this great quote recently, “You’re not stuck in traffic, you ARE traffic.” This is what came to mind when I was thinking of how to describe how venues and tags help connect community.
Whenever someone looks at or submits an event to one of our GatherBoard calendars, they join in this online community. They become part of the traffic. But venues and tags are a further investment. They are like the public transportation part of the traffic. They bring people together and take them to where they want to go.
Venues vs. Tags
The venue is the place where something happens, where this abstract idea of an event becomes a reality. The venue is where people actually come together face to face. Tags are used for events that take place at different locations and times, but are all part of the same thing such as “Bike Week,” or “The International Wildlife Film Festival.”
Community Members
Venue and Tag pages are valuable to both those who are searching the site and those who are advertising events. The community member who wants to know the line-up of movies, showtimes, and locations for the film festival will find all of those on one page when they search under that tag. Or, if they want to know all the live music that is happening that week at a particular venue, they can search that and have all the information they need on one page, even the location, website, and phone number of the venue.
Promoting Events
For those who are promoting events and venues, these feature pages are a great way of increasing web presence and reaching a larger audience. Also, if a venue or tag is regularly posting events to the website, having a venue page makes it easier, because then they are added to a drop-down menu in the submission form, that when selected, auto-fills their information such as venue name, phone number, address, and website. This can save time and effort when entering many events!
The Benefits of having a Venue Page
GatherBoard calendars can take this a step further, offering venues other benefits such as online ad credit, featured online ads, RSS feeds, or their own login so that they can submit, edit, or delete their own events. At MissoulaEvents.net, we call this an “Enhanced Venue Page.” With an RSS feed, the venue can have its own mini-calendar on its website that is connected, in real time, to the full GatherBoard website.
Venues and tags are just some of the features that people can use to connect through GatherBoard. It’s not just a site listing events, it is a living community. When using a GatherBoard calendar, you’re not just visiting, you ARE the community.
