{"id":3119,"date":"2016-01-01T17:14:04","date_gmt":"2016-01-01T17:14:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bisexualblogs.wordpress.com\/?p=755"},"modified":"2016-01-01T17:14:04","modified_gmt":"2016-01-01T17:14:04","slug":"promoting-your-bi-group-meet-ups-the-rule-of-four","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bimedia.org\/blogs\/2016\/01\/promoting-your-bi-group-meet-ups-the-rule-of-four\/","title":{"rendered":"Promoting Your Bi Group Meet Ups: The Rule of Four"},"content":{"rendered":"

When promoting a monthly event\u00a0I’ve found ‘the rule of four’ quite an efficient way to get my message across. Part of me used to worry I was promoting myself too much, but over time I’ve realised that most people will only see one of your messages. Or, they will read it and forget the date by the time it comes around!<\/p>\n

What’s this rule of four then?<\/p>\n

It’s not really anything special. Just tell people about your event\/meet up at least four times; thrice before the big day and once afterwards.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

My monthly schedule looks like this:<\/strong><\/p>\n

1, Post about the next meet up a few days after the last one, four weeks in advance.<\/p>\n

2, Post about the meet up during\u00a0the week leading up to it. (A Sunday evening or a Monday morning is a great idea as a lot of people log into their emails and\u00a0social media then, and\u00a0are thinking about the week ahead.)<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"promo<\/p>\n

The photo shows a tweet from the Nottingham BiTopia account. It says “In Nottingham and want to meet other people who are attracted to more than one gender? Join us 12th Nov from 7:30pm at the Lord Roberts.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

3, Remind people\u00a0about it the day before.<\/p>\n

4, After the event, either during\u00a0the same day or the day\u00a0afterwards, post to thank everyone for coming. I usually post a photo or\u00a0add some kind of comment to say it was a great night, well attended etc. This is to cultivate a desire in people to attend the next one, but also to celebrate and share our good times and successes.<\/p>\n

Then back to step one for the next month!<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I’ve found if I don’t do steps 1-3, attendance can drop by up to half even though the pub social for Nottingham Bitopia is always on the second Thursday of the month! Normally for me, BiTopia falls around 10th-14th of the month. However there are a few times a year the second Thursday falls on a single digit date (e.g. 9th) and this really catches people out. Posting is therefore a lot more important during these times.<\/p>\n

My technological skills aren’t advanced enough to make one post which automatically shows up on all social media accounts, but I’m sure that will save you time if you want to go down that road. However I’m\u00a0not a great fan of this because I prefer something more personal and am put off from following a group on multiple sites if their messages all say the exact same thing.<\/p>\n

However I do find software like Hootsuite<\/a> very useful for scheduling posts\u00a0in advance. That way messages\u00a0can still go out at key times of day even when I’m at work, on holiday etc.<\/p>\n

After spending a lot of time faffing around resetting passwords I finally wrote them all down on one piece of paper and thankfully haven’t lost it yet!<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When promoting a monthly event I’ve found ‘the rule of four’ quite an efficient way to get my message across. Part of me used to worry I was promoting myself too much, but over time I’ve realised that most people will only see one of your messages. Or, they will read it and forget the date … Continue reading Promoting Your Bi Group Meet Ups: The Rule of Four<\/span> →<\/span><\/a>\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":36,"featured_media":1211,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[390],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3119","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-running-a-bi-group"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bimedia.org\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3119","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bimedia.org\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bimedia.org\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bimedia.org\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/36"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bimedia.org\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3119"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/bimedia.org\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3119\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4696,"href":"https:\/\/bimedia.org\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3119\/revisions\/4696"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bimedia.org\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1211"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bimedia.org\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3119"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bimedia.org\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3119"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bimedia.org\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3119"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}