The 4 C’s of Publishing an Events Calendar: Useful Tips and Annoying Pitfalls

Our readers, clients and professional colleagues know that one or more of our Healthcare Success “Marketing All Stars” is always traveling. In addition to our consulting work and our continuing Advanced Healthcare Marketing Strategies Seminar series, we’re frequently invited to speak at professional meetings and events across the nation.

No doubt your schedule is just as crazy. When the office is hectic/busy, it's easy to overlook the opportunity to generate additional healthcare public relations punch for your public speaking and events calendar. Perhaps it seems a bit elementary, but we often discover that “busy” overwhelms “basics”  in a medical practice or hospital...and a simple and useful calendar of events is neglected.

Here are a few quick tips—and some pitfalls—about publishing and promoting a highly visible calendar of public events and activities.

• Consider including the big events and the not-so-big events. Attending and/or presenting at an international professional association meeting is highly important to you, your reputation and your peers. But your talk to the Rotary Club probably has a great deal of  weight with community leaders and local newspapers. There’s value in listing both.
• The “Three C’s” that spell a truly useful calendar. A calendar of events--modest or extensive--needs to be (a) Correct, (b) Current, and (c) Complete. A posted calendar that “forgot someone” or is out of date is a problem to avoid. (You probably know what we mean.)
• And the “Fourth C” is for Circulate. Publish your calendar in multiple places and ways. For example, you can post and maintain your calendar on a web page, as a blog post, on your Facebook page, via the local media “community events” listings, in specialty or niche publications, circulated internally via email or newsletter, posted on bulletin boards and by various other visible venues. One of our readers lists event reminders (with links) as a standard PS with email correspondence. Use all the options that are appropriate and do so regularly.

Your calendar of events may take a different form, but creating and maintaining a current and complete calendar is a useful tool for awareness and public relations visibility.