Or, how to win friends and influence people (for free)

Yahoo’s Upcoming.org is a great way share and discover local events online, but can also be a powerful tool for publishers.  On Tuesday, Upcoming.org co-founder, Andy Baio, gave us some quick tips on how to build events into your own site using Upcoming.org. Today Andy finishes off with a dive into creating a group calendar and with some advice on getting out and off the screen and onto the social circuit.

Start a Group Calendar

Finding and adding every relevant local event yourself can be hard work, so why not let the rest of your readers help each other out? You can create an Upcoming Group for your specific website or topic, and open it up to anyone. Whether you moderate the group calendar yourself or grant control to other trusted moderators, Upcoming Groups empower your community to get involved and connect with each other in new ways.

Like your own personal watchlist, you can create a badge for your group events for easy redistribution. Your readers can do the same thing, spreading the word to their own blogs and personal websites.

Meet and Greet
Sometimes, the best way to build a strong community is to get off the computer. Meeting offline deepens the relationship between your readers, which then creates more engagement online.

But sponsoring an event doesn’t need to be a big, expensive ordeal. Just announce a time and place on your site, add it to Upcoming to spread the word, and then buy a couple rounds while you’re there! 

Of course, you may not be able to attend local gatherings outside your city (or country), but you can provide the tools to help your readers self-organize. Just point them to your new Upcoming Group, letting them discuss and decide when and where to meet. When they’ve decided on the details, they can add the event and it will automatically display on the Group badges on your site.

By adding your special event to Upcoming, you’ll also be exposing it a wider audience: the very active Upcoming community.

That’s the basics. I hope it was useful. For a run-down of features and functionality, be sure to view our Quickstart Guide video. If you have any questions, post them in the comments and I’ll do my best to respond.

—Andy Baio, Co-Founder, Upcoming.org