Make your calendar more impactful and valuable to your audience with Scenethinkās curation tools. This guide will help you understand the differences between categories, collections, and starring events in your calendar system.
Categories
Understanding Categories
Categories are predefined by event submitters or calendar administrators to describe the nature of the event (e.g., music, dance, food, drink, performance, exhibit, film, art openings, festival, comedy).
They can be changed by calendar admins by editing the event
Categories help organize and curate events, making it easier for users to find events that match their interests.
When to use categories
Categories are great to show off an entire genre of event. For instance, a highlight of all the Music events on your calendar, regardless of the genre or event itself - it will group together everything from an open mic night to a stadium show.
Customizing Categories
If you need different nomenclature (e.g., combining "music" and "dance" into "nightlife"), you can customize categories
Go to Settings > Categories to adjust the category names and groupings as needed.
Collections
Understanding Collections
Collections are a powerful way to curate and group events. Collections are perfect for organizing events around themes like holidays, local festivals, or any other groupings.
When to use collections
Collections are perfect for highlighting events that all fall under a similar umbrella but may be entirely different. It can be used for your event newsletter picks, special events, festivals, geography, and more.
For instance:
a Family Friendly collection may include art, classes, music, and outdoors events
A Fourth of July collection could include food, drink, performance, music, and outdoors events.
Creating a Collection
Collections are a powerful way to group related events together.
Events are added to a collection by a calendar admin
Add events to your collection by:
Selecting an event to be added to the collection from your āAvailableā Events tab
In the hover menu, click the folder icon
Choose or create a new collection
Click the button to save
Viewing Collections
To see all of your collections, go to Events > Collections.
Best Practices for Collections
Add a tagline and description to each collection for better SEO and user engagement.
Include an article header image for visual appeal.
Enable "Auto Remove Past Events" to keep collections up-to-date and evergreen.
For Newsletters, use Collections rather than categories or starred events.
Scenethinkās email builder can format the event information and pull the HTML to the email editor of your choice.
You can link directly to collections in your calendar menu, or share them out on social media.
Starring Events
Understanding Starred Events
Starring events is the fastest way to feature or otherwise curate your calendar - just click the star icon from the event action items.
Utilizing Starred Events
Starred events can be highlighted on hub pages or featured sections, providing an alternative way to showcase important events.
Starred events are a great way to pull out events youād like to feature, but wonāt necessarily be going into print or via a newsletter.
Conclusion
By understanding and utilizing categories, collections, and starring events, you can effectively organize and highlight events in your calendar system. Each feature serves a unique purpose, allowing you to curate and display events in a way that best suits your audience's needs. We recommend using a combination of these features to achieve the best results, but with some experimentation you will find what works best for your team.
If you have further questions, reach out to us at support@cityspark.com.