Publicizing Student Events

Planning Your Event

Campus events should be scheduled through the Office of Student Life using the Room Scheduler.

Williamstown and the college are small communities and the available audience is limited. Most events attract no more than 50 people; a large crowd here is usually about 200, but it takes 500 people to make Chapin Hall look full. To save the sponsoring organization and speaker the embarrassment of a small turnout, choose a date with few conflicting events and a room that will hold the number of people you expect. Do not book a large room if you do not expect a large crowd.

Publicity

The best ways to publicize student events are Daily Messages, posters & flyers, word-of-mouth, and advertising in the student newspaper The Williams Record and on WCFM (see the main Publicizing Your Event page).

The college’s campus-wide public events calendar is at https://events.williams.edu/. The calendar’s aim is to combine all campus public event listings into a single, more functional and more visually compelling calendar. We hope you find it both useful and easy to use.

Log in at https://events.williams.edu to start using the calendar today! The calendar is intended to promote public events. Anyone with a Williams username and password can submit events to it. For detailed instructions on using the calendar, please see http://oit.williams.edu/help/calendar/.

Scheduling Your Publicity

One month before the event

  • Posters (see Publicizing Your Event)
  • WAMC/NPR (Albany): Send event release to [email protected]. They only include events of wide public appeal. See “Writing an Event Release” and “Submitting an Event Release” below.

Two weeks before the event

  • Send event releases to local media: Student organizations are expected to write and distribute their own event releases. See “Writing an Event Release” and “Submitting an Event Release” below.

Friday before the event

One or two days before the event

  • Daily Messages (student organizations may submit two DMs per event to run on different days)

Writing an Event Release

At the top, put the contact person for more information. Include email address and phone number. (Contact: Tom Jones, [email protected], (413) 597-1234.)

Write a succinct headline which entices the reader to read more.

The first paragraph of an event release begins with the speaker’s name, day, date, time, location, and title of the lecture or performance. (Example: Mathematician Colin Adams will deliver a lecture “Why Knot?” on Saturday, Oct. 23, at 11 a.m. The lecture will be held in the Bronfman Science Center auditorium on the Williams College campus.)

The body of the release should include a description of the speaker or performer and his/her program or lecture. Include why this event is newsworthy. Use adjectives and adverbs sparingly. If you have a quote from a well-known publication about the speaker, include it with attribution. Include admission and ticket information, sponsoring organization(s), and how to find more information.

The release should be no more than 250 words.

Submitting an Event Release to the Media

Send only one press release per event to each of the media.

Send releases by e-mail with a subject line of “Calendar Editor.” Copy and paste your release into the body of the e-mail message — do not send attachments. (calendar addresses above)

Please note that the media is under no obligation to run event releases. They run what interests them, depending upon space availability.