A calendar page is not a diary of everything you have ever hosted. A visitor wants three answers: what is next, where it is, and how to get a seat. Build the page around those, and move the archive out of the way.

Write down the next three dates, the place for each, and the link to reserve. If you can answer those in under a minute, the calendar is ready. Everything else is a nice extra.

Your website is the one place you control. Social platforms change how they show posts, and an event you posted six months ago can disappear from view. A simple list on your own page, with the next date at the top, always answers the question.

Each entry needs four lines: the event name, the date and start time, the place, and one link that opens the event page. Use a plain list. A table looks good on a laptop and breaks on a phone, and most visitors are on a phone.

• Event name, as a link to the event page.
• Date and start time in one line, with the time zone if guests come from elsewhere.
• Place: the venue name and the street, or "online" with the platform.
• A short line on cost: free, or the price, and whether a reservation is needed.

Sort by the soonest date first. Once a date has passed, remove it from the list or move it to a "past events" section at the bottom, with its photos or notes if you have them.

Your social profiles will each show a different subset of your events. Give them all the same destination, your calendar page. When a friend shares a post, the link should always lead to the full list, not to a single old post.

Put the link in the profile bio or the link field, then pin one post that says what the calendar covers. Example: "Monthly book club, workshops and a yearly picnic. See every date and reserve a seat: [your link]." Keep the wording the same on each platform so people recognize it.

Do not post the same event announcement on every platform on the same day. Post it on your site on day one, post a short version on your strongest platform on day two, and post a reminder with the link a week before. Spreading it out reaches people who saw the first one and forgot.

A feed lets people add your events to their own calendar once, and then see new dates appear on their own. It is the difference between one reader who checks your page and a reader whose phone already shows your next date.

A calendar feed is a web address that holds your events in the standard iCalendar format. Most phone and desktop calendars accept it as a subscription.

If you do not have a feed, you can still share an .ics file for a single event. A guest who only needs one date will add it once and move on. Use a feed for a series, and a single file for a one-off.

Put an add-to-calendar option on every event page, not only on the list. Guests who reserve want the date in their own calendar before they leave the page. Connections event pages can show an add-to-calendar menu with Google, Outlook, Microsoft 365, Yahoo and Apple, plus a downloadable .ics file.

A full year of dates on social media is hard to read and goes stale in a month. Post the next date with the reserve link, and let the calendar hold the rest. Pick a cadence that matches your events. A monthly group posts once a month about the next date and once a week about the reserve link. A one-time event posts when it is announced, one week before, and the morning of.

Worked example: a community garden runs one work day a month, on the second Saturday. In September it posts the October date on its site and in its bio on the 15th of September. It posts the reminder on October 5, and again on the morning of the 11th. Each post carries the same link, so the calendar gets the clicks.

A calendar with a wrong date does more damage than no calendar. Set one day each month, the first Monday for example, to check it. Open the page on a phone, check the next three dates, and look at the feed in a calendar app to make sure the dates show up.

• Next three dates are correct, with the right time zone.
• Every date links to a working reserve page.
• Past events are moved out of the upcoming list.
• Every social profile links to the calendar, not to an old post.
• The feed link opens in a calendar app and shows the next date.

• How to get more people to RSVP to your event
• How to write an event page people finish reading
• How to grow an email list from your events

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