Promoting a Discussion Meeting

Similar to many other events you might organize, discussion meetings should be promoted too. Think of all the things you do to raise awareness for the group when big speakers are coming to your campus. You might flier, chalk, post the event on a social networking site, or send out reminders on the list-serve. all of these strategies work very well when applied to promoting the various discussion meetings you will have throughout the quarter. Promoting your meetings effectively creates the potential for attracting new and interested members to your group and also reminds current members where and when they should show up. You might even want to create an appointed or elected position in your group devoted to promoting events and meetings.

Here are some ideas and suggestions that will help your promotional materials achieve maximum effectiveness:

1. When making up fliers, make sure to make the basic information about where and when your group meetings take place prominent on the page. That way, once the meeting date has passed, the flier will still serve as an effective advertisement for your group.
2. Brightly colored fliers and chalk are recommended because they readily catch the eye of the occasional passerby.
3. Sometimes it makes sense to make provocative or humorous statements when chalking for your event. People will be more interested in that as opposed to a simple rundown of the topic, date, time....etc.
4. Put fliers and chalk in areas that get a great deal of foot traffic so that they will be easy to see by the largest possible audience.
5. You also might want to consider flyering extensively in your philosophy, biology, or astronomy departments and classrooms on your campus, as the students in those majors might be more likely to share the ideals of you secular student group.

SSA Flyer Exchange:

The Secular Student Alliance is proud to host the Exchange, a library of flyers used by campus groups around the country. The SSA has always felt that the most valuable resource within the student movement is the ingenuity and creativity of its grassroots activists. Drawing on this, the SSA is dedicated to creating an online library filled with flyers and posters that student freethought groups across the country have successfully utilized on their campuses. Click here to check out the flyer exchange.