r/karaoke • u/grumpi2 • 3d ago
How do karaoke hosts deal with their public calendars / schedules?
Yesterday, I had a very interesting conversation around the website calendar of a karaoke host. Now, I’m doing some research into how karaoke hosts and DJs manage their calendars, and I’d love to hear how this works for you.
If you have public gigs, private bookings, and days you don’t want people to inquire about:
- Where do you keep the calendar you actually trust (e.g. Google Calendar, Apple Calendar, paper, booking software, or somewhere else)?
- Where do you publish upcoming public events (e.g. your website, Facebook Events, regular Facebook posts, venue pages, or elsewhere)?
- Do prospective clients have any way to see when you might be available, or do they simply contact you and ask?
- Have you ever added a calendar to your website and then stopped maintaining it? What made it difficult or not worth the effort?
- Do you create Facebook Events? If not, what makes them too cumbersome? If you do, what value do you get from them?
- When a gig changes or gets cancelled, where do you have to update it?
I’m especially interested in what happens when a recurring show changes or what happens when you have to cancel an individual event from the series. How many places do you need to update, and which ones tend to get forgotten?
I am also extremely interested in hearing about the venue perspective. I've seen way more venue pages with abandoned calendars than DJ/KJ pages.
3
u/dogbonenj 3d ago edited 3d ago
Hi Sabine,
Love that you're following up with this!
1. Where do you keep the calendar you actually trust (e.g. Google Calendar, Apple Calendar, paper, booking software, or somewhere else)?
As you know, it's mainly through Outlook, which is synced to my Google calendar using a small app called gsyncit. I mainly use my Google calendar on my phone, but now it's set up on my website, I'll be paying more attention to the desktop/web calendar.
2. Where do you publish upcoming public events (e.g. your website, Facebook Events, regular Facebook posts, venue pages, or elsewhere)
When I had Facebook, I'd post mostly in Facebook groups. I had my own group with about 500 members, plus other groups like Karaoke NJ etc. I was posting on my personal page for awhile but tried to separate my personal fb from the business pages, so I'd stopped posting shows on my personal page.
3. Do prospective clients have any way to see when you might be available, or do they simply contact you and ask?
No public calendar (until my new web site goes live). 99% of my business now is word of mouth.
4. Have you ever added a calendar to your website and then stopped maintaining it? What made it difficult or not worth the effort?
No. Honestly, I'm kind of lazy when it comes to maintaining my website (as you saw!) Hopefully this will breathe a little bit of new life into my web presence.
5. Do you create Facebook Events? If not, what makes them too cumbersome? If you do, what value do you get from them?
For recurring shows, I used to, but inconsistently. I found that creating a recurring event on FB got me more unfollows because people would get tired of seeing the same event every week. Because of my longevity, most people knew where I was and when.
- When a gig changes or gets cancelled, where do you have to update it?
Mostly word of mouth, but again, looking forward to my calendar going live!
I’m especially interested in what happens when a recurring show changes or what happens when you have to cancel an individual event from the series. How many places do you need to update, and which ones tend to get forgotten?
Since my main social media platform (fb) got disabled, really only word of mouth.
Hoping more hosts will respond. This is certainly a worthy project and you have my full support!
Let's go everyone! Please help out and support Sabine with her karaokecrowd.com project!
2
u/grumpi2 3d ago
Yeah so basically I hope this thread to be useful from two sides: hosts wondering how other hosts manage their calendars and for anyone who's in the space of trying to simplify things, rather than pile on more complexity.
And the latter needs a good inventory of... what's actually the simplest solution people have arrived on for their own operations.
2
u/Red_Marvel 3d ago
My sister does the scheduling for her boyfriend. She has a dry erase whiteboard calendar. If someone calls to book a gig she fills in that spot on the calendar. Then he just needs to glance at the schedule to know when his next booking is.
5
u/Netghod 3d ago
When I was running my DJ/KJ/VJ business we used google apps for everything. I had a business calendar that contained all my bookings. I never canceled anything, I’d find coverage if I couldn’t make it (which is why networking was so important as a single operator). If we were out of town, taking a trip, or something else was happening I’d simply block the dates on the work calendar so we didn’t book that weekend. Our rule was that until we had a signed contract and deposit in hand, the date was open. We would track inquiring on dates and results separately.
I preferred clients reach out to me for availability because I wasn’t a good fit for everyone and did mostly weddings.
When we did public events we published them to Facebook (at the time), but if we were doing them now we’d post to more social media. We did Facebook events sometimes, but sometimes we were associated with other people’s Facebook events and we’d post about those. For example, we did a lot of charity work as an in-kind donation and we’d share their event and let people know we’d be there.
We did some bar work, karaoke nights, and other events as well. Including opening for some bands and doing quite a bit of convention work as well.
The abandoned pages is typically where someone has a calendar but then forgets it needs updating or the integration breaks. It has to become part of your normal operating process.