5 Ways To Increase Student Attendance At Homecoming!

August 30, 2019

One of the biggest struggles that a lot of schools have is making sure enough students attend their school dances! Why host a big event if no-one is going to attend? We’ve noticed this is common with a lot of our schools, but there’s always a solution to this! My School Dance came up with a few different ways your school can increase student attendance at Homecoming!

Promoting

• Everyone assumes that promoting is super easy and they can just do it the week before the dance, but that isn’t the case. Advertising for a dance should happen the very first week you begin planning for it and should continue until the time of the dance. Since we live in the Digital Age, social media is HUGE for promoting dances. Almost all schools have at least one social media site. Why not continuously post about the dance on there? If your school has an electronic message board, create a message on there. Have students help out and create flyers, posters, and banners that are displayed all around the school and maybe even around the town. The more publicity the better!

Interactive

• It’s important to make the event somewhat interactive and fun! You want to have something that will engage the student’s attention and want them to want to attend. Even having something like some games, pep rallies, contests, karaoke, etc. Any activity that is going to allow the students to make it seem like they are involved and are a part of the event, will encourage them to continue to participate.

Feedback

• To continue to get more student’s input when it comes to big events like Homecoming, you’ll want to get some feedback. Surveys are a great way to get feedback and they’re super easy to gather! You can send surveys through email or have ones that students fill out on the spot. Email surveys usually have better results. Have students fill out surveys during an event or at a place where they will have to fill it out, such as student orientation. Another easy way to gather some feedback is to host student focus groups to get opinions from them. Even after the event, try to have some sort of way to gather feedback so you can make changes for next time!

Reminders

• Try to have some sort of reminder for students each week to encourage them to buy tickets for Homecoming. This could be done through emails, intercom announcements, or even having students or faculty speak in each class for a minute or two about the event. Students are so busy nowadays that even just a 1 minute reminder will make them remember to purchase tickets for Homecoming. You can even send a quick email to the students basically promoting them on why they should attend.

Food

• Who doesn’t love free food at events? I don’t know if it’s just me, but I have definitely attended an event just because there was food there! Teenagers love going anywhere where they have food, so why not work with that? I’m not saying have a full 5-course meal for each student, but provide something. One thing I always see as super effective is having appetizers. This way students can just come by the table and grab a few finger-foods instead of having an entire meal.

Ensuring that you do all 5 of these things are crucial to increasing your student attendance. Put yourself in the student’s shoes and think about what would make you want to go to an event. Even better? Have a student group, like a Homecoming committee, come up with ways to get student’s involved more!

With using My School Dance’s platform, you’ll be able to do all of these tips in even easier ways. Check out our free platform now or schedule a 10 minute demo to get more info! As always, feel free to read more of our blog posts for other tips that can help you: 10 Hottest Homecoming Themes for 2019, 8 Reasons Why You Should Attend Your School’s Homecoming, and Homecoming Is About Community!

Follow our social media channels too: Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, and Instagram.

Contact:

Stephanie Hamilton

833-336-8656