Make sure that you communicate about your study group. It will help your fellow learners to feel part of something cool, and it will help in getting additional participants. The first step is of course to turn to social media, such as Twitter and Facebook. Don't just start your own group, account or hashtag, but see if there are groups active in your community for this subject, and see how you can join those. It will give you access to those who have already shown interest in your subject. We decided for #BSVDUS, to create our own twitter account and hashtag, but did not create an additional facebook page or group. In stead, we shared through the pages and groups of the organising partners.
Key in our broadcasting strategy was the website, and the blog. On it, all information for participants was made available, and local presentations were uploaded there as well. We also launched a newsletter, because email marketing is still an extremely strong tool.
To manage attendance to our sessions, we used Eventbrite. It will help you in understanding how many people will attend, has tools for reminding people about the events, and is free as long as your event is free. Obviously, there are other alternatives, such as
Meetup.com, who have similar tools for relatively low costs. In our case, the choice was based on costs, but an important factor for using tools like this, is local reach. In Düsseldorf, both Eventbrite and
Meetup.com are heavily used in our target audience. So, for us it was not a factor. But if you are the first in your location to use a site, it can be a barrier for fellow learners to join and come to your study group.