Can a simple calendar really bring in more readers?
Turns out, yes. Salem Reporter quietly added one to their site and saw a big boost in traffic, more engaged readers, and less work for their team. Tune in to learn how they did it and how you can too.
Two months ago, Salem Reporter quietly launched its new events calendar, powered by LocalCalendar. There was no big announcement, no promotional push, just a clean, structured calendar dropped onto the site and connected to a few local data sources.
The results?
- More than a thousand new events surfaced and were updated automatically
- 16,000+ pageviews from event content
- Bounce rate under 5%
- A growing email list with 60–70% open rates
- And significant time saved for the editorial team
All from a tool that ran quietly in the background for weeks. Let’s take a deep dive at how local calendar benefited Salem Reporter—and why this matters for local publishers.
Small Calendar, Big Value
Salem Reporter’s calendar started small—just a few curated event sources, selected for relevance to their community.
From there, LocalCalendar did the rest. It automatically pulled in events, cleaned up inconsistent formatting (thanks to some AI magic), and populated a fast, SEO-friendly calendar on the site.
There were around 25–50 new events added every day, with hundreds more updated to reflect reschedules or detail changes. No duplication, no manual cleanup, just fresh, useful content for readers.
And Then Google Showed Up
The Salem Reporter team didn’t promote the calendar for the first month. But Google found it anyway.
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Almost immediately, the site began ranking for event-related searches and even outranking many of the sources they were pulling from.
Within the first two months:
- Over 16,000 pageviews were tied directly to the events ecosystem
- Direct traffic to the calendar became the #1 source
- Google Search came in second
- Visitors viewed 4+ event pages per session on average
- Bounce rate stayed around 4%
Community Participation, Without a Push
Even without promoting it, Salem’s audience found the “Submit Event” link tucked at the bottom of the calendar page. And still, 50+ events have been manually submitted by readers.
People will find a way to get their event on a high-quality local calendar. You don’t need a campaign. You just need a tool that works.
Email Signups and Open Rates
LocalCalendar also comes with an optional email feature that lets readers subscribe to event categories (Food & Drink, Community & Culture, Business & Professional, etc.).
Salem Reporter’s results:
- 150+ people signed up for category notifications
- The average email open rate is over 60%, with some categories seeing up to 70%+ open rates.
Less Work for the Newsroom
One of the biggest wins for Salem Reporter? Time.
Instead of spending hours chasing down events and updating calendars, their team now reviews a handful of submissions and uses the existing calendar data as a resource when writing event-based stories.
Next Up: Featured Events
In the next few weeks, Leaky Paywall is also rolling out a Featured Events function that allows submitters to pay for highlighted placement and bypass moderation. Think “pinned” or “sticky events” listings that sit at the top of the calendar or a category.
This opens the door to monetization without complicating the workflow.
Why This Works
The LocalCalendar is already proving to be a game-changer for local publishers. More than just an event calendar, it’s a content engine, an SEO booster, a list builder, and soon—a revenue stream.It pulls in 70% of events that live on Facebook or scattered sites, but it also helps uncover the other 30%—the ones that are buried deep. The hidden gems your community cares about.
For Salem Reporter, this has meant more traffic, better engagement, stronger SEO, and more time for editorial work.
You don’t need a big launch or fancy tools to make a local calendar work. With the right setup, it can quietly bring in traffic, help your readers, and save your team time. Want to see how this could fit your site? Let’s chat.
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