by Morgana Mirage

Here in New England, spring, summer and fall are often the busiest times of years for Middle-Eastern dance events. The reason is simple – the weather! Be sure to put the word out well ahead of time for event goers to make their plans and support your event. Same-week reminders are great, too.

FLIERS

Fliers are a great way to get a lot of information out quickly about your event. They can be printed, shared as PDFs, or posted on your website or favorite social media channel. Therefore it’s important to be sure to include all the information someone would need in order to check out your event!

All good flyers have the following – apart from attractive artwork and jazzy graphics (which should enhance, and never muddy or overwhelm, the text):

• Time, date, and day of the week (Year is not necessary if the event takes place in the current year).
• Location, including complete name of venue and complete street address. This includes street number, which is frequently omitted.
• Cost, and how event-goers can pay. If it is free, state that clearly; if donations are desired, state that also. Indicate if tickets are available in advance and how to order, if they are available at the door, and so on.
• A contact for more information. Always provide a contact email, phone number, website, or other means for the public to get in touch.

There has been a recent development in which event promoters cram all the information possible about the event star or teacher on the front of the flier. The result is a visually-confusing and hard-to-read flier, especially if the flier is posted on line. It’s much better to keep the essential information front and center; ancillary information, such as teacher bio, can be posted to your web site or Facebook page.

PRESS RELEASES

Your local newspaper and its online sources can be a great way to get the word about an event. But for those who’ve never done it, it can be a little confusing. Here’s a few “dos” and “don’ts” based on my experience on the other side of the desk and a long-time news and arts editor.

DO:

Read your local newspaper. The newspaper cannot support events in the community if the community does not support the newspaper. Readership and circulation is how the newspaper provides this resource.

Check out guidelines ahead of time, including your newspaper’s submission deadlines, any word limits, and other information needed before sending a notice.

Always include the following. This bread-and-butter information is much more important than long descriptions attempting to “sell” the event. This is the information a reader actually needs in order to attend an event:

• Time, date, and day of the week. The most frequent omission is day of the week. Most event goers need to know this in order to decide if it’s something they can attend.
• Location, including complete name of venue and complete street address. This includes street number, which is also frequently omitted.
• Cost, and how event-goers can pay. This information is sometimes left out entirely which leaves the impression that the event is free. If it is free, state that clearly; if it’s donations, state that also. State if tickets are available in advance and how to order, if they are available at the door, and so on.
• A contact for more information. An event-goer may need more information than what limited space in a newspaper can provide. Always provide a contact email, phone number, website, or other means for the public to get in touch.
• Designate one person and one person only as a press contact and include that person’s contact information.
• Include a high-resolution photo. There may not be space to run it in the end, but it’s better for an editor to have the photo in hand than have to reach out and ask, which creates an extra step in an often hectic deadline schedule. The photo should have a caption that identifies the people in it, or name or artist or group. If there are children, please be sure to get parents’ or guardians’ permission first. This may seem like common sense, but on occasion people do submit photos without taking this important step.

DON’T:

Have multiple people sending the same information or calling on behalf of the event. This can be very confusing, especially on deadline, and for editors or editorial support staff who may have literally hundreds of notices to process. Also it makes it unclear whom to contact for more information.

Send multiple “follow-up” emails forwarding the original press release. This can also create confusion and make it harder for the person who is processing all the emails – which again can run in the hundreds. If you don’t hear within 24-48 hours, make a quick, brief follow-up call.

Send just a flyer and ask that this run as advertisement. Display advertising is a paid service and most newspapers can’t devote space for a free flier except under certain circumstances.

Send a link to a page or website, and ask the editor to look up the information from the link. This creates an extra step including having to filter graphics or other elements from the link.

Send excerpts from an article in another newspaper. A newspaper article is copyrighted, and doing this is asking the editor to appropriate copyrighted material to which their paper may not have rights. Also, that newspaper may be unaffiliated so it’s also asking the newspaper to give props to its competitor.

Give an interview to a competing paper and then ask your local editor for an article as well. Again, the news business is a business, as well as a competitive enterprise. Newspaper editors want to present fresh, original stories to their readers as much as possible. If you give a story to a major metropolitan paper and then ask your hometown paper to do the same, this is treating that paper as a second-class news source. Newspaper editors especially get upset if they have been faithfully printing calendar briefs and other notices for a long time only to pick up a competing paper and see the group or person has given that paper a substantial feature.

Send a press release and then send a “revised” version. Once it’s in the editor’s hand, the process of getting ready for layout and deadline begins and it’s not necessarily a simple task to go back and make corrections or revisions. Of course if there is an error such as date or time, it’s best to alert the editor right away – better to correct information than not. But carefully checking over the press release can help avoid this step in a very narrow press time frame.

Forget to buy a copy, put a link to an online feature on your website or Facebook page, or promote it to all your friends and families. The newspaper has given space to you and your event; do the newspaper a good turn by, well, by spreading the news!

Morgana Mirage is associate editor of Belly Dance New England.