Welcome back everyone – I hope you had a lovely weekend! I wanted to quickly write about publicity opportunities you can take advantage of – by simply investing a few minutes of time now. This may not be relevant to you, gentle reader who has already registered your Museums at Night event – but if you know anyone at a nearby arts or heritage venue this applies to, please forward this post on to them!
Here in the Culture24 office, Museums at Night HQ, we’re already getting a lot of media enquiries about the Museums at Night campaign. Newspapers, magazines and websites from across the world (I’m not kidding – a publication from Hong Kong just contacted us this morning) are all asking for press releases, images and event listings connected to their particular area of interest, whether it’s events happening in art galleries, performance events, events in Yorkshire, or simply everything family-friendly.
Something potentially awesome about to happen, both literally and metaphorically
Of course, we reply straight away with our latest press releases and the link to our media image library (got some good high-res pictures of people enjoying themselves at your venue, ideally at night or at least in atmospheric lighting? They could be reprinted around the world: please send them to PR coordinator Pandora by emailing Pandora@bulletpr.co.uk).
Then we interrogate the Culture24 database to find a list of all the events that meet their criteria – and send them through. Now, if you’re planning an event in Yorkshire, or London, or Southend, or wherever you are, and you’ve started your local marketing by publicising it on your website and in your local paper, that’s a great start! Now, I may have discovered your event listing through Google Alerts, cross-checked that it’s not listed in the Culture24 database, and found the time to phone you to ask you to register it with us. Or I may not have done this yet. Either way, you could have been part of Culture24’s wider Museums at Night PR campaign, and reached completely new audiences – you could have been a contender – but you missed out, because you haven’t registered the event in our central database!
It’s completely free to register an event listing, and takes less than five minutes. There are step-by-step instructions here: How to register your Museums at Night event.
Unleashing the awesome power of fire - a metaphorical representation of what happens when you register your Museums at Night events
Once you’re logged in, if you haven’t updated your venue record for a while, please take the time to double check your details and make sure that your venue looks as rich and inviting as possible. Have you uploaded an image? Are your opening hours, ticket prices and contact details correct? Have you described the collections you hold? You don’t only have to use your Culture24 entry to promote your Museums at Night events: you can list all your upcoming events and exhibitions, and even list any educational resources you offer (which can also be tagged to the National Curriculum).
Our next deadline is Wednesday 30th March. If you haven’t yet registered your event, please do so by next Wednesday – that’s 9 days away – to ensure that it’ll be included in our next series of press releases. Every year, our evaluation survey shows venues saying “We should have started our planning and marketing earlier…” so register now. You know it makes sense!
If you have any questions, please get in touch sooner rather than later, ideally by Friday – as next week I’ll be busily preparing for our campaign launch on Wednesday night! Email rosie@culture24.org.uk or call 01273 623336.
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