Uploading your events to hundreds of different websites, with loads of different entry formats can be a real bore. How do you know anyone’s attending as a result of your hours of potentially mind-numbing data entry?
Visit Bristol is a bit different.
Our What's On pages received over 2.2million page views in 2018. There’s no limit on how far in advance you can upload your event and you are welcome to do your full year’s programming at once, or just as and when things come up.
Our top-tip: It is never too early to upload your event!
We can always edit text and images later if you want to change or add a final detail.
The most clicked-on events have a great short description to tempt in the readers, and a strong, hi-res, landscape image, of 750 x 430 pixels. If you’re having trouble resizing your image, online editor Pixlr is a great place to start.
Image: A screenshot of the event calendar
Once uploaded, your event will be reviewed by one of our team. We check the pictures, text and other aspects and will tweak it into our house style if necessary. This process can be speeded up if you follow the guidelines on the event submission page, including writing in the third person (otherwise it can sound like Visit Bristol are the hosts for your event!).
Once your event is live
Congratulations, you've done the hard bit! It doesn’t end there though. Our marketing department can now make use of your event in their activity. Here are some examples of how it might be used:
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Press and PR
Our media liaison wizards, Susie and Lesley send out regular press releases about what's on in Bristol to local and national press and media, which are frequently picked up by journalists. For example, this Christmas Shopping article in Somerset Life.
Image: Somerset Life, December 2017
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Hospitality
A benefit of membership is our monthly event listing. Details of every event listed on our site is sent out to all member hotels (and anyone else who is interested) in the area so their front of house team can let visitors know all about what’s on in Bristol during their stay.
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Advertising:
Passed through Temple Meads or driven around the Lawrence Hill roundabout recently? You may have spotted our digital billboard ads. The Temple Meads screens have 425,000 people passing them every month, and run on a weekly rotation, so a fantastic way to reach people who either live in or are visiting the city. The screen at Lawrence Hill is huge and cannot be missed by the huge number of motorists passing by each day.
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Blogs:
The Visit Bristol blog regularly receives around 70,000 views a month (although August 2019 was over 94,000!). We actively use the database of uploaded events to inform our blog content, especially our month ahead, school holiday and bank holiday things to do round-ups. Event-related blogs are the most popular on the website - our 118 Things to do in Bristol in 2018 blog alone had 35,799 views in 2018.
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Major Campaigns:
Visit Bristol run two major campaigns a year: summer and Christmas. You may have spotted our eye-catching leaflets, which list the top events happening in Bristol over these periods. We collate the events for inclusion from those which are uploaded to the Visit Bristol website at the time of creation, stressing the importance of uploading your events as soon as possible.
The guide has a print run of 50,000 copies and is distributed in carefully selected high-footfall zones within the city and the surrounding areas. Destinations include Somerset, Gloucestershire and South Wales as well as busy transport hubs such as London Paddington. Members also have the opportunity to advertise in these leaflets - a half or full page. Prices vary depending on band of membership.
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Social media:
Every week we pick out a few events to highlight on social media. With a following of around 160,000 people, that’s a big audience you might miss if we don’t know about your event.
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Newsletters:
Finally, but not exhaustively, we’ll showcase certain events in our consumer newsletters, which go out to around 16k subscribers every fortnight.
Image: Visit Bristol consumer newsletter
So, what are you waiting for? Upload your event and reach new audiences now!
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