CL's readers, whether they're loyalists or just passing through, are always looking for something to do. There's a special place in events heaven (or hell, if you like it that way) for promoters and scene champions who make it easy to come to a decision about that.
Many of the Bay area's marketing managers already do a great job adding their shows & events to CL's calendar, but this is a friendly reminder that there is a free, easy way to tell the 400,000 monthly readers of this alt-weekly just what kind of party you're throwing.
Make sure a quick visit to Creative Loafing Tampa's submission page is on your list of things to do when creating listings for your event (you know, before/after you make that Facebook event page or blog listing). After you submit, an editor will review your listing and more than likely approve. The better the post adheres to easy guidelines, the quicker approval usually goes. We do reserve the right to edit information before it goes live.
Here are some tips (with pictures below):
- Leave the venue out of
EVENT NAMEEvent name (more on that later) (notice how much we hate ALL CAPS?) - Don't go over on any of the character limits (in fact, keep it all really short and sweet)
- Hyperlinks are your friend, use them in the
DESCRIPTIONDescription to get people to your site or ticketing page. - Use the
LOCATIONSLocations we've already uploaded. Holding an event somewhere we haven't heard of? Well, damn, way to go — choose "New Location — please see notes" and enter the venue address, phone number and website (if it has all those things) underneath your description. We'll create the venue in our system! - Get the dates and times right, please — leave them out of the description, though, and make sure you enter them in the Dates field. If you have trouble submitting the correct day and time, simply enter the correct time at the top of your writeup.
- Please, for the sake of our sanity, do not use all caps or exclamation points. We've rejected events for this.
- Upload good images. Branding is your icon or brand (duh) and Upload images is a good place to put a picture of John Lennon if you've booked his ghost to play your bar. A couple of notes about images: One, we require an image for each calendar listing. It makes your event more noticeable and the calendar doesn't look right without an image for every event. Please make sure you have the rights to images you upload, too. Two, high resolution images increase your chance of inclusion in our print listings and "Do This" section. What do we mean by high resolution? Well, there's lots of ways to explain it, but essentially, a high-resolution image will be at least four megs in size. Want a technical explanation? Here's one. Please do not attempt to change pixel size to "make" something high resolution. It will look bad in print, and we don't want that — we want your event to put its best face forward!
It's as easy as that. Ready? Then, go. Click on "Submit an event" on the main page.
Next, add your details:
Don't forget to add images,
Finally, add the cost, date, time, details for our eyes only and your email address. Most importantly, click "Create" when you're done:
Now, sit back and wait for us to approve your listing. Please note: Listings submitted without dates, times or photos may not get approved. Please help us help you! We reserve the right to reject any events.
Thank you—
The CL Tampa team
This article appears in Aug 18-25, 2016.