EDINBURGH 2017: A Guide For Promoting Your Fringe Show

With this years' Edinburgh Fringe festival fast approaching, we have compiled a list of press release do's and don't's! After many years of reviewing at the Fringe we have seen it all and continue to be amazed by some of the things that come through to us!

If you're planning to take a show to Edinburgh Fringe festival 2017 then you can send press releases to natalie@broadwayworld.com.

Contact press through official channels.

My email address is linked to the BroadwayWorld website and also held by the Fringe press office so I expect to receive a lot of press releases through email. I post all of my reviews on Twitter and actively seek out inspiration for new shows to review on there. What I don't expect (and experienced a lot before deactivating my account) is personal pleas sent to me via my private Facebook account which were never well received!

Do not send 29 PDF attachments on one email.

When reviewers are receiving hundreds upon hundreds of emails, they aren't going to spend a lot of time looking at attachments. Ideally the description of each show should be in the body of the email with the show title as subject heading. Attachments can be added for press images but ideally with one per email. The number "29" might sound like a gross exaggeration but is the exact number of PDFs I received one year from a PR in one email.

Know the publication you are emailing.

Do a little research on publications and reviewers that you are targeting with your press release and make sure that they cover your genre. BroadwayWorld covers a wide range of performances but some publications will specialise in comedy, circus and cabaret and may not appreciate generalised mailouts.

Check your spelling!

One error that sticks in my head was for a production about Elvis' time in the UK landing at Prestwich airport. Having grown up in Prestwick, this probably annoyed me more than it would any other reviewer but the point remains that press release spellings should be double and triple checked!

Don't use CC.

It looks really unprofessional to send a mass mailout with everyone's email addresses visible. While it would be difficult to personalise every single press email you send out, this looks lazy and handing out other reviewers' email addresses is unlikely to go down well with anyone.

Be nice.

While I can't speak for other reviewers, I am much more likely to respond to friendly and polite emails and tweets. Being pushy, arrogant or rude is not the way to convince press to come and see your show.

Know your show!

Whether it be flyering on the Royal Mile or appealing to reviewers on Twitter, be prepared for questions! I've lost count of the number of times that I've asked someone why I should see their show, what sets it apart from the thousands of others, and been met with blank stares and shrugs.

Don't email more than once.

Unless there have been major chances to your show (i.e. a change of venue or cast) then only email each publication/reviewer once. I read recently that a recommendation for getting reviewers in to see your production is to simply "harass them". I'm not sure who this has been working for, because it's certainly not any reviewers that I've met!

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