AreYouDancing runs an events diary which includes a range of dance events including ceilidhs and barn dances.
Promoting an event on 'AreYouDancing' is relatively straightforward but there are quite a lot of steps involved. This note tries to list out what you need to do. Best think of the job as being in three parts; you are registering on the site, describing your organisation, and entering your event
The first step, registering, means that you chose a username and give an email contact address. You'll get the notifications about events sent to this address and any correspondence where people have said 'Contact Organiser'..
In the second stage of the process you'll need to give a description of your organisation, possibly a paragraph from your publicity blurb, saying what the organisation's about. The implication is that this is for organisers who are promoting their own events. If you are being helpful and want to promote some else's event, you'll need to get this information from them.
Finally, when entering the event, you'll need to give the details of the venue (including, for example, how to get to it) and the event itself.
Your browser will also have to accept cookies from the www.areyoudancing.com site.
You'll get given 3 forms to fill in before you get started...
The first is the one where you choose a username, give your contact email address and you choose one or more from these questions
If you are just wanting to advertise your event, the second is probably what you want.
Asks some questions about where you are and what dance styles you are interested in (think that this site deals mostly with couple dances). You can happily leave these fields blank.
Needless to say, don't choose a password you use elsewhere for anything important.
It is probably one you can write down somewhere though and if you've forgotten you can ask for it to be emailed to you.
You'll get a welcome email after this stage and start getting the regular update and info messages from the site.
When the registration is done you'll move on to giving the description of the organisation. You'll need that paragraph from your publicity blurb saying what your organisation's about. Don't forget to say where you are in the world and to include references to your web or myspace pages.
It is best keep the first sentence of the description short and punchy - the site uses the first 100 characters as a 'Short Description'
You won't be able to include HTML in your entry but you can give the URL of your website or myspace page in the "Website URL" section. You can also edit the page (a little later) to add an image or logo.
Towards the bottom of the page, you'll have to select one or more of a collection of 'roles'. If you're registering in order to promote a gig, 'event organiser' is the most likely. When you select that the form suddenly expands to ask the types of event, in this instance again a 'dance' is a good choice (but of course you can tick as many as are applicable i.e. workshops, classes)
You are almost at the end but still have to say what style(s) of dance you want to promote, you'll see a link saying 'select styles' where you get given the choice of Folk/Country and a quite a range of subdivisions (Barn Dance, Contra, County Dance, English Ceilidh, French Country for example). Again, you can tick as many as are applicable.
When you click on "Submit Details" you'll get a screen saying you will receive an email to confirm your registration. You'll get an automated response which should arrive more or less immediately. This is a 'Registration Acknowledgement' which includes a 'confirm receipt' link which you click on to tell AYD that the message has got through. There'll be a second email (which might take 48 hours) saying that your account has been activated and you can start setting up events. The 48 hours may be just because there is a human 'approval' step required.
It is worth looking at your 'My Profile' page (you'll find this as a small link in the top right of the page, there's 'My Profile' 'My Picture' 'Help/FAQs' and 'Logout'). This allows you to change your registration information, including the email address you selected, ask for fewer email reminders (by default you get everything) and hide your personal info.
This seems to be a lot to do just to publicise an event, but you only have to do the bulk of the work once. When you are registered adding new events is a shorter process.
Assuming you've just got the 'account is activated' email saying you can add events/update information, login again and you will see (or should see) an 'Admin' link on the right hand end of the banner. If you click on this it will take you to a calendar showing your events (and only yours) which gives you options to set up an Event, a Template, a Venue (etc).
It will probably be easier for you to add your venues first, then your events
You'll be prompted to enter information about your venue, including directions and a postcode (put it in if you can, this is what allows AYD to provide the link to Google Maps), then click on Save (top right).
The Venues Form will list all your venues once you have entered them.
If you have a number of events, it is worth creating a template. This makes it less work to add similar events in the future. Create a template and you can use it to copy a 'basic set' of information to a new event where all you have to do is select a date.
Note this doesn't mean that each event is 'cookie cutter' identical, you can still make changes for each, for example to include the Band Name in the title - something that is a Most Excellent Idea as this is what is displayed in the calendars - and don't forget to mention the band and caller in the description of the event.
Follow the step by step instructions which will ask you to
Check the calendar/events list to make sure the events have been added correctly
If you need to make changes (and you can come back later to do this if you want), you can do this by clicking on "Edit". This link can be found at the end of each row in Events List.
Alternatively, click on the event name (in any calendar or list view), which will display a full page of information about your event and the Edit button can be found on the top right of the Event Information page.
It's easy for you to cancel, reschedule or change the venue for an event. In each of these cases, all members who have registered that they will be attending the event will be told of the change.