The Yorkshire Dales Dark Skies Festival is taking place from Friday 9 to Sunday 25 February 2024 and we’d love you to be able to get involved, and help to promote it.
Our toolkit provides a range of images, our logo, suggested social media posts and other ways you can get involved and show your support.
The Yorkshire Dales Dark Skies Festival provides an ideal opportunity to extend your tourism season and to celebrate and promote one of the special qualities of the National Park – our magical dark skies.
The Yorkshire Dales National Park Tourism team will be promoting the Festival through Facebook, Twitter and Instagram along with paid promotions to reach relevant key target audiences and press releases to inform local journalists. We encourage you as businesses to share and amplify #DarkSkiesFestival content on your own social platforms with the help of the social media kit below.
If you’d like any more information or to talk about ideas or other ways you can support, please just get in touch at tourism@yorkshiredales.org.uk.
Objectives
The objectives of the Festival are to:
• Promote understanding and enjoyment of the special qualities of the National Park, in particular Dark Skies.
• Promote the Yorkshire Dales National Park as a place to visit because of its dark skies and engaging businesses.
• Encourage businesses to use dark skies as a way to market their business and extend the season.
• Provide support and guidance to businesses to host Festivals through various media outlets such as social media, events listings, website promotion and providing dark sky images for promotion.
Format
The Dark Skies Festival is held in February to try and further boost the off-peak season and will take place over a fortnight. We are really keen to share the unique qualities of the Festival which covers the whole of the National Park with businesses taking part in the north, south and west of the Park.
Purpose of the toolkit
We now have hard evidence that there is a ready market for your unique festival events, but also that there is a much increased demand for exploring the night sky. As you know, in this area we are some of the fortunate few who are able to see a sky adorned with glistening stars – resulting in sell out, successful events!
So with the new Festival dates released, advertise your events on our website, create an event on Facebook if you can, and email your guests and visitors to let them know to save the date!
By working together, we will increase the reach, awareness and impact of the campaign by using this toolkit. We will be utilising YDNPA website, events listing and social channels, the media and our Communications team to promote the activities to the right audience and we hope you can help us to create a consistent message to promote the Dark Skies Festival and all the wonderful activities taking place during it.
What we will provide
- Expert astronomy contacts that can lead on stargazing elements of your event
- Yorkshire Dales Dark Skies Festival logo
- Related images for you to use for promotion
- Feature on our Dark Skies Festival map
- Free online and offline promotion – press releases, web events listing, social media
- How to support the Dark Skies Festival
- Social media toolkit
- Links with the local and national media
- Support from the Tourism team in the build-up
and during the Festival - Resources – blogs, quizzes, case studies
- Social media tips and tricks
Images
When posting on social media platforms, be sure that each post includes a visual element of some kind (videos, images) as these tend to perform better than posts without.
Remember when posting on Instagram that it does not support hyperlinks in captions. You must add the link into your bio (click “Edit Profile” to add a website URL). Then, direct your followers to the link by adding “Click the link in my bio to read all about it!” to your caption. Alternatively, you can use LinkTree.
Of course you can search for and download your own pictures from our very own photo library, just make an account and sign in if you haven’t already. Please make sure to credit the photographer.
Social media posts
To celebrate the dark skies of the Yorkshire Dales and to help you to capitalise on this, we are encouraging businesses to promote their business, work together, share opportunities and promote each other’s social messages to maximise the conversation around the Dark Skies Festival.