If you are part of the EdinburghGuide.com team of reviewers you can add a review of a show. This page provides help in doing this.
These are the basic steps to follow for adding A Review content type to EG.
- Choose Create Content. Then choose "Festival Review" or Review depending on whether it's showing in an August Edinburgh Festival or not.
- Fill in the form Ignore fields if they don't apply.
- Title This is one of the most important elements of the page, in particular as far as the search engines are concerned. We've tried to maintain a consistent format. For Year round and Fringe shows use: [Title]([YYYY]), [Venue], Review e.g. Sound of Music (2016), Edinburgh Playhouse, Review For other festivals start the title with the name of the Festival and then a colon before the title of the show and a comma and the word 'Review'. Venue is not necessary. e.g. "Edinburgh Book Festival: [Title of Show], Review"; and EIF: [Title of Show], Review
- Attach an image This is the place to put your production image for the show. Best format is landscape (as opposed to portrait - portrait images will be cropped). Try to avoid poster/publicity images. Note that there is a file size limit - very big files wont upload.
- Rating out of 5 After much discussion amongst the EG team of reviewers we settled on these guidelines for the star rating system: 1 star: Really not good; 2 star: Not good; 3 star: Pretty good; 4 star: Very good; 5 star: Exceptionally good!
- Venue The venue field should automatically fill itself in as you start typing the name of the venue - so if you type "Trav..." it will complete "Traverse" with a link through to the Traverse venue page. If the venue doesn't appear, just leave it out and an editor will work it out.
- Company Name of the production company - eg theatre company or film company.
- Performers The individual names of the performers in the format: First name Second name (role).
- Production The individual names and roles of the behind-the-scenes people in the same format as above.
- Category This is for Edinburgh show lists and generating pages of related reviews. Choose a category, highlighting each with your mouse, for the festival. If it's the comedy festival then choose Fringe and Comedy festival. You will need to hold down the Control key and click in order to choose typically 1 or 2 categories - choose one for the relevant festival. In the second set of categories choose the genre of review (e.g. theatre:drama, music:rock).
- Running time: the duration of the show from beginning to end including any breaks and encores.
- Body (and Summary): This is the most important part of the page: your review. Keep reviews concise and to the point: 150-250 words is usually sufficient. Highlight the strengths and weaknesses and let the reader know who the show is for.
- The Summary By default, the introductory sentence of the body will be used for the Summary. This will appear in Search results and social media so it's quite important. It's like a standfast, a line summing up the whole article. You should definitely include a summary if the first line is a quotation.
- Don't forget at the end of the show to mention the time of the show. Use italics for the time e.g. Times: 12-25 August, 7.30pm. Tuesday matinee, 2.30pm. Or for more complicated times: Times: 12,13, 16-20, 23-25 August, 2.15pm. 14,15,21,22 August, 1.30pm
Submit the review It may not appear immediately on the front page, but the review should be live immediately and on the frontpage within a few hours. You can check your published work and edit your content by going to My Account and clicking on the activity tab.
If you put out a Tweet include @ediguide on Twitter or @edinburghguide on Facebook for a retweet/like.