Lincoln Castle have turned to social media in order to attract a younger audience to the attraction this weekend.
As part of Discover Lincolnshire Weekend, the castle are offering a free and exclusive tour of the castle’s Victorian prison to users of Instagram this Saturday, known as an Instameet.
The castle hopes that the event will enable to meet with the rest of Lincoln’s Instagram community and explore the castle together.
The castle prison has been a tourist attraction since it ceased operations in 1878.
The castle has promoted the event through its social media channels on Facebook and Twitter, sending out the invite to all the ‘savvy Instagrammers’ in Lincoln. However, the platform for the castle’s event is promoting, Instagram, features little or no mention of the upcoming event. Most of the castle’s social media channels promote the entire Discover Lincolnshire Weekend, offering links to pages that provide more information to particular events.
People who are interested in taking part are being asked by the castle to follow the event by using specific hashtags including #LincolnInstameet and #IGersLincoln, where interested parties are given more information by the organisers.
Visitors to the Castle will receive identification upon arrival to signify their participation in the tour. They will then be given an Instatour around Lincoln Castle and the castle prison by a member of the Friends of Lincoln Castle Prison Group.
Laura Kelman, one of the organisers of the event has claimed that the Instameet is part of the Castle’s plans to appeal to a more youthful audience. “We plan to hold more Instameets during the course of the year.” “We want to increase the amount of interaction we have with our social media users. Using Instagram allows for a different kind of tourism that we hope appeals to a younger audience that is becoming more pre-occupied with their phones.”
What is an Instatour?
As part of an Instatour, Instagram Users will be allowed time during each stop on the tour to take Instagram photos. The photos taken on the tour will be uploaded to Instagram under a common hashtag. The specific hashtag for this particular tour will be #LincolnInstameet where tourists will upload their photos of the Victorian Prison.
How else does Lincoln Castle attempt to attract a younger audience?
Instagram is not the only way Lincoln Castle chooses to interact with its audience. The castle uses social media to promote major upcoming events and encourages visitors to send photos taken at the Castle to their Twitter feed using the hashtag #LincolnCastle.
The Instameet is part of a number of upcoming events held by the castle to encourage a younger audience. However, these events seem to cater towards a more general audience. An upcoming event involving the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party, which is receiving heavier promotion on social media compared to the Instameet, is set to attract families, rather than a youthful audience.
There is hope from Lincoln Castle and Visit Lincoln that this Instameet will attract more Instagram users leading to more social media-focused events in the future. Lincoln Castle is the second most popular tourist attraction in Lincoln behind Lincoln Cathedral, attracting 160,000 people a month.
