Publicity Report

From Webmaster John Lamb:

Festival registrations are now being accepted on the website. There have been some glitches that we are investigating and it seems to be working only half the time. Four people have reported a problem when trying to register online. They were able to register by contacting the registrar and sending their materials through US Mail. Fixing this problem is now the web team's highest priority.

By popular request, a search feature has been added to the home page. This feature uses Google, but searches only within the folkproject.org site.

Online notifications for the electronic version of the newsletter are now being handled through Constant Contact. The messages use the standard header from the website in order to help reinforce our brand identity. I am working with Rick Thomas to integrate the maintenance of the eNewsletter mailing list with his membership database, and to use Constant Contact to send out reminders to those whose membership has recently expired.

For next month, I will be working on a new web page that collects links to all of the other possible sign up pages throughout the site. Someone interested in signing up for the Minstrelgram, for example, will also be given the opportunity on the same page to sign up as a volunteer, to sign up for Swingin' Tern announcements, Special Concert announcements and so forth.

Thanks once again to Lori Falco and Allan Kugel for their work on the site. As always, we welcome questions, suggestions and comments to webmaster@folkproject.org.

From Publicity Chairman Nancy Kelner:

The publicity committee worked hard this past month to “get the word out.” Thanks to all the committee members.

NJ Monthly magazine did indeed run a story about the Folk Project in its August issue. The story is also on their website. The link is http://njmonthly.com/articles/lifestyle/keeping-the-coffeehouse-spirit-alive.html The only difference between the print story and the Internet story is that there are photo credits in the Internet story.

Got an email through the FP website from Ian Murphy of the Caffe Lena History Project.

This is a non-profit initiative in assocuation with the Library of Congress and GRAMMY Foundation. The aim of this project is to document and preserve the recorded history of Caffe Lena, America's oldest continuously running folk music coffeehouse. I offered to put a short article in the next FP bulletin. For more information, go to www.caffelenahistory.org.

Tony Mottola, editor of the NJ Jazz Society newsletter, offered to publicize the October Frank Vignola Minstrel concert in the next NJJS newsletter.

I am working on reducing the number of paper flyers we mail out each month. The goal is to make all publicity electronic.

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