PUBLICITY

Publicity Committee Report

30 November 2014

Publicity Committee members: Alicia Weimer, Jeff Saxton, Jim Gartner, Jim King, Joanne Cronin, John Lamb, Michael Mitsch, Nancy Kelner, Pam Robinson, Pat Brangs, Paul Fisher, Loretta Brooks, Susan Lembo, Jean Scully and Cathy Ballard

Webmaster Report – John Lamb

November has been another reasonably quiet month for the web team with Lori handling much of what was done. Special event pages were created for the MUF benefit concert and the New Year's Eve dance. Minor tweaks were made on the home page and the main Minstrel page. Several of our email lists have been updated. After last month's mention that Getaway was considering designing its own website, a lot of discussion ensued via email. Mark is reconsidering how he wishes to handle the Getaway web presence. We have installed WordPress to determine whether that might be a possible alternative to Wix, the solution Mark was considering. The web and Getaway teams are welcome to explore the possibilities by accessing

dev.folkproject.org/wordpress/

The administrator login ID and password are available from John Lamb. As always, thanks to my team of Lori, Charles and Allan. Please send questions, comments and suggestions to webmaster@folkproject.org.

Facebook Report – Pam Robinson

In 2014 we hit the 1,000 mark in the number of "like"s for the FolkProject's FaceBook page.

The single most seen post to the page was the post of the Halloween Photo Album, it was seen by over 3,000 people. The 2nd most seen post to the page was the post of the "Event" for the Special Concert of the Sycamore Slough String Band, it was seen by 1,000 people.

Overall the page is doing well. Keep those photos coming.

Twitter Report – Jean Scully

Pending

Report From “The Chair” – Paul Fisher

The committee continues to function smoothly, getting out releases as needed when the chair provides them on time.

Paul went to NERFA and attended workshops related to publicity, including an interesting one on the use of social media.

Other news:

· An additional special press release was added to publicize the MUF benefit.

Online

· The Minstrel continues to be frequently listed among the Top Ten Monthly Events by the Morris County Tourism Bureau.

· All of our events were posted to the northjersey.com calendar.

· New listings on Maplewood Online.

· Jay Lustig has left the Star Ledger and begun a new web presence, NJARTS.net. We are listed.

In Print

· Listings were seen in a number of local outlets.

Working with Performers and Their Publicists

On the Radio

· Bill Nutt interviewed Lucy Kaplansky on WNTI.

· Can be read and heard here:

· http://wnti.org/post/bill-nutt-interviews-singer-songwriter-lucy-kaplansky

Other Items

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December 1, 2014

End of Year Publicity Report

Webmaster Report – John Lamb (Web Committee - Allan Kugel, Lori Falco, Charles Lamb)

2014 has seen many minor improvements to the website and a few large ones in support of nearly all of The Folk Project's activities. We gave the Minstrel calendar page a way to link to performer videos. We made incremental improvements to tools used by Minstrel, Swingin Tern and Special Concerts when they enter information about the events that they produce. We added a Carousel feature to the home page to address the issue of having enough space to feature more than one or two events when our calendar fills up. We completely redesigned the membership signup page to make that process much easier than it had been. We are helping Getaway investigate ways that will allow them to update both the content and the format of their web presence by using a web page editor or a content management system. We helped move registration for Uke New Jersey over to the Constant Contact system used by Getaway. We provided links to the extensive YouTube presence maintained by Horses Sing None of It. We helped the publicity team filter out dozens of unwanted messages sent their way every day. We instituted improved security measures throughout the site Many thanks are due to Allan Kugel, Lori Falco and Charles Lamb for all their hard work on the site. Comments, questions and concerns may be sent to webmaster@folkproject.org.

Facebook Report – Pam Robinson

In 2014 we hit the 1,000 mark in the number of "like"s for the FolkProject's FaceBook page. (This time last year, it was at 850. – PF)

Overall the page is doing well. Keep those photos coming.

Twitter Report – Jean Scully

Pending

Chairman’s Report – Paul Fisher

December 2013 - Publicity Committee members: Alice Weimer, Jeff Saxton, Jim Gartner, Jim King, Joanne Cronin, John Lamb, Karen Justin, Loretta Brooks, Michael Mitsch, Nancy Kelner, Pam Robinson, Pat Brangs, Paul Fisher (13)

December 2014 – Publicity Committee members: Alice Weimer, Cathy Ballard, Deborah Graham, Jean Scully, Jeff Saxton, Jim Gartner, Jim King, Joanne Cronin, John Lamb, Loretta Brooks, Michael Mitsch, Nancy Kelner, Pam Robinson, Pat Brangs, Paul Fisher, Susan Lembo (16)

The members of the publicity committee who were not in charge of the Folk Project website, the FaceBook page or Twitter worked very hard in 2014, gathering and posting performer photos, writing press releases, emailing information to newspapers, magazines, and websites, posting events to Internet calendars, mailing fliers, and suggesting and working with radio stations, all in an effort to “get the word out.”

Twitter is new for this year and has the potential to reach large numbers of people who might follow performers or venues.

We have also started moving in the direction of getting more access to radio. Susan Lembo did this initially for the Getaway but we will be moving to doing it more generally (though less intensely). A lot was learned there about where to invest time and money.

We have been working more closely with performers' publicists, arranging interviews for both radio and print on a regular basis. We provide lists of our outlets (print, radio and TV) to all that request them.

We again provided press passes for 2014 to several journalists. We have developed good relationships with several of them, notably Jennifer Nelson of the Daily Record, Gwen Orel of the Irish Examiner, Bill Nutt of the Daily Record, Tony Mottola of the NJ Jazz Society’s Jazz Journal, and Kevin Coughlin of Morristown Green.

These have turned into increased coverage of many of our events including The Minstrel, Special Concerts and Uke NJ II. The Bucky Pizzarelli concert was featured (with photo) on the front page of the NJ Jazz Society magazine, Jersey Jazz. The Sycamore Slough Minstrel Concert made the New York Times.

We are frequently listed in the “Top Ten” events of the month in the Morris County Tourism Bureau’s email blasts which go to more than 5000 people. We are also often listed in The Collection, Vicinity Magazine and the Independent Press.

Last year's interaction with PCK Media, which has taped nonprofit organizations for PBS television turned into taping and broadcasting part of the Dec. 27, 2013 Shockenaw Mountain Boys performance, which was broadcast on NJTV at the end of January.

Arrangements were made last year for several radio stations this year to give away Minstrel passes for selected concerts. These included WNTI (Centenary College), WPRB (Princeton University), WMSU (Montclair State University), and WFDU (Fairleigh Dickinson University). Response was not great.

We will be looking into going a little more outside of our immediate area with radio outreach to stations which reach a larger folk audience, such as WFUV-FM (Fordham University, The Bronx).

Participation in both the Mini-NERFA and the big NERFA conferences provided insights on using new things like social media.

Spent some money on advertising this year. Radio Station WNTI required us to buy air time to get some interviews and coverage, so we purchased a total of 15 air spots for $100. We also spent $100 with WDVR for the same type of coverage.

New, updated business cards were also printed but more updates and new cards are needed once again.

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