PUBLICITY

Publicity Committee Report

February 2014

2 Feb 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 and Cathy Ballard

Webmaster Report – John Lamb

It has been a busy month for the web team. We held a meeting to discuss the status of work in progress and make plans for the coming months. Among the many issues addressed:

- support for a graphic designer who contacted the Schaffers about volunteering to improve the Festival portion of the site. We have provided some ground rules and resources to permit this effort to go forward.

- improvements to site security that are underway

- early work on a formal issue tracking system to help us document what needs to be done and what has been accomplished

- support for the Zed music series that has been added to the site

- ideas for providing more real estate on the home page when multiple special events are scheduled within a short period

- better documentation for the site as it exists today

- ideas for integration of video links to the Minstrel calendar, a feature which Mike Agranoff has long requested

- periodic backups for the site and its associated databases

- better use of Constant Contact to replace older home-grown methods of maintaining mailing lists

- better support for small-screen mobile browsers (smartphones and tablets, mainly) and how to get the site to know when such devices are being used

There has also been the normal month-to-month activity, such as making minor updates to various Swingin' Tern and special event pages, updating email forwarding lists for the board, and updating emergency alert messages in response to inclement weather. As always, many thanks to team members Allan Kugel, Lori Falco and CharlesLamb for their hard work. Please send any suggestions, questions or comments to webmaster@folkproject.org

Facebook Report – Pam Robinson

Report pending

Paul's observation: “Likes” rose to 886.

Chairman’s Report – Paul Fisher

Paul's tenure was off to a rocky start because of personal and health issues but things are starting to get better. Paul is still learning the job and getting schedules right. Some reports/releases went out late. These will be prepared and sent out earlier this month.

Nancy has been very helpful prodding Paul when something is being overlooked.

Online

· NorthJersey.com has listed our March events.

· A release on the Spring Festival has been sent to NJMonthly.com

· Initial problems with the NJ Family site listings were corrected for this month.

· Skylands Visitor (njskylands.com) listed two January events online. February events have not yet been listed.

· MorrisTourism.org listed our February events and included our January 31^st show in the Top Ten.

· Hunterdon.Happening.com has listed our Festival under “outdoor events” in the voting for “most happening”. We don't know who submitted this.

In Print

· The February 2014 Issue of the Acoustic Guitar magazine listed the Folk Project, with a general description of our festivals (including the Fall 2013 performers) as THE NJ selection for an article called “50 States, 50 Must-Attend Events”. We should try to see if this generates any responses. The article is now online and a link was sent out to the board. http://www.acousticguitar.com/News-Features/Roadside-Americana-50-States-50-Must-Attend-Events/Roadside-Americana-New-Hampshire-Ohio

· The Daily Record put Jean Rohe's performance one week too early. We were not able to reach the correct person for an update before the actual show and no subscriber reported as to whether or not it was in the TGIF section the following week.

· Paul has found that Acoustic Guitar Magazine has a new events page on their website and has entered one or two Minstrel shows there. The intention is to begin to update it as new shows are added. Any subscriber interested in taking on this task would be welcome. For now, Paul will take care of it.

· Pat followed up and found that it must be a subscriber that inputs events.

· Paul is a subscriber and will do it for now.

· Do we wish to get a sub for the Folk Project?

· The to view the list, you do not need to subscribe:

· http://www.acousticguitar.com/Events?utm_source=SilverpopMailing&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=AG%20Weekly%201.13.13%20(1)&utm_content=&spMailingID=8126199&spUserID=NTE3ODQ4MDYwNTMS1&spJobID=196170438&spReportId=MTk2MTcwNDM4S0

·

Working with Performers and Their Publicists

· Requests from several performers for contact information and radio lists has been received and is being worked on. · Most are farther out in the calendar.

On the Radio

· There is an ongoing discussion on connecting Minstrel performers with local radio stations and how to most effectively provide promotional CDs.

·

Other Items

· Nancy is looking at redoing our business cards and will have a draft for review.

· She has identified a place to get it done

· She is working on updating event names and contact numbers.

· A shortage of cards at MUF has led to the identifying of several boxes in other places, so the urgency is less.

· Press passes for 2014 are being distributed and reconsidered.

· Some callers to The Minstrel phone number have mentioned where they saw the listing and Mike suggested that we figure out a way to track this to see if we get enough volume to learn something from the data.

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