PUBLICITY

Publicity Committee Report

2 June 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, Jean Scully and Cathy Ballard

Webmaster Report – John Lamb

Your web team provided support for many of Folk Project's activities in May and the coming months. We posted schedules for the Acoustic Getaway and published updates regarding ticket availability as the event filled up. (Congratulations to the Getaway Committee for producing another memorable weekend, by the way.) We also updated the page for the upcoming Uke New Jersey Too! and set up registration capability for that event through Constant Contact, which has proven an efficient way to sell tickets and collect information for complex, multi-day events. We assisted Swingin' Tern with entering and correcting information about their Special Dance on June 27. We also cleaned up a typo or two spotted by our eagle-eyed publicity chair in the Minstrel calendar. Although not directly related to the website, we completed a major rewrite of the Tally Sheet used at Minstrel. The Tally Sheet employs some of the same technologies as our website, so we leverage the experience of the web team to help make life a little easier for the Head Staff, Minstrel Chair and Treasurer in tracking attendance and accounting for income and expenses. As always, many thanks to my team of Allan Kugel, Lori Falco and Charles Lamb, without whom our website would be a far more modest and much less interesting affair. Please direct all questions, concerns and suggestions to webmaster@folkproject.org.

Facebook Report – Pam Robinson

TIn May we have gotten 12 new likes and we are now up to 962 "Likes".

When we post to the wall it seem to generate more folks actually looking at the page. So various Content Creators keep those posts coming.

The two posts that got the most "buzz" in May were the 5/4/14 Sycamore Slough post which was seen by 434 people in the first 24 hours and the 5/15/14 Getaway next weekend post which was seen by 533 people.

Twitter Report – Jean Scully

Pending.

@TheFolkProject is now live on Twitter.

Report From “The Chair” – Paul Fisher

Another complex month with some improvements but not a lot of details to report.

Assistance was provided to Bill Nutt for additional fotos and contacts for interviews for John Gorka and Rich Deans. Communication between Minstrel and Publicity on this kind of request is important to prevent too many people contacting performers at the same time. We were also asked for foto credits for when the pictures are published. This is useful information to know for the future. This produced some good copy in the Daily Record.

http://www.dailyrecord.com/story/entertainment/music/2014/05/30/rich-deans-play-morristown/9663539/

http://www.dailyrecord.com/story/news/local/2014/05/30/fun-things-morris-county-weekend/9764387/

The Bucky Pizzarelli Minstrel concert was featured on the front page (with photo) of the NJ

Jazz Society magazine, Jersey Jazz.

The Publcity Committee requests that Special Concerts prepare a Uke Fest flier for distribution as soon as possible.

The Sycamore Slough Minstrel Concert made the New York Times.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/04/nyregion/events-in-new-jersey-for-may-4-10-2014.html

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

Nancy continues to be very helpful with ideas, suggestions and reminders.

Other news:

· 500 new business cards were printed and some were distributed.

· There is one box at The Minstrel, Paul has another.

· Early notice was sent to the committee of the July 1^st increase in ticket price at The Minstrel in order to accommodate outlets with longer lead times.

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Online

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

· Minstrel event was listed in njskylands.com.

· Folk Project events listed on northjersey.com

In Print

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Working with Performers and Their Publicists

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On the Radio

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

· Some performers have been sent lists of media contacts for their own outreach efforts.

Other Items

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