PUBLICITY

Publicity Committee Report

1 September 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

August has been a fairly quiet month for the web team. There have been some updates to the Getaway and Swingin' Tern pages, a few tweaks to the Special Concerts editor page to make it a little less frustrating to use, and some assistance rendered to members who were receiving a lot of spam through the publicity@folkproject.org address. Otherwise, most of the site seems to be working pretty well. As always, many thanks to the team of Allan, Lori and Charles. Please send questions, comments and suggestions to webmaster@folkproject.org.

Facebook Report – Pam Robinson (slightly edited by Pub Chair)

FaceBook Stats for August 2014

In August our FolkProject admins posted 14 posts to our Wall

there have been 154* "likes" or "comments" to those 14 posts.

The 14 posts were seen by 4,405 people** for an average of 315 seeing each post.

We currently have 1,014 persons who "Like" our page.

* Some people "liked" or "commented" on more than one post, so in some instances the same person has been counted more than once.

** FaceBook counts each posts reach separately, so it is possible that it could be counting any specific person multiple times. FaceBook Stats for August 2014

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. There has been a lot more proactive activity, with people raising issues and questions and all those involved following up on them. Some good promise there.

We received an offer for help from someone who has worked in media and I am waiting for her to follow up with an email (I gave her my card).

We also will follow up with Susan Lembo specifically on improving radio access. Susan has been working closely with the Getaway team on promotion.

We have been working more closely with publicists for performers. Maybe the recent performers have more active publicity teams or maybe this is becoming more widespread than in the past. In any case, local contact info has been passed to performer's PR teams and more interviews are taking place in advance of performances.

We are gearing up for the Halloween concert and the Special Concert with Jonathan Edwards and Lucy Kaplansky.

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

Other news:

Online

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

· Our uke fest was listed in njskylands.com.

· Folk Project events listed on northjersey.com

· Several Minstrel events and Uke 2 NJ have been posted on http://www.njartsmaven.com/.

· A great write-up of the Open Stage was posted here: http://jillcagney.wordpress.com/2014/08/10/an-entirely-different-kind-of-evening-at-the-minstrel-open-stage/

· The Minstrel got a short one-liner on Princeton On Line, an outlet we have been thinking of dropping. Following the links, it was actually a listing for the Friday night Uke Fest concert with corrrect pricing but incorrect time. No September listings have been added yet.

· The Bluegrass and Oldtime Musica Association (BOTMA) dedicated a big chunk of their mid-August email newsletter to the Uke Fest.

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

· MorristownGreen.com did a good writeup prior to the Uke Fest.

· http://morristowngreen.com/2014/08/26/uke-new-jersey-too-holiday-guarantees-with-no-strings-attached-aug-29-30-in-morris-township/

· MorristownGreen.com followed up with a great post-Fest writeup:

· http://morristowngreen.com/2014/08/30/hooping-it-up-at-uke-nj-fest-in-morris-township/

· Bill Nutt at The Daily Record did a big write-up prior to Uke Fest.

· It was noted that publicity@folkproject.org has been getting hit with a lot of spam emails lately. The web team provided suggestions on how to mitigate the annoyance using gmail, which filters it effectively.

In Print

Working with Performers and Their Publicists

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.

· A discussion is ongoing about providing free tickets to The Minstrel to a small group of radio stations (such as WFDU, used by a number of other venues this way) for giveaways.

Other Items

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