Publicity

Publicity Committee Report

1 March 2015

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

February has been a busy month for the web team, working toward three major events coming up over the next several months. We have provided help with a press release relating to Folk Project being named 2015 Outstanding Arts Organization by Morris Arts. We have created a web page and helped kick off advance volunteer ticket sales for the Minstrel's 40th Anniversary Concert. Charles has updated the Getaway section of the site, and prepared for the opening of registration for the upcoming Getaway.

We continue to try to improve email on several fronts: Allan worked to decrease the amount of automated spam sent via our form-based email pages by requiring the person using the form to answer a simple question. We are working with DreamHost tech support to identify why some email sent via fullboard@olkproject.com bounces, and to prevent it from happening in the future. Lori made some updates to the fullboard list that were not completed last month.

With the weather not being very cooperative, there were a couple of emergency updates for an Evening of Music and a Swingin' Tern Dance. Speaking of Evenings of Music, we completed the name change back from Home Made Music Party on several pages of the site.

As always, many thanks to my team of Allan, Barb, Charles and Lori. Please direct any questions, concerns or suggestions towebmaster@folkproject.org.

Facebook Report – Pam Robinson

The new Group, The Minstrel Acoustic Concert Series has been off to a slow start. We are up to 68 members. (not bad for the 1st month)However, folks are not yet posting within the Group.

The Events that have been posted are starting to pick up some steam and folks are seeing, joining, sharing and inviting their friends, keep it up. Tern Folkproject has 54 friends.

The Folk Project's FB page has 1125 Likes.

The 19 Posts to the Wall in February, we reached between 40 and 190 people each.

We have also had as many as 15 people visiting our page on any single day in February with the average being around 8 or 9.

Twitter Report – Jean Scully

Pending

Report From “The Chair” – Paul Fisher

A very hectic and busy month with a lot of discussions and activities around our two big upcoming events (Morris Arts Award and the 40^th Anniversary Concert).

We got our normal release out and are trying to be ready and/or move now with support of both the Morris Arts Award and the Tom Paxton concert. Publicity is working closely with the Ad-Hoc Committee on the Morris Art event.

We have received some new advice from Pam Turner, who has been helping with the Morris Arts planning. Hopefully, she will become a regular contributor to the Committee.

Pam's new Facebook work is solidifying (see her report above). We need people to join The Minstrel Acoustic Concert group (this you “join”, you don't “Like”).

We are still considering the options of taking adds with Fun New Jersey and The Morris County Tourism Bureau (the latter we have done for at least two years). We have been asked to consider taking a membership in njskylands.com, which often posts our events. This will be revisited as soon as things calm down from our special events.

We need to prepare and print new business cards.

Nancy has been gearing up for the EastRiver Chinese Ensemble in June by trying to create a Chinese niche listing for outreach. If you have any ideas, please share them via email. We are considering writing an additional special press release for this list.

There is a big backlog of things to get done in the very near future, so I will end this report here.

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.

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

· The Minstrel events are listed in MorristownGreen.com

In Print

· Listings were seen in a number of local outlets.

Working with Performers and Their Publicists

On the Radio

Other Items

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