Publicity

ANNUAL REPORT

December 2015 – Publicity Committee members: Alicia Weimer, Deborah Graham, Eileen Napolitano, George Otto, Jean Scully, Jeff Saxton, Jim Gartner, Jim King, Joanne Cronin, John Lamb, Loretta Brooks, Margaret Crowl, Michael Mitsch, Nancy Kelner, Olga Alvarez, Pam Robinson, Pat Brangs, Paul Fisher, Susan Lembo (19)

December 2016 – Publicity Committee members: Kathi Caccavale, Alicia Weimer, Deborah Graham, Eileen Napolitano, George Otto, Howard Goldman, Jean Scully, Jim Gartner, Jim King, Joanne Cronin, John Lamb, Loretta Brooks, Michael Mitsch, Nancy Kelner, Olga Alvarez, Pam Robinson, Pat Brangs, Paul Fisher (18)

The Publicity Committee remains busy.

We continue to support our venues with monthly publication of press releases to web, print and media outlets.

Print outlets seem to be going away as the newspaper world contracts. We lost the New York Times as an outlet this year when they stopped doing NJ listings.

Web outlets are increasing and many of them are going to a paying, subscription or membership model for financing. The Folk Project has joined or continues to be a member of Morris County Tourism Bureau and njarts.net.

Feedback from Committee members and others report that our listings are often seen on sites like njarts.net, jerseyarts.com, newjerseyhills.com, The Daily Record, Morristown Green and others. In print, Star Ledger Local, NJ Hills and Vicinity Magazine also frequently list our events. Morristown Green often has in-depth articles both prior to and after big events, so your clicks there would be a way to show our appreciation.

Coordination with Special Concerts has improved and we have put out additional press releases for concerts and the Uke Fest.

This year has seen a lot more interaction with performer publicists.

Thanks to Liz Pagan’s design, we have some very nice, new, professional business cards. If you need a few to keep in your wallet, there are always some at The Minstrel or Paul can provide more for our venues.

The Web Team added a new member and was very busy moving to a new email server and collecting new data web activity. As part of our move to Google, we took advantage of an offer for some free Google Ads for non-profits.

Our Social Media Team got our YouTube channel in gear, gaining enough likes to earn our “vanity” channel name (“Folk Project Video”). There you can find playlists related to Swingin’ Tern, The Getaway, The Minstrel and Special Concerts. Also, we have subscribed to six other channels, so our channel is a place to find good sources of other folk music. There are places for Discussion and links to our websites and social media.

Social Media also set up a Hootsuite account to track our Social Media activity.

Our Facebook Page has 1476 Likes and that our posts reach up to 4000 people each month. Also, our Facebook Group has 345 members.

Publicity supported having a table during two of the Meet Me in Morristown monthly events. Participation by members was good but issues with placement and competition with other music from the central stage proved to complicate the activity a lot.

The Publicity Committee has been growing in unexpected ways.

Merchandise, which has very sporadic activity mostly centered on sales at Getaway, reports through our committee. In that regard, Margaret has stepped down as head of Merch. During her tenure, we acquired new mugs, new bumper stickers, a resupply of Rise Up Singing books and our first shipments of the new Rise Again! book (all of which make great holiday gifts). Kathi Caccavale has stepped up to help out with interim storage for our mugs, books, t-shirts and bumper stickers.

Jim King, who produces our monthly in-depth press releases, has had health problems for most of this year and is mostly house-bound. He appreciates hearing from people by email, so drop him a line at jkloudmouth2007@embarqmail.com !

There are always more opportunities but never enough time!

Webmaster Report – John Lamb

(Web Committee - Allan Kugel, Lori Falco, Charles Lamb, Fil Wisneski)

Notable achievements this year included adding a talented new team member in Fil Wisneski, moving our email system from DreamHost to Gmail thus eliminating many problems caused by the DreamHost email system, the addition of Google AdWords and Google Analytics to our toolkit, and tighter integration between the website and Constant Contact.

Stats from Google Analytics usage (2/12/2016 - 12/1/2016):

Total Sessions - 28,274

Total Users - 16,797

Total Pageviews - 64,965

Pages per Session - 2.3

Average Session Duration 1:44

Sessions due to returning users - 40.6%

Sessions referred from Google AdWords - 2,294 (8.1%)

Top referring sites - the FP Facebook page (529), newjerseybluegrass.org (222), contradancelinks.com (202)

We reached users in 107 countries on 6 continents.

Our most frequently visited pages were the home page (18,328 pageviews), the Minstrel calendar (12,856) and the Getaway main page (3,741).

Stats from Google AdWords usage (2/11/2016 - 12/1-2016):

Total Ad Impressions in search results - 132,772

Total clicks - 2,054

Click through ratio - 1.55%

Average ad position - 2.3

Total cost (the service is free to us via a grant from Google, but otherwise it would have cost this much) - $2,186.50

Cost per click - $1.06

As always, many thanks to Lori, Charles, Allan and FiL for the work they do. Keep those inquiries and suggestions coming to webmaster@folkproject.org.

Social Media Coordinator Annual Report – George Otto

Pending

Facebook Report – Pam Robinson

Facebook Page -

So far in 2016 the FPs Facebook Page has gotten 187 new Likes and has lost 7. Bringing us to a total of 1,476 Likes.

The Page has seen some ups and downs over the year. Pam cut back on the number of Events that were created and that had a negative impact on the number of people that the Page reached.

At the beginning of the 4th quarter Kathi Caccavale took over creating Events and there has been an upswing in the number of folks who are seeing the Page and the various Events.

Facebook Group -

The Group is up to 345 Members.

More members than ever have been posting to the Group.

Twitter Report – Jean Scully

Pending.

Merchandising

We have lots of inventory.

• There are quite a few of the light blue t-shirts available at discount prices.

• We now restocked Rise Up Singing books, which are available at close to cost.

• We have also restocked the new Rise Again! Books, which bring an additional 1200 or so songs. Also available at close to cost as a service to our members and guests.

• We have new mugs available.

• We have a new supply of bumper stickers for your cars and instrument cases.

MONTHLY REPORT

Publicity Committee members: Kathi Caccavale, Alicia Weimer, Deborah Graham, Eileen Napolitano, George Otto, Howard Goldman, Jean Scully, Jim Gartner, Jim King, Joanne Cronin, John Lamb, Loretta Brooks, Margaret Crowl, Michael Mitsch, Nancy Kelner, Olga Alvarez, Pam Robinson, Pat Brangs, Paul Fisher

Report From “The Chair” – Paul Fisher

Not a lot of specifics for this month. Most of the general information is included in the End of Year report.

Things move along fairly well but I have not enough time to move forward on some of the new activities we should be doing (new outlets, etc.).

We need to find ways to promote our Social Media more.

Kathi Caccavale will be storing our Merch in Madison, so it will be well cared for and safe.

Webmaster Report – John Lamb

After a couple of slow months, web team activity picked up again in November.

Charles updated the Getaway pages to remove information about the fall Getaway and prep for spring 2017. Lori and Allan pitched in on numerous tweaks while I was away, including updates to the carousel, the Swingin' Tern page and to address some problem reports with the calendar editors for Minstrel and Swingin' Tern. We also provided a new sub-domain for the New Years Eve Dance, nye.swingintern.org, made updates throughout the site to highlight the coming changes in time and admission price for Minstrel, changed some references in the database from Festival to Getaway so that they would show up correctly in the Projections feature on most pages, and made the usual requested updates to email addresses.

Stats from Google AdWords and Analytics for the calendar month of October (since they could not be included in last month's report that was due before the end of that month):

User sessions - 2510 for an average of 81.0 per day representing a 12.7% decrease over the previous month. Fewest (40) on October 30, most (172) on October 21.

Total number of unique Users - 1858, a 5.4% decrease over the previous month. Returning users accounted for 39.6% of all sessions.

Total page views - 5606, down 7.5% over the previous month, for an average of 2.2 pages per session

Average session duration - 1 minute 33 seconds. This is down by 1.1% over the previous month.

Google AdWords traffic accounted for 379 sessions, or a rather remarkable 15.1% of the total.

Notable numbers of references to us from other sites included newjerseystage.com (26 sessions), contradancelinks.com (23 sessions) and three others tied at 20 sessions each.

We reached users in 46 countries on 6 continents.

Our most frequently visited pages were the home page (2586 page views), the Minstrel calendar page (1213) and the Getaway main page (370). The following also got at least 100 page views for the month: the Swingin' Tern page, the newsletter download page and the Minstrel open stage page.

Stats from Google AdWords and Analytics for the calendar month of November::

User sessions - 2701 for an average of 90.0 per day representing a 11.1% increase over the previous month. Fewest (55) on November 8, most (200) on November 21.

Total number of unique Users - 1848, a 0.5% decrease over the previous month. Returning users accounted for 42.5% of all sessions.

Total page views - 6609, up 17.9% over the previous month, for an average of 2.5 pages per session

Average session duration - 1 minute 36 seconds. This is up by 3.2% over the previous month.

Google AdWords traffic accounted for 331 sessions, or 12.3% of the total.

Notable numbers of references to us from other sites included newjerseybluegrass.org (30 sessions), our Facebook page (25 sessions), and contradancelinks.com (25 sessions).

We reached users in 45 countries on 6 continents.

Our most frequently visited pages were the home page (1472 pageviews), the Minstrel calendar page (1131) and the Swingin' Tern page (384). The following also got at least 100 page views for the month: the newsletter download page, the HSNOI page, the Getaway page, and the Special Concerts page.

Social Media Coordinator – George Otto

Pending.

Facebook Report – Pam Robinson

Facebook Page -

So far in 2016 the FPs Facebook Page has gotten 187 new Likes and has lost 7. Bringing us to a total of 1,476 Likes.

The Page has seen some ups and downs over the year. Pam cut back on the number of Events that were created and that had a negative impact on the number of people that the Page reached.

At the beginning of the 4th quarter Kathi Caccavale took over creating Events and there has been an upswing in the number of folks who are seeing the Page and the various Events.

Facebook Group -

The Group is up to 345 Members.

More members than ever have been posting to the Group.

Twitter Report – Jean Scully

Pending.

Merchandising

Kathi Caccavale has offered to provide a safe place to store our merch.

Pam has offered for us to have a FP Merch table at the Holiday Benefit show for MUUF.

Publicity Happenings

Online

• Most of the usual outlets have been covering our events.

In Print

• Most of the usual outlets have been covering our events.

Paul Fisher