Publicity
Publicity Committee members: 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, Susan Lembo
Report From “The Chair” – Paul Fisher
Here are my rambling notes from January.
YouTube
The year started off with a lively discussion with Chris Reimer and the Social Media team on our YouTube channel.
John Lamb also made a detailed proposal on January 11 on taking advantage of the free Google Adword options we have as a non-profit. This needs to be visited by the board and especially the venue champions. Should we put this on the agenda for this month or next month?
Tonight, I googled “contra dance nj” and the first thing that came up was an ad for Country Dance New York (cdny, followed by multiple links to Tern), which led me to raise the question with ST on using the ads. It seems to me like this is something we should do but John needs buy-in from the board before investing the time in filling out the paperwork (a couple of hours). Monthly effort would be less than an hour for tracking and tweaking key words.
John's January 11 proposal also included us moving our email to gmail, which got a lot more reaction. More on this in the Webmaster report below.
Folk Project in the News
A discussion Nancy had with Roberta Burkhart from the NJ Hills newspapers turned into a big connection with Jim King, Pam Robinson, Barrett and Andy Koenig, which became the big print and online article displayed last week at The Minstrel.
http://www.newjerseyhills.com/entertainment/just-folks/article_05e2ac91-ee56-58bf-aec3-35eacadb2aba.html
We have received a request and an offer of help from member Miriam Libove in publicizing the Odessa Klezmer concert with Jewish outlets. Information has been going back and forth on this.
An extra release on the Comas concert was included with the January press release packet.
We need to build a list of our members that take pictures at our events who would be willing to share them for Publicity uses. For example, the Morris County Tourism bureau has asked for high-res event shots (performers, audience and participants). Please email publicitychair@folkproject.org with any suggestions.
Webmaster Report – John Lamb
It has been quite a busy month for the web team.
Due to difficulties we have had with email service through DreamHost, we have long wanted to move email service (but not web hosting service) to a new host. Accordingly, we have been making preparations to run our email through Gmail and hope to make the move in the next couple of weeks.
As part of this move, Folk Project has been accepted for Google Apps for Nonprofits. This can provide any Folk Project member who wants one a free Google for Work account (normally $5 per user per month) with access to many applications (GMail, the online version of Google's office suite, 30 GB of online storage, a Skype-like service and several more things).
Anyone wishing to avail themselves of these services should apply to the webmasters, and we will set you up with a login and password. Our fairly complicated email structure has been duplicated on Gmail and we just need to make some changes in our domain registration so that our email is routed through Google's machines rather than DreamHost's.
Should the board wish to pursue it, the next step after this would be to set up Google AdWords. This would allow us to specify a geographic region and a set of keywords. Whenever someone within that region searches on google.com and enters one of the keywords that we pick, there is a chance that a small ad for our website will be included in the results of the search.
I have used this with other non-profits to increase website traffic by 15% to 20%. This is normally a paid service, but Google offers it for free to nonprofits through their Google Grants program.
We have also been taking care of business as usual. The Getaway section of the site has been completely updated for the upcoming Spring event, we have made minor updates on the Minstrel and Open Stage pages, created the subdomain volunteercalendar.folkproject.org as an easy way to reach the volunteer calendar, and added a new link at the top of most pages for the new YouTube channel. As always, many thanks to Charles, Lori and Allan for all the work they do. Please send any questions, comments or suggestions to webmaster@folkproject.org.
Social Media Coordinator – George Otto
Pending.
Facebook Report – Pam Robinson
Posted a link on both the Page and the Group to the Folk Project's YouTube channel. Keeping fingers crossed that it has helped.
Page:
have almost 1300 Likes
in January the most seen posts were:
1/20/16 a link to the Beppe event
1/30/16 a link to the Out & About article
Group:
have almost 250 Members
Some of the other members of the Group have started posting.
Twitter Report – Jean Scully
Pending.
Merchandising – Margaret Crowl
No updates at this time.
Publicity Happenings
Swingin Tern was to be featured in The Daily Record's TGIF section on January 1 thanks to Nancy putting Bill Nutt in touch with Leigh and Doug providing photos. The article was to cover Tern and its 32nd anniversary and contra dancing in general. Hopefully we picked up some newcomers!
Online
• The Folk Project continues to be listed by the Morris County Tourism Bureau (morristourism.org).
▪ They have Uke Fest pictures on “our” page and can use new ones.
• NJARTS.net continues to list most Minstrel events and Special Concerts.
• JerseyArts.com is listing most Minstrel, Special Concerts and Swingin' Tern events.
• The Daily Record has listings for Minstrel concerts and Special Concerts.
• The Beppe Gambetta concert and the Comas Special Concert were given prominent mention in the newsletter of the Bluegrass and Old Time Music Association (BOTMA).
• NJ Skylands listed the Beppe Gambetta concert on their calendar.
• Morris County (morriscountynj.gov/about/arts) provides a link to our web page on their website.
◦ They also include some of our events in their e-newsletter (seen by Kathy Caccavale).
◦ They prominently featured Beppe Gambetta's show (including a picture) in the newsletter.
In Print
• The New York Times listed Tern in the Metropolitan section Calendar on 12/27/15.
• Vicinity Magazine included Minstrel, Special Concerts and Tern calendar events for February.
• Listings were seen in a number of local outlets, including Ledger Local.
Working with Performers and Their Publicists
• We are coordinating with Odessa Klezmer on Jewish outlets for publicity for their concert.
On the Radio
• Nancy has updated our radio list again this month.
Other Items
• Mountainside Library posted both Minstrel and Tern flyers on their bulletin board.