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

The New York Times eliminated the regional editions of the Metropolitan section on 8/28, which includes local arts listings from the paper. ArtPride New Jersey organized a petition and leading a discussion on what a response should look like. http://www.artpridenj.com/2016/08/discontinuation-of-nj-metro-section-of-ny-times-harms-nj-arts/

ArtPride New Jersey is having a 30 year celebration on Nov 11 and is looking for musicians, storytellers, dancers, poets and actors to do a 3-5 minute performance. Apply here by September 30th. http://www.surveygizmo.com/s3/2993578/30th-Anniversary-Party-Call-for-Performers Should we add this to the web and newsletter or a member email?

Working with Brother Sun’s publicist for the September 9th show.

We have a few new outlets which we need to find committee member volunteers to handle each month.

Thanks to all of you that make this happen every month!

Webmaster Report – John Lamb

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

Charles updated the Getaway pages to add a new performer. Lori and Allan pitched in on numerous tweaks while I was away, including updates for the Muriel Anerson Special Concert, the Swingin' Tern flyer, removing Uke Fest from the carousel and performing the usual updates to various email addresses. We also provided a new subdomain and a link to the Minstrel survey, removed the special alerts regarding the change in Minstrel start times, made a minor correction to the August meeting notes, renewed the domain registration for folkproject.org for another two years, added a Frank Ruck song to the jukebox at the bottom of the home page and fixed a typo on the Minstrel calendar spotted by the sharp eyes of Nancy Kelner. Congratulations to Fil Wisneski on a well-designed page in support of a well-run Uke Fest.

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

User sessions - 2742 for an average of 88.5 per day representing a 10.8% decrease over last month. Fewest (60) on August 3, most (171) on August 19.

Total number of unique Users - 1948, a 5.7% decrease over last month. Returning users accounted for 41.5% of all sessions.

Total page views - 5617, down 16% over last month, for an average of 2.1 pages per session

Average session duration - 1 minute 32 seconds. This is down by 14% over last month.

I believe we had a slow traffic month due to vacations, and hope that things will pick up in September.

Google AdWords traffic accounted for 171 sessions, or 6.2% of the total.

Notable numbers of references to us from other sites included our Facebook page (88 sessions), contradancelinks.com (26 sessions) and visitnj.org (22).

We reached users in 45 countries on 6 continents.

Our most frequently visited pages are the home page (1873 pageviews), the Minstrel calendar page (1151) and the Swingin' Tern page (322). The following also got at least 100 page views for the month: the Getaway main page and the newsletter download page.

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 – George Otto

Pending.

Facebook Report – Pam Robinson

Looking for another person to help with Posting and Event Creation on the FaceBook Page.

Otherwise, all is well on the interwebs.

Twitter Report – Jean Scully

Pending.

Merchandising – Margaret Crowl

Nothing to report.

Publicity Happenings

Online

• Frequent listings, some with very good placement in njarts.org.

• Morristown Green (morristowngreen.com) has done extensive reporting on the Uke Fest including articles and videos.

• nj.com listed the Uke Fest in an article on “8 Great Events to Check Out in NJ this Weekend” http://www.nj.com/entertainment/index.ssf/2016/08/8_great_events_to_attend_this_weekend_in_nj.html

• The Morris County Tourism Bureau gave prominent listing for the River Drivers show in an email blast.

• FolkTalk magazine (http://betherenowfestival.com/folktalk.htm) has a prominent listing of the Calan concert coming up this month.

• The NY Times online listing for “In the Towns, New Jersey” listed the Uke Fest and they even contacted Nancy to confirm that it was still on.

• Princeton On Line, which we had been considering dropping as an outlet for lack of inclusion, gave a listing on the Uke Fest in their email newsletter. http://www.princetonol.com/newsletter/201608-newsletter.html

In Print

• The September issue of Vicinity magazine has listed all special concerts, Mintstrel and Tern events.

• The Star Ledger often lists our events.

Paul Fisher