Publicity

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

Report From “The Chair” – Paul Fisher

Not a lot new from “The Chair”. It has been a very busy month outside of Folk Project activities, so I have a backlog of work that needs to get done.

The article added to the January newsletter looking for new volunteers to handle new outlets was not productive. We should try to repeat it next month. If any current members would like to take on one or two more additional tasks, please let Paul know.

Jean came through with a very good Twitter report which includes guidelines on how any of us that are Twitter users can make things more effective and spread the word wider. It is included in her report below but we should find a place to put a wiki article for people to refer to.

About four inches of business cards were delivered to The Minstrel. We have been going through them more quickly lately (thanks Ken and Mike for the request). We are down to about five inches, so I would like to ask people to take a look at the green cards and make sure that they are up to date for your venues.

Neither Nancy nor I were able to make the Swingin’ Tern board meeting because of weather and prior commitments.

Wishful Thinking:

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

• We could use a champion to set up a repository of Folk Project event photos.

◦ We get requests several times a year and it would be great to be able to just grab some!

• We can use a champion for Merchandise.

◦ Plan occasional sales at events such as member Minstrel concerts.

◦ Deliver inventory to Michael Cohen at the Getaways for sale there.

◦ Track inventory a few times a year.

◦ Figure out when and if we should order new t-shirts and books.

Webmaster Report – John Lamb

All in all, a fairly normal January. We provided support for Getaway, Special Concerts, Swingin' Tern and the Valentine's Extravaganza. We produced the annual email directory and distributed it to board members. If you did not receive one, please let me know and I will send another.

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

User sessions - 2922 for an average of 94.3 83.5 per day representing a 12.9% increase over the previous month. Fewest (59) on January 22, most (166) on January 23.

Total number of unique Users - 2127, a 16.7% increase over the previous month. Returning users accounted for 38.6% of all sessions.

Total page views - 6587, up 23.0% over the previous month, for an average of 2.3 pages per session

Average session duration - 1 minute 36 seconds. This is up by 12.9% over the previous month.

Google AdWords traffic accounted for 555 sessions, or 19.0% of the total.

Notable numbers of references to us from other sites: njbluegrass.org (39 sessions), visitnj.org (26 sessions) and three others tied with 19 sessions.

We reached users in 48 countries on 6 continents.

Our most frequently visited pages were the home page (2015 pageviews), the Minstrel calendar page (1444) and the Swingin' Tern page (359). The following also got at least 100 page views for the month: the newsletter download page, the main Getaway page, the Special Concerts page, the Minstrel Open Stage page, the Contacts page and the Evenings of Music page.

As always, thanks to the team of Charles, Lori, Allan and FiL. Please keep those questions, comments and suggestions coming to webmaster@folkproject.org

Social Media Coordinator – George Otto

Pending.

Facebook Report – Pam Robinson

No news.

Twitter Report – Jean Scully

Here's the latest!

@TheFolkProject now has 702 followers, and follows 1283. We're closing in on our 1,000th tweet!

The Morris County Tourism Board tweeted about the Valentine's Show as "kicking off the local Valentine's Day events" to its almost 2,500 followers.

Katherine Rondeau tweeted out some live video from her show at Godfrey Daniels opening for Bill Staines, and I retweeted that, which got us a new follower and got her some more free publicity. Win/win!

Whoever tweets for Minstrel events (or any FP events) please please please take a moment to see if the act you're tweeting about has a Twitter account. If you include their Twitter handle in your tweet, all their followers will see it, so it's a lot of absolutely free publicity. It's like hitching a ride on someone else's mailing list. In other words, say the Kennedys are performing. If you include their Twitter handle, @KennedysThe in your tweet, all their followers will see it and be able to look up the show. you can look up if someone has a Twitter account by putting their name in the search box at the top of the screen. If they have a Twitter account, you will see it listed with an "@" symbol before it.

Also, if you include the Twitter handle for local groups like the Morris County Tourism Board @MorrisTourism or Morris Arts @MorrisArts, they will almost certainly re-tweet your tweet, so all their followers (about 3500 groups and individuals!) will have several opportunities to see our name and your bit of advertising.

Electronic Communications – Lori Falco

Watch this space. First quarterly report probably in March.

Merchandise

Andrew Hines bought a number of t-shirts to take back to Arizona for use as door prizes at his new House Concert series. A check for $70 will be delivered to the Treasurer, which should be credited to The Minstrel as that was Andy’s biggest activity.

Publicity Happenings

Online

• newjerseystage.com:

◦ Most January Minstrel events are listed.

◦ The first January Tern dance is listed.

• Suburban Chambers of Commerce (The Collection)

◦ All Minstrel and Tern events are listed here http://business.suburbanchambers.org/events/catgid/14

• Morris Arts

◦ Listed Minstrel events.

• Morris County Tourism Bureau

◦ Listed blurbs for all Minstrel events, with additional links to our pages.

◦ We are members.

In Print

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

Paul Fisher