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

A new year with new members.

Welcome to the Electronic Communications subcommittee members led by Lori Falco, who will now report through the Publicity Committee on a quarterly basis unless there is important news. Look for their first report in the March edition of this report.

After a somewhat slack concert month, the Publicity Committee is getting ready for a busy year.

Olga wrote a Press Release for Special Concerts for Kaia Kater (special concert coming up in March) and Nancy has worked with Pam and Kaia’s publicist on editing it. It is now ready to go out.

The fact that our eNewsletter got 379 downloads is a good sign that our membership is engaged and interested. That’s great!

An article was added to the current newsletter looking for new volunteers to handle new outlets. If any current members would like to take on one or two more additional tasks, please let Paul know.

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

We handled a lot of end-of-year maintenance this past month throughout the site, related mostly to appointment of new Trustees, Officers, and Committee Chairs, plus the change in time and price for Minstrel. Due to the personnel changes, we had a higher than normal volume of email address maintenance. We also helped maintain the list of Board meeting times and Evening of Music dates and times.

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

User sessions - 2510 for an average of 83.5 per day representing a 4.1% decrease over the previous month. Fewest (34) on December 25, most (135) on December 30.

Total number of unique Users - 1822, a 1.4% decrease over the previous month. Returning users accounted for 42.0% of all sessions.

Total page views - 5355, down 19.0% over the previous month, for an average of 2.1 pages per session

Average session duration - 1 minute 25 seconds. This is down by 10.9% over the previous month.

Google AdWords traffic accounted for 338 sessions, or 13.5% of the total.

Notable numbers of references to us from other sites including the FP Facebook site (51 sessions), visitnj.org (44 sessions) and newjerseystage.com (23 sessions).

We reached users in 58 countries on 6 continents.

Our most frequently visited pages were the home page (1465 pageviews), the Minstrel calendar page (1037) and the eNewsletter download page (379). The following also got at least 100 page views for the month: the main Swingin' Tern page and the Swingin' Tern New Years Eve dance page.

Social Media Coordinator – George Otto (No report)

Facebook Report – Pam Robinson

FaceBook buzzed along in December 2016. All is well.

Much thanks to Kathi C. for her hard work in keeping up to date with creating Events.

Twitter Report – Jean Scully (no report)

Electronic Communications – Lori Falco

Watch this space. First quarterly report probably in March.

Merchandise

Kathi Caccavale has offered to provide a safe place to store our merch but we still have to gather it and get it to her.

Pam set up a FP Merch table at the Holiday Benefit show for MUUF. Some sales happened and,

keeping with the way things are handled at Getaway, the sponsoring committee gets the revenue.

Publicity Happenings

Online

• newjerseystage.com:

◦ Most January Minstrel events are listed.

◦ The first January Tern dance is listed.

• Morris County Connections (December 15):

◦ Gave prominent links to the Holiday Concert.

◦ Gave a prominent link to the Donna Hunt/Grand Picnic Tern dance.

In Print

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

Paul Fisher