Publicity

ANNUAL REPORT

Report from The Chair

December 2019 – Publicity Committee members: Alicia Weimer, Deborah Graham, George Otto, Howard Goldman, Jean Scully, Jill Lagerstrom, Jim Gartner, Joanne Cronin, Joe Guzzo, John Lamb, Kathi Caccavale, Liz Pagan, Loretta Brooks, Lori Falco, Michael Mitsch, Mike Rauchwerk, Pat Brangs, Paul Fisher, Rebecca Rydell, Susan Lembo (20)

December 2020 – Publicity Committee members: Alicia Weimer, Deborah Graham, George Otto, Howard Goldman, Jean Scully, Jill Lagerstrom, Jim Gartner, Joanne Cronin, Joe Guzzo, John Lamb, Kathi Caccavale, Liz Pagan, Loretta Brooks, Lori Falco, Michael Mitsch, Mike Rauchwerk, Nancy Beyer, Pat Brangs, Paul Fisher, Rebecca Rydell, Susan Lembo (21)

The Publicity Committee has been limping along for most of 2020 because of last year’s failure to find a suitable replacement for Chairperson Paul Fisher, who had only accepted the position as “Acting” during 2019. Being both Chair and President is too big a job for a part-time volunteer.

While our monthly releases for the months preceding the pandemic all went out on time, there was little time left over for building the Publicity Committee and modernizing some of its procedures.

Luckily for all of us, the structure that Nancy Kelner put into place keeps on chugging along as long as we feed it the raw material that it needs each month to get the message out. Many thanks to all of you that share the load!

At the beginning of the year, our regular monthly releases and some special effort for the Greg Greenway and Reggie Harris presentation “Deeper Than The Skin” had us chugging along at a good pace. That all came to a sudden halt in March.

Since the beginning of the pandemic and the cancellation of all of The Folk Project’s live, in-person events there have been a few press releases sent out for special events but no regular effort by the main body of the Committee to reach our usual outlets. A good effort was made to support send out a Press Release for the first and only Drive-In Concert organized by the Folk Project and the Borough of Madison.

The one bright spot in the way of real publicity has been the E-Communications sub-committee, chaired by Mark Schaffer, which has publicized all of the StayAway activities and built a new look into the Constant Contact releases.

Our YouTube Guru, Joe Guzzo, has been producing shows featuring interviews, clips from Horses Sing None of It shows and live performances. Look for Folk Project Television on YouTube to watch all of the archived shows plus the new ones that appear on most Sunday afternoons. Subscribing is easy and will get you notifications of the shows.

Kathi Caccavale has been doing a great job with Facebook, staying on top of posting events and fielding questions from the public. She has played a major role in supporting all of the StayAway concerts and continues to be a key player every week.

Up until the start of the pandemic, Jill Lagerstrom had been doing our monthly in-depth releases and was also starting to do most of our concise releases for posting on web calendar sites. We hope to get her back to work in the coming months.

The Web Team has, once again, done a lot of great work this year. John and the team are quick to respond to changes in the world and were able to make the StayAway the landing page for our website from one day to the next. They have also contributed to finding solutions for StayAway and S863 government lobbying efforts since the start of the pandemic. And they have a new version of our regular website nearly ready to go once our venues are back in business.

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. There are a number of other outlets that we need to investigate and then find volunteers to support them.

Last year, we finally had the beginnings of a repository for photographs of our events and performers but that has not continued its forward motion since the beginning of the year. Hopefully, our incoming chairperson will be able to get this moving again.

Anyone with photographs that they would like to contribute can send a link to publicity@folkproject.org and we will download them and put them into the proper section by venue, contributor and date.

Merchandise could still use a champion.

There are always more opportunities but never enough time!

Folk Project Web Team Report (12/1/2019 through 11/30/2020) – John Lamb

As might be expected, 2020 was a chaotic year for our website. We started the year with FiL Wisnewski retiring from the team due to other commitments. FiL is a professional website developer who had sole responsibility for the Uke Fest portion of our website. We will cover for him when Uke Fest resumes, but we will have some large shoes to FiL. (Ouch.)

We started the year working on an ambitious, complete redesign of the Folk Project website. Then COVID hit, halting all live events and providing the impetus to take all of our activities online. When Stayaway was first proposed, we realized that the website would be a critical factor in its success. The new site design, 80% complete by then, morphed into an all-out effort to establish an online presence for Stayaway. Because we had a head start with the work done for the new site, we were able to have the Stayaway site live online in two weeks and it soon became the temporary default home page for all of Folk Project. It will continue to serve in that regard until we resume live, in-person activities. Work on the new site has all but halted, but it should be possible to complete the work on that with a couple of month's warning before it is needed. It remains to be seen what Folk Project will look like at that point, so I think it is better to wait a while before trying to add the finishing touches.

Over the summer, when new COVID cases were much lower in number than before or since, there was some discussion about reopening Troubadour concerts to an online audience with artists and staff producing the show live from the Morristown Unitarian Fellowship. In support of that effort, Mike Agranoff and I produced a spreadsheet that modeled the financial implications of such events to both the Folk Project and our performers. Ultimately, and wisely given the current uptick in cases, it was decided that it was not yet time to take any unnecessary risks and the plans were shelved. I sincerely hope that spreadsheet will be useful once again someday when we can resume events with both an in-person and an online audience.

Throughout the summer and into the fall, there was quite a lot of concern about a bill under consideration by the New Jersey State Legislature. S863, as written, would have forced all of our performers to be treated as employees rather than independent contractors. This would have resulted in additional expenses and paperwork that would have made it impossible for a small, volunteer-run organization like ours to continue producing public events. In response, Folk Project started an effort to publicize the potential effects on live music throughout the state and to organize a call for amending the proposed bill along the lines that a similar bill in California had been amended. As part of this effort, we produced a web page to which an email campaign could direct other musicians, venue operators and music lovers. The page provided information and allowed readers to add their name to a petition. We also created a database that would collect the responses from that page so that they could later be formatted and forwarded to our representatives in Trenton. In the November elections, the similar California bill (originally intended to help gig economy workers for companies like Uber and Lyft who were seen as exploiting labor laws for the sake of increased profit) was repealed. This seems to have stalled the effort toward passing S863 here in New Jersey. We remain vigilant, but do not see the need at present to sound the alarm and initiate a petition drive. The online capabilities for this are ready if needed.

Also over the summer, a generous targeted donation from an anonymous donor allowed us to purchase a significant amount of ad time on WNYC, the main NPR outlet in the New York metro area. The resulting ads approximately doubled the number of users of our website while they ran. Since they ended, our numbers have approximately returned to the same level as before the ads ran.

Throughout the year, we spent a good portion of our effort on the routine day-to-day updates required of any vital web presence. Much of this is done behind the scenes and does not warrant itemization of specific details in a summary report such as this, but that work is some of the most important that we do.

As always, many thanks to the entire web team: Allan Kugel, Lori Falco, Liz Pagan, Charles Lamb and, for the month or so he was with us since our last annual report, Fil Wisnewski. Their kind assistance has made all of this possible. Keep those suggestions, questions and concerns coming to webmaster@folkproject.org

MONTHLY REPORT

Total Sessions - 33,421 down 2.9% over the prior year - an average of 91.6 per day.

Total Users - 19,266 up 2.0%

Total Pageviews - 62,568 down 20.7% - an average of 171.4 per day. (recall that we spent most of the year where our only event was Stayaway. Most of the information needed for that is on the home page and users had little reason to explore other pages.)

Pages per Session - 1.87 down 18.3%

Average Session Duration 1:38 down 12.4%

Sessions due to returning users - 17.6%

Top referring sites - bandsintown.com (133), morristowngreen.com (100), cdss.org (93)

We reached users in 124 countries on 6 continents.

Our most frequently visited pages were the home page (19.852 pageviews), the Troubadour page (6,458), and the Newsletter download page (2,659).

Two periods stand out in the statistics. Site usage was extremely light from mid-March through mid-April after we ceased live events and before Stayaway got into full swing. Site usage was extremely heavy during the months of July and August, when we had a series of ads running on WNYC. The rest of the year was down only slightly from 2019, despite the fact that we were operating as a single venue most of 2020.

Electronic Communications Annual Report – Mark Schaffer

This year all 4,800 Folk Project addresses received two emails every week or 104 emails a year.

The chart below shows a large increase in sends, opens and clicks over previous years.

The reason is since March, all Folk Project addresses received emails twice a week.

Previously, individual venues sent emails only to addresses collected at the venue or by specific request.

The total Folk Project email list is 4,819 contacts.

This is a net increase of 38 contacts over last year.

The attached chart illustrates a tremendous increase in views.

The first two columns compare this year and the previous year as of November 29th.

“Sends” are like ads - the recipient views our name and our subject line.

"Opens" show a deeper interest and engagement, the recipient opened the email and read the content.

As of 11/29/20:

Instead of a year of absence and silence - the norm for 2020 -

The Folk Project has remained constantly engaged with the public at an extremely high level.

This will help significantly when we resume live events in 2021.

It’s been a very productive year.

Social Media Coordinator Annual Report

Vacant position

Interim Facebook Report – Kathi Caccavale

Overall, without numbers, I would say likes on our FP page and members in our Folk Project group have grown notably as a result of going virtual with the Stayaway series due to the pandemic. Uke Fest and Swingin' Tern numbers showed little change.

YouTube Report – Joe Guzzo

There was a dramatic change in our YouTube channel viewership beginning in May. This coincides with the initial airing of the Folk Project Television Show. Since that time, there is an apparent increase in activity. Much of this is likely the result of the Covid-19 lockdown, but some may be due to new member videos and the weekly FPTV show.

We’ve had some success attracting submissions from our members. I hope to encourage more of this as awareness increases.

All statistics are for the last 365 days.

We had 2,144 views.

Watch time was 446.5 hours

We had an increase of 107 subscribers.

Our most viewed FPTV programming was that with new interviews and music.

In 2021, the FPTV show will move to one broadcast every other week. It will provide me with more time to make improvements and refine each show’s look and sound.

Twitter Report – Jean Scully

Pending.

Instagram Report

Vacant position.

Merchandising

No activity this year and still seeking a champion.

Monthly Report

November 30, 2020

Publicity Committee Members

Alicia Weimer, Deborah Graham, George Otto, Howard Goldman, Jean Scully, Jill Lagerstrom, Jim Gartner, Joanne Cronin, Joe Guzzo, John Lamb, Kathi Caccavale, Liz Pagan, Loretta Brooks, Lori Falco, Michael Mitsch, Mike Rauchwerk, Pat Brangs, Paul Fisher, Rebecca Rydell, Susan Lembo,

Nancy Beyer and publicitychair@folkproject.org.

Chairperson’s Report – Paul Fisher

E-Comm, the Web Team, Facebook and YouTube have continued to be busy. Thank you all!

Paul is looking forward to training Nancy Beyer as Chair once she has been elected to the Board.

Many thanks to those who have continued to prepare documents, make posts of our events, and email on behalf of Folk Project Publicity.

Subcommittee Reports

Merchandise Acting Chair – Paul Fisher.

We still need a merch owner, to keep track of our small inventory and maybe organize a new t-shirt design.

Webmaster – John Lamb

November was another quiet month involving routine maintenance and answering a few questions. Most of the effort went into keeping the Stayaway site updated as new shows were booked.

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

User sessions - 1969 for an average of 65.6 per day representing a 15.3% decrease over the previous report. Fewest (29) on Nov 28, most (136) on Nov 27.

Total number of unique users - 1238 a decrease of 20.7% over the previous report.

Returning users accounted for 24.0% of all sessions.

Total page views 3237, down 18.0% over the previous report for an average of 1.6 pages per session.

Average session duration - 1 minute 15 seconds. This is down by 2.1% over the previous month.

Notable number of references to us from other sites: tomchapin.com (18) and thechapinsisters.com (14)

We reached users in 38 countries on 6 continents.

Our most frequently visited pages were the home page (1192 counting), the Newsletter download page (268) and the event page for The Chapin Sisters (176). The following also got at least 100 page views for the month: the event page for Tom Chapin..

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

Electronic Communications – Mark Schaffer

Everything went smoothly in November

Estimates for all of November 2020:

Emails sent: 46,000

Emails opened 9,000

Clicks: 900.

Social Media Coordinator – Vacant

Nothing to report.

Facebook – Kathi Caccavale

Pending.

Twitter – Jean Scully

Pending.

YouTube – Joe Guzzo

We have 222 subscribers as of the end of this month. That’s a gain of 6 subscribers in the last month.

The channel got 287 views, which is 67 more than usual.

Watch time was 120.2 hours. (90.2 more than usual.)

We had 33 views in the last 48 hours of the month.

FPTV began its run in May of 2020 and has aired every week. This schedule will change in 2021.

I will be rebroadcasting the entire HSNOI show from July of 2018 hosted by Sandie Reilly, which featured Ralph Litwin. I feel this is a fitting salute to all the hard work done by Ralph and his team over the last 30 plus years.

There was no broadcast on November 29th.

There will not be a broadcast on December 27th.

Instagram – Vacant

Publicity Happenings

In Print

Nothing to report.

On the Radio

Nothing to report.

On the Web

Other Items

Nothing to report.