Publicity

Publicity Committee Report To The October 2020 Board Meeting

October 6, 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 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!

Once again, Paul is still Publicity Chair but would really like to be replaced.

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

September was a fairly quiet month involving routine maintenance and mostly minor tweaks here and there. Most of the effort went into keeping the Stayaway site updated as new shows were booked. Allan fixed a minor issue reported by the HSNOI crew. We set up user accounts for Nancy Beyer and Jeff Canter. The main new work involved the Folk Project response to S863, for which we provided a landing page (S863.folkproject.org) to which supporters may be directed and a spreadsheet that tracks the responses received via that page.

Stats from Google AdWords and Analytics for the calendar month of SEPTEMBER 2020.

After extremely high volume in July and very high volume in August, September's numbers are back in the normal range. The main difference between August and September is that we did not generate hits on the order of the shows given by Christine Lavin and Don Henry. The Tom Paxton show would have certainly matched or exceeded those, but that event was presented on a different site and attendees received the URL for the show in email rather than by accessing out website.

User sessions - 2356 for an average of 78.5 per day representing a 24.5 % decrease over the previous month. Fewest (30) on September 19th and 20th, most (138) on September 29th. Total number of unique users - 1581 a decrease of 25.6% over the previous month. Returning users accounted for 22.1% of all sessions. Total page views 3974, down 25.7% over the previous month for an average of 1.6 pages per session. Average session duration - 1 minute 15 seconds. This is down by 14.8% over the previous month.

Google AdWords traffic accounted for 17 sessions or 0.7% of the total.

Notable number of references to us from other sites: bandsintown.com (29).

We reached users in 40 countries on 6 continents.

Our most frequently visited pages were the homepage (1411), the eNewsletter page (249), and the Tom Paxton event page (180). The following also got at least 100 page views for the month: the Olga Alvarez and Gerry Hazel event page and Troubadour page.

As always, thanks to the team of Allan, Charles, Liz and Lori for the work they do. Keep those suggestions, questions and concerns coming to webmaster@folkproject.org

Electronic Communications – Mark Schaffer

Constant Contact Report:

12 months: 441, 218 Sends, 115, 842 Opens

1 month: 53, 268 Sends,10,83 Opens

Total Contacts: 4,873

90 Days Net Increase in Contacts: 37

Annual Net Increase in Contacts: 143

Of interest:

The big change to a twice-weekly newsletter is six months old. The result was a dramatic increase in engagements across the entire email list and a very slight increase in total contacts.

The essays get some fan mail - not much, but it’s nice.

Social Media Coordinator – Vacant

Nothing to report.

Facebook – Kathi Caccavale

We continue to see more likes on our FP FB page and more members request in the Folk Project group, which I ascribe to our virtual concert activity. When someone likes a concert event posting, I invite them to like the FB Folk Project page.

Gary Pratt and I continue to work with performers to coordinate their live stream events, either from our Facebook page or a platform of their choice. We try to do a live stream test before every concert, to minimize technical difficulties during the performances, but sometimes Father Internet and Mother Earth combine to interrupt a live broadcast despite our pre-vetting, due to circumstances beyond our control.

As of October 5:

Folk Project Page:

2,962 people like this (97 new likes in the past 28 days; up from 2,203 on 2/1/2020)

3,290 people follow this

Folk Project Group:

942 members (member requests have noticeably slowed down this month, only +3.4% growth; but up overall from 610 on 2/1/2020)

Swingin' Tern Group:

534 members (-1 from last report; up from 528 on 2/1/2020)

NJ Uke Fest Group:

221 members (+1 from last report; up from 185 on 2/1/2020)

Twitter – Jean Scully

Pending.

YouTube – Joe Guzzo

I went back six months to get a picture of how far we’ve come. I knew we had done some good things, but the numbers tell the story far better than I can. In May, we had 147 subscribers. As of today, we have 210. That’s a gain of 63 subscribers. (43% increase)

This month’s report:

The channel got 132 views in the last 28 days. (13% increase)

Watch-time was 25.1 hours. (26% increase)

We obtained eight new subscribers. (33% increase)

We have a large number of non-subscribers watching the videos and programs. I am urging all viewers to subscribe.

I have posted information on our Facebook page in an attempt to gain more viewers.

Our most recent show has 29 views (in less than 24 hours since broadcasting it). I expect this number to increase as most people catch the presentations after the stream ends.

I have two live interviews in the works. Look for shows with Turner Adams and Dave Vargo soon. I also have a few emails out to other performers hoping they will come on the program.

I had a volunteer offer to assist with the show, but he backed out due to personal reasons. I’m still looking for help. I will write another request for the next newsletter.