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Publicity Committee Annual Report, December 2021
Sam Edelston, Publicity Chair, Submitted December 5, 2021
Publicity Committee Members
Alicia Weimer, Deborah Graham, George Otto, Howard Goldman, Jean Scully, Jim Gartner, Joanne Cronin, Joe Guzzo, Kathi Caccavale, Liz Pagan, Loretta Brooks, Mark Schaffer, Michael Mitsch, Mike Rauchwerk, Olga Alvarez, Pat Brangs, Paul Fisher, Rebecca Rydell, Susan Lembo
Web Team Members
John Lamb, Allan Kugel, Charles Lamb, Lori Falco, Rick Thomas (emeritus Member)
Reports
Chairperson’s Report – Sam Edelston
Hallelujah, the Great Storm is Over (we hope). For most of 2021, the Folk Project’s in-person, revenue-generating venues (Troubadour, Getaway, and Swingin’ Tern) have been closed, so some of our best opportunities for publicity have been unavailable. Meanwhile, I’m told, some Publicity functions were less active.
Troubadour has now been re-opened for three months, and Swingin’ Tern was scheduled to have a dance this past Friday (which I assume happened).
My job as the new Publicity Chair is
Get the Folk Project Publicity machine humming full-bore again.
Look for ways that we can do it better than the Team was able to do in the past.
The #1 priority is to increase attendance at Troubadour / Open Stage / Special Concerts, because that’s a high-attendance, frequent, revenue-generating function. I would like to get it back at least to pre-pandemic levels, but realize that will take time.
Of course, we also will work to increase attendance at the FP’s other revenue-generating and non-revenue-generating venues.
E-communications – Mark Schaffer
December 2021 e-Communications Subcommittee Report to Board
The subcommittee members are Mark Schaffer (chair), Robin Schaffer, Jean Scully, Todd Dennison, Gary Pratt and Paul Fisher.
e-Communications oversees the Constant Contact e-mail system.
It’s used primarily to:
Distribute the monthly newsletter to members and publicity outlets (George Otto)
Contact Troubadour volunteers every week (Amy Livingston)
Distribute the twice-weekly Music Alerts to all Project contacts for all music and community events (Mark Schaffer)
Distribute Swingin’ Tern announcements to Project dancers (Doug Heacock)
Distribute Troubadour posters (Mike Agranoff)
The Music Alert had a successful year.
We send 104 every year to 4,706 contacts.
663 contacts regularly open and click the emails
Another 1,079 are “somewhat engaged"
We sent 460,526 total emails in 12 months
The unsubscribe rate is 0.1%
The open rate is 21.4% for the year
The current open rate is 27% and 28% with the Troubadour open.
The open rate for the Troubadour COVID announcement sent on 12/3/21 was 38% and we received two unsolicited compliments on the email and our COVID procedures.
Summary: Successful Strategies & Execution
The consolidated email system (Music Alert), now two years running, gives much better publicity coverage to all Folk Project committees and programs than the previous silo system, and especially to the less-frequent events with the smaller individual email lists.
In late spring, as we began in-person concerts, we eliminated most of the purely entertainment articles that were designed to keep readers engaged during isolation. However, we kept the light, entertaining approach so the repeating content - calendar reminders - remained interesting.
The e-Communications Team is a great bunch of hardworking, smart, and experienced volunteers, and it’s pleasure to work with them. It’s been a fun and productive year.
Mark
Mark Schaffer, e-Communications Subcommittee Chair.
Facebook – Kathi Caccavale
As of this writing, we’ve had 18,333 Facebook Page Visits so far in 2021, with our biggest peaks in February.
We’ve gotten 838 New Facebook Page Likes so far in 2021, with about 10% of them coming from three dates (February 5, March 25, and July 6).
Twitter, Instagram – Jean Scully
YouTube – Joe Guzzo
Joe says: YouTube Channel Report for the month ending November 30, 2021
We have 266 subscribers as of the end of October. That’s a gain of 4 subscribers in the last month. Despite the lack of new programming, our subscriber growth has been steady.
This month, the channel got 49 views.
Watch time was 3.5 hours.
I am still working on a “Holiday” themed show for December 19 and need more submissions from past guests, members, and anyone who wishes to contribute something. HINT – HINT: I can use more performances for the show!!
Other than emails and our newsletters, we are not getting any advertising from other publicity areas. I think that Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram could be more actively used.
I will be airing a one-hour video featuring Circle Round the Sun on December 5. I will follow that with a holiday show on December 19. Early January will feature an interview and more music from Circle Round the Sun.
Joe upgraded the Pinnacle video editing software he uses to produce the shows. The new version has additional tools that can give more polish to our FPTV shows, and will run faster.
Web – John Lamb
2021 Annual Highlights from John Lamb:
Most important accomplishment: Debut of completely redesigned website in August 2021, a result of at least 1,000 hours of combined effort accomplished while also maintaining the interim site stayaway.folkproject.org
Most Important Goals for 2022:
Restore full pre-COVID functionality of the site, specifically including the Performers Resource Directory and History pages for all available venues.
Continued response to online needs of The Folk Project, for both the website and the email system.
See statistical info on next page.
Merch – Paul Fisher (acting)
No activity.
Web Highlights for past 12 months, as of November 30, 2021, vs prior year
Period Dec 2019 – Nov 2020 Dec 2020-Nov 2021 % Difference
Days in period 366 365 days
User sessions 33,421 29,520 users
User sessions / day 91.3 80.9 -11.4 sessions/day
Unique users 19,266 18,432 -4.3 users
Returning users % 17.6 14.8
Total page views 62,568 51,013 -18.5 page views
Session duration 98 85 -13.3 seconds
Countries 97 82
Continents 6 6
Leading providers of references to folkproject.org
morristowngreen.com 100 240
tapinto.net 57
contradancelinks.com 50
bandsintown.com 133
cdss.org 93
Most frequently visited pages on folkproject.org
Homepage 19,852 16,795
Troubadour Calendar 6,458 2,867
Newsletter 2,659 2,122
Others over 1000:
UkeFest 1,256
Full Calendar 1,180
Acoustic Getaway 1,605
Swingin' Tern 1,512
Observations:
Dec 2019 - Mar 2020 had a good bit more traffic than the same months a year later due to operations being curtailed by COVID.
July and August 2020 numbers about tripled due to ad campaign on NPR. Returned to normal rates when ads stopped.
September - November numbers for 2021 are up over 40% from September - November numbers for 2020.
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