Publicity

Publicity Report for the December 7, 2021 Board Meeting

December 6, 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

I’m continuing to learn my way around the Publicity functions.

As part of that process, in talking with people, we’ve identified some opportunities. For example, in the near future, we’ll tweak the design of the Troubadour’s posters that we distribute at libraries, stores, etc. – to make them easier to read at a glance. (Deborah Graham for doing the design work on that.)

Jill Lagerstrom, who has been writing our press releases, informed me that she currently doesn’t have the time to do that, so that task will temporarily be covered by Paul and me.

E-communications – Mark Schaffer

Mark says:

All is operating normally.

We sent a COVID contact warning on 12/3/21 to all email contacts regarding the 11/26/21 Troubadour show. The open rate was 38%, the best ever for a general announcement. Hmmmm.

A Note on Notes: We received two unsolicited compliments on the 12/3/21 email and our COVID response procedures to the 11/26/21 concert and our overall response.

Facebook – Kathi Caccavale

Facebook recently changed what Public groups can do to prevent inappropriate posts and prevent malicious people from posting. Kathi, Gary Pratt, and I met to discuss our options. We’ve seen some groups become Private, but we all agreed that it would be to the Folk Project’s advantage to keep the group Public if at all possible. We added a couple of basic rules (Be kind and courteous; no hate speech or bullying), which all new members must accept, added a couple of questions that people need to answer before they can post, and tweaked a couple of other settings.

Facebook stats for November:

• Reach of 9,486 (The number of people who saw any content from our Page or about our Page, including posts, etc.) (Up 3.5% vs October)

• 1,477 Facebook Page visits (Up 13.7% vs October)

• 41 new Facebook Page Likes (Down 26.8% vs October)

Twitter, Instagram – Jean Scully

Nothing new to report.

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.

Addendum from Sam: Also, 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

John says:

November was a busy month filled with maintenance work and showing additional venue chairs how they can use the site to their advantage.

• We continued prior work with Tina Ross and Ralph Litwin in this regard, and brought Todd Dennison and Gary Pratt onboard.

• We assisted Mike Agranoff on numerous occasions, both with the website and with two Excel spreadsheets that he uses in Troubadour operations.

• We worked with Doug Heacock to promote the resumption of Swingin' Tern Dances.

• We helped Chris Bukata with an email issue and adjusted the schedule for Songs that Sing to Me when Jay Wilensky had a one-time change in starting time.

• We made a minor change to the eNewsletter publication process to make things a little easier for George Otto.

• We spoke with Joe Guzzo about ordering some video editing software, but unfortunately the package he needs is not available through the techsoup.org clearinghouse.

• A new web page was developed for accepting online donations for the song leaders at Chorus Song Night. Gary Pratt will share the URL during the webcast of the show.

• Minor glitches were occurring on a small number of online orders for Troubadour tickets, as best as I can tell when the purchasers decided to change the quantity of tickets purchased midway through an order.

• The software charged the correct amount to the customer in all cases, but reported one ticket purchased when two were paid for in one instance, and two tickets purchased when one was paid for in the other. We have reworked the back end of the ticket ordering process somewhat to try to eliminate the problem. We will monitor the situation closely to evaluate the change, but we believe that the new system will result in an overall improvement.

• We also responded to some late-breaking scheduling changes for both Troubadour and Inside the Song and continued helping Sam Edelston come up to speed on all things related to the website.

We can still use another team member or two going forward, particularly one with WordPress experience. If you hear of anyone interested in helping out with the website, send them our way. We will gladly train.

As always, many thanks to Liz, Lori, Allan and Charles. Please send questions, comments and suggestions to webmaster@folkproject.org.

Statistics for November are shown on the next page.

• Looking through Google Analytics it is obvious that we had a smaller audience from 12/1/2020 - 11/30/2021 than we did a year prior.

• Delving a bit deeper with Google Analytics reveals that is partially due to the fact that COVID did not impact our operations until a few months into the earlier period, and also because we got some huge numbers in July and August of 2020 due to the ads on NPR that ran for a few weeks.

• The numbers for September through November of 2021 are at least 40% up over the numbers from September through November of 2020, so we seem to be picking up some steam as our live venues cautiously re-open.

Merch – Paul Fisher (acting)

Nothing going on.

Web Highlights for November 2021:

Month October 2021 November 2021 % Difference

Days in period 31 30 days

User sessions 3,049 3,328 users

User sessions / day 98.4 110.9 12.8 sessions/day

Unique users 2,234 2,327 4.2 users

Returning users % 15.9 16.3

Total page views 4,974 5,702 14.6 page views

session duration 78 88 12.8 seconds

Countries 31 28

Continents 6 4

Leading providers of references to folkproject.org

christinelavin.com 10 22

troutmusic.com 14

littletobywalker.com 12

Most frequently visited pages on folkproject.org

Homepage 1,447 1,835

Troubadour Calendar 443 628

eNewsletter 173 190

Others over 100:

Streaming Tuesdays 115 122

Christine Lavin show 160

Swingin' Tern 104