[Organizers] Advertising for dance weekends

[Heitzso]

We (Jennifer Horrocks and myself as @gaga) hosted 2 weekends of 
discussions ('17 & '18)
for dance organizers in the SE (Baltimore to Memphis to Charleston 
attending).
We then assisted Berea in hosting a similar weekend of discussions for dance
organizers in their region this past summer.

The answers to your question as I recall the discussions were all over 
the map.
I personally agree with Jonathon that you're better off with social 
media, e.g.
a Facebook event that gets passed along, liked, etc., but we've had 
organizers
who (quite successfully) do just paper handed out at local dances,
others who use email lists of dancers who are known
to travel (collected from friends who have run weekend dances and had 
collected
email addresses of dancers who attended), etc.  I also remember one 
organizer
who refused to come to our weekend discussion because we still used email to
communicate when we should be Facebooking (why should he bother attending
a discussion hosted by Luddites?).  As I said, all over the map.

Who is your target demographic?  Younger dancers communicate differently
than older dancers (paper ... web pages ... email ... social media). 
Last I heard,
the youngest now live on Snapchat and disdain Facebook, Instagram, et al.
Yikes. Moving target and all.  How much is your dance weekend? Younger
dancers don't have the same discretionary income that us old farts had at
their age. Noting that because targeting younger dancers with an expensive
dance weekend doesn't go anywhere.  Who do you have for talent?
Great Bear's last outing packed the dance weekend (Winter Warmup).
Ditto Perpetual e-Motion's last outing at Mentone (Birmingham's weekend).
So top talent will draw on their own.  But if you have top talent booked
and the same headliner band is leveraging a tour of weekends in your area
then the draw goes flat.

The ecosystem of weekend dances is rather full in many parts of the country,
so a lot depends on how well known your weekend dance is, e.g. how many 
years
has it been going on, how well attended in the past, etc.

Wishing you well.

Heitzso
http://atgaga.com


> I've just become the co-organizer of a dance weekend. Can anyone give
> me tips on publicizing the weekend? We'll obviously bring flyers to
> nearby dances and dance weekends, but what else should we do?
>
> Thanks!
>
> Larry
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