Organizers

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Re: [Organizers] Organizers Digest, Vol 31, Issue 4

by Emily Addison via Organizers

Sorry that I've been slow on replying since my initial post. Consumed with family commitments. I've been catching up on what people have said and sounds like not much success. As per the question as to what boosting is - it's paying facebook money to feature your event/post. Here is some info: https://www.facebook.com/business/help/547448218658012 We haven't tried it for our local contra dance. It was my local community association that has done it twice for our events this spring. One was a spring cleanup where we usually get 40 people and we got 70... our biggest attendance ever. We don't think anything was different from what we've done other years (or weather) but maybe our memory is off. The thing with our community association is that the ad specifically targeted people within 1km to capture our neighbourhood only.... paid $10 for that one. This would be harder with a contra dance as you'd want to target your audience in a different way. (Supposedly there are various choices for targeting audiences but I haven't done it). Here is a comparison of five of our posts Post /// # of Post Clicks /// # of REactions, comments & Shares 1 / 42 / 11 2 / 7 / 0 3 / 132 / 78 THIS WAS THE BOOSTED ONE 4 / 6 / 0 5 / 14 /5 As you can see, the boosted one seemingly got a lot more attention. I have heard that the numbers can be off because of fake facebook accounts but given my limited knowledge, it's been really effective for my community association. Maybe we'll give it a try at Ottawa Contra and can report back. Anyway, good to know others haven't yet found it effective. And yes... .... so many other ways to reach out to new folks. Just checking out options! Emily in Ottawa > Message: 1 > Date: Fri, 5 May 2017 15:13:55 -0400 > From: Don Veino via Organizers <organizers(a)lists.sharedweight.net> > To: "organizers(a)lists.sharedweight.net" > <organizers(a)lists.sharedweight.net> > Subject: Re: [Organizers] Facebook boosts > Message-ID: > <CAAJTti+x8xLC9mXgxKQcnqVcMwtTNy-z_urj- > b8JEqm-9NKQUg(a)mail.gmail.com> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" > > I've tried FB boosting/Ads a few times for events locally. In summary, we > saw no return on the effort. And I do mean effort, as it is a relative > chore to set up the "boost" campaign (target audience, customized graphics > and copy, etc.) - at least the first time around. > > In my opinion, they have a pretty good scheme going - for FB. Their initial > estimated exposure never materialized with the actual campaign yet the > funds disappeared just the same. Their reports demonstrating "success" > (views/placements) I found to be very vague. Over a span of three > "campaigns", the only related post "likes" we got were from people well > outside our targeted audience and geography (e.g.: people in India don't > fit within 50 miles of Concord, MA). Follow up with new faces at the events > found no one sourced from the FB ads. > > We got better results from the local free toss-away "Action Unlimited" > weekly rag, via their free community events articles. I've found Craigslist > event listings have also worked - again for free. > > -Don >

7 years, 11 months

Facebook boosts

by Patti Maxwell via Organizers

Hi ~ I am the organizer for Seacoast Contra in Newfields New Hampshire. We are a small-town group with a big heart :) I've boosted our dance with Facebook approximately 3 times. The budget I set was very low, as we're on a very tight budget ($15) We've polled new people how they found us...and we received no response from a Facebook ad. Most found us multiple ways, including signs we place near our dance a week before and a sandwich board outside the dance, referral from friends, posting on our FB page, email list and Meetup posts to multiple groups. Multi-faceted means of advertising our group has made it a viable dance. We just celebrated our one year Contraversary. Our group has grown steadily. I do think there is value in boosting our group....it gets us noticed, and planting that seed is essential. I think that a bigger budget for a larger group would be a great way to get noticed and bring in new dancers It just can't be the only way. Patti ~~~~~ Patti Maxwell Seacoast Contra at Newfields, NH Our website: www.seacoastcontra.com Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/SeacoastContra/

7 years, 11 months

Re: [Organizers] Facebook boost

by Claire T via Organizers

I paid to boost a family dance at a free folk festival that I was calling. The only hits were from possible pedophiles..... really creepy appearing guys with only young cute girls as friends. So it does not help to boost kid activities. Claire Takemori SF Bay Area CA. Sent from my iPhone On May 5, 2017, at 8:17 AM, via Organizers <organizers(a)lists.sharedweight.net> wrote: Send Organizers mailing list submissions to organizers(a)lists.sharedweight.net To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit http://lists.sharedweight.net/listinfo.cgi/organizers-sharedweight.net or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to organizers-request(a)lists.sharedweight.net You can reach the person managing the list at organizers-owner(a)lists.sharedweight.net When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific than "Re: Contents of Organizers digest..." Today's Topics: 1. Re: Facebook boosts (Alexandra Deis-Lauby via Organizers) 2. Re: Facebook boosts (Laur via Organizers) 3. Facebook boosts (Patti Maxwell via Organizers) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Message: 1 Date: Thu, 4 May 2017 16:13:42 -0400 From: Alexandra Deis-Lauby via Organizers <organizers(a)lists.sharedweight.net> To: carol.geisler(a)nyu.edu Cc: Emily Addison <emilyladdison(a)gmail.com>, Shared Weight Organizers <organizers(a)sharedweight.net> Subject: Re: [Organizers] Facebook boosts Message-ID: <690C807D-5F60-4050-94EF-84838FD1936C(a)gmail.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Boosting is when you pay Facebook to promote your event. Emily, can you clarify. Ottawa did try it and it worked? or a different local dance of yours tried it and it worked? Or none of the above? Sent from my iPhone > On May 4, 2017, at 1:30 PM, Carol Geisler via Organizers <organizers(a)lists.sharedweight.net> wrote: > > What is "boosting"? > >> On Thu, May 4, 2017 at 1:16 PM, Emily Addison via Organizers <organizers(a)lists.sharedweight.net> wrote: >> Hi Fellow Organizers, >> >> I was wondering if any of you have had boosted facebook events for your dances??? >> >> My local community association has done it twice this spring and we've seen significant pick up in our events. Given, we've got a very defined geographical area for our neighbourhood! >> >> Ottawa Contra is now thinking about trying boosting for a few dances but we're curious --- any success elsewhere??? >> >> :) Emily in Ottawa >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Organizers mailing list >> Organizers(a)lists.sharedweight.net >> http://lists.sharedweight.net/listinfo.cgi/organizers-sharedweight.net >> > > _______________________________________________ > Organizers mailing list > Organizers(a)lists.sharedweight.net > http://lists.sharedweight.net/listinfo.cgi/organizers-sharedweight.net

7 years, 11 months

Facebook boosts

by Emily Addison via Organizers

Hi Fellow Organizers, I was wondering if any of you have had boosted facebook events for your dances??? My local community association has done it twice this spring and we've seen significant pick up in our events. Given, we've got a very defined geographical area for our neighbourhood! Ottawa Contra is now thinking about trying boosting for a few dances but we're curious --- any success elsewhere??? :) Emily in Ottawa

7 years, 11 months

is NEFFA LinkFest still active

by Jonathan Sivier via Organizers

Are the lists of various folk dance groups, including contra and ECD, on the NEFFA LinkFest "http://www.neffa.org/Top/" still being used? There appear to be quite a few dead links and I'm wondering if anyone is still updating these pages. Thanks. Jonathan ----- Jonathan Sivier Caller of Contra, Square, English and Early American Dances jsivier AT illinois DOT edu Dance Page: http://www.sivier.me/dance_leader.html ----- Q: How many angels can dance on the head of a pin? A: It depends on what dance you call!

7 years, 11 months

Re: [Organizers] Query: Tools to search for stale links (was Re: is NEFFA LinkFest still active)

by James Saxe via Organizers

On Apr 26, 2017, at 1:33 PM, Jack Mitchell <jmitchell.nc(a)gmail.com> wrote: > There is an extension for Chrome that will go through and check links for a particular page. > https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/link-checker/aibjbgmpmnidnmagaefh… > > I ran it on the NEFFA Link Fest and this is what I got (or at least is the first screen): > Purple is sites that couldn't be reached, and red is not found messages of various types. Thanks for this information, Jack. The screenshot in Jack's message shows part of the page http://www.neffa.org/Top/Festivals/index.shtml In the screenshot, we see 6 purple links, 14 red links, and 31 green (good?) links. Of the 31 green links, the three nearest the top are internal to the LinkFest, leaving 28 external links not detected as bad by the link checker. However, closer examination reveals that about half of those 28 links are in fact stale. Below is a rundown on the definitely stale ones plus a couple questionable ones. Let me emphasize that my point is *not* to whine to NEFFA/Dan about the LinkFest not being maintained, nor to to whine about the (former?) owners of the target pages of the bad links. My point is to illustrate some of the varied ways that links can go stale, and to ask whether there are automatic tools that can do a better job of detecting them. Belgium - World Festival of Folklore http://come.to/schoten Redirects to a page in the domain www.realtor.com Canada - index http://www.festivalfinder.com Site is apparently under construction: "Welcome to FestivalFinder.com a Diverse, Festival Listing Site – Coming Soon!" (but what does "Soon" really mean?) Versions captured in the Internet Archive from May 1997 through June 2015 seem to have been working. Canada/Alberta - Calgary - Hispanic Performing Arts ... http://www.geocities.com/~hispanicarts/ Redirects to https://smallbusiness.yahoo.com (as do other geocities sites) England - Chippenham Folk Festival</A> - In Chippenham http://members.aol.com/chippfolk/index.html Redirects to an AOL login page. If I got an AOL account and logged in, it might indeed take me to a page having something to do with the Chippenham Folk Festival. I'm not about to try. KY - Gray Hawk - Stringbean Memorial Bluegrass Festival - ... http://www.geocities.com/stringfest/ Redirects to https://smallbusiness.yahoo.com Netherlands - index http://www.euronet.nl/~trio/ Last updated 31 May 2011. However, it doesn't seem to claim to have any regularly updated calendar information. It just has a bunch of links (some good, some stale) to other sites. PA - Elmhurst - Endless Mountains Blues Fest - ... http://www.blues101.org Now a page full of text in some Asian language. TN - Sevierville - Bluegrass in the Smokies - ... http://www.BluegrassInTheSmokies.com The banner at the top says "Bluegrassinthesmokies.com" but the contents are stuff about bodybuilding and ads for tree services. (I am not making this up.) UK - Ipswich - International Country Music Festival - ... http://www.minifest.co.uk/ Goes to a page soliciting offers to buy the domain name. United Kingdom - Stirrings' Folk Festival Newsletter http://www.stirrings.co.uk/folkzone/index.html Goes to http://www.stirrings.co.uk which appears to advertise live music for weddings and other event. The current content deems very different from in Internet Archive snapshots from 10 years ago or so, which show the online version of a folk, roots and acoustic music magazine. USA - CA - Napa Valley Music Festival - Three days in September http://www.napafest.com "... The owner of napafest.com is offering it for sale ..." USA - CA - Old-Time Fiddlers' Convention - also has singing, ... http://www.fiddlersconvention.org/dpage.php?page_id=1 "This Account has been suspended." USA - CT - NOMAD (NOrtheast Music And Dance) Festival - ... http://www.nomadfest.org/ "No NOMAD Festival in 2008" -- and if there has been one since then, the organizers seem to have have been darn quiet about it on the web. USA - index - Festival Finder http://www.festivalfinder.com Supposedly under construction (see "Canada - index" above). USA - MA - Boston Folk Festival</A> - Mid-September http://www.bostonfolkfestival.org/ The site, which seems to be administered by radio station, WUMB doesn't appear (at the time I write this) to show any info about a mid-September folk festival, though it does show info abut registration being open for summer acoustic music weeks in July and August USA - MA - Greater New Bedford Summerfest - ... http://www.barrel-of-music.com "BUY THIS DOMAIN The owner of barrel-of-music.com is offering it for sale ..." Oddly, one link marked as red by the checker seems to be good: movable - Folk Alliance Conference - Yearly conference for ... http://www.folk.org --Jim

7 years, 11 months

Fwd: Query: Tools to search for stale links (was Re: is NEFFA LinkFest still active)

by Jack Mitchell via Organizers

There is an extension for Chrome that will go through and check links for a particular page. https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/link-checker/aibjbgmpmnidnmagaefh… I ran it on the NEFFA Link Fest and this is what I got (or at least is the first screen): Purple is sites that couldn't be reached, and red is not found messages of various types. [image: pasted1] On Wed, Apr 26, 2017 at 3:55 PM James Saxe via Organizers < organizers(a)lists.sharedweight.net> wrote: > I have a question for any of you who are involved with website > administration (e.g., for your local dance organization): > > Do anyone know of good tools that will automatically go > through a site searching for stale links? > > I've been prompted to make this query in part by the recent > messages about the NEFFA LinkFest, which is apparently no longer > maintained because it got to be too much work relative to the > perceived benefit (particularly relative to perceived benefit > for the volunteer maintainer(s)). However, I've noticed that > many local dance groups' websites include lists of external > links, and that while these lists are typically much smaller than > the LinkFest (containing perhaps a dozen to a hundred links vs. > almost 3000 in the LinkFest), they also often are not assiduously > maintained and so often include at least a few links that no > longer point to the expected content. > > I recognize that the automatic detection of stale links may not > be a trivial problem, since there can be a variety of different > symptoms. I'e just gone looking through lists of links on > several different sites. Among the things I've found are: > > * Links that fail with Error 404 (Not Found) > > * Links that fail with Error 403 (Forbidden: You don't have > permission to access ...) > > * Links that fail because the browser cant find the server. > > * Links that get to the site that apparently used to contain > the desired page but now show a message like "We're sorry, > but we were unable to locate the page you requested." > (Perhaps attempts to follow these links actually produce a > 404 code even if the text displayed to the user doesn't > include the string "404".) > > * Links that go to sites offering to sell you the (expired) > domain name that included the target page. > > * Links to pages that appear to have been taken over by new > owners and no longer display the original content. Among > other things, I've found pages full of text in Chinese > or Cyrillic characters; pages that used to have dance > information and seem to have been taken over by real estate > agents or financial service organizations; and pages that > say "WARNING!! THIS SITE CONTAINS ADULT MATERIALS ..." > (I did not click on the "Continue" button after the warning > to see whether it got me to traditional-dance-related > cotent). > > * Links to pages that admit to being no longer maintained. > > * Links to pages that in turn offer a (possibly good) link > to a new page with the desired content. > > * Links that go to what seem to be the original target > pages, but that also seem not to have been updated in > several years. (For example a site might refer to > "upcoming" event that are now several years in the past. > One might then wonder whether there's a new, actively > maintained, site somewhere with similar, but current, > information.) > > If someone creates a link the points to a recent blog entry, > someone who follows the link several years later might get to > now-most-recent page of the blog and only be able to reach > the originally referenced content by clicking something like > "older posts" a large--and unknown--number of times. Similarly, > links to online newspaper or magazine content might now point > to pages that are evidently full of newer content. The old > content might or might not be available somewhere, but there > may be no visible advice about how to find it. > > When people migrate their websites, it seems to be common that, > if links into the old site get redirected at all, they end up > redirecting to some place like the home page of of the new site > instead of to the exact page (if one exists) corresponding to the > old target of the link. > > Despite these comments about how links can go stale in various > ways that aren't immediately obvious, it seems to me that stale > link detection would be a useful feature for a wide variety of > website administrators--and not just for dance organizers. So > perhaps someone somewhere has put some effort into doing a good > job of it. I'd be interested if anyone knows of examples. > > Thanks. > > --Jim > > _______________________________________________ > Organizers mailing list > Organizers(a)lists.sharedweight.net > http://lists.sharedweight.net/listinfo.cgi/organizers-sharedweight.net > -- Jack Mitchell Durham, NC -- Jack Mitchell Durham, NC

7 years, 11 months

Re: [Organizers] Organizers Digest, Vol 30, Issue 1

by Emily Addison via Organizers

Hi Orin, Al, and others, Al - your Sierra Club Singles newsletter sounds great! I'll ask around in our community if there's anything similar here. (We've got outdoor clubs but I'm not sure if for singles). And Orin - we've tried the Celtic Studies program and the grad associations. I love the idea of the dance department ... unfortunately we don't have one in the city. We've tried to infiltrate the swing clubs but that hasn't panned out yet. But I'll dig to see what other dance clubs are around the post-secondary institutions. Thanks for the leads! Emily

8 years

Re: [Organizers] Organizers Digest, Vol 28, Issue 13

by Emily Addison via Organizers

Hi Dana (Monteplier) and fellow organizers! I'm digging back into my inbox for interesting things I had read but couldn't get to. Anyway, I think your dance series sounds really innovative and quite neat. :) I love the idea of the little skits. We did just one back in the fall on how to hold your partner... just before the break in the dance. This because lots of our regulars pull on shoulders etc.... even though many go to the beginner lesson to help out, we wanted to get the message clearly but in a fun way out to everyone. I'm curious - do you have a running list of what you've done for skits? How you've covered those subjects? It would be neat to do a group sharing of ideas if others are also interested! Emily > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > > Message: 1 > Date: Mon, 20 Feb 2017 17:09:02 -0500 > From: Dana Dwinell-Yardley via Organizers > <organizers(a)lists.sharedweight.net> > To: organizers(a)lists.sharedweight.net > Subject: Re: [Organizers] Organizers meeting at Flurry. > Message-ID: > <CAM1RjTvAqu=9_njhbub4hD82tdjXHjD9ujgVAWY+ > r4JOkwKCUg(a)mail.gmail.com> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" > > Hi friends, > > I missed this session at Flurry, but my co-organizer, Alice Smolinsky, was > telling me about it! We run the Montpelier Contra Exchange dance ( > www.contraexchange.org) together, along with four other folks. > > We are the series that does half contra, half featured dance. We do contra > for the first half, and it's a long half: 8?9:45. Then we have a short > workshop on the featured dance from 9:45 to 10. Then we take a break, and > come back for 45 minutes of the featured dance (swing, Cajun, waltz, etc) > from 10:15 to 11. > > We also do the organizer-led skits on various aspects of being a better > dancer: asking your partner if they prefer twirls, listening to the caller > and not chatting, being a "dance ambassador" and looking out for the > benefit of the whole hall, etc. We believe that it's powerful when teaching > moments come from the "laypeople" ? dancers/organizers ? not just the > caller. > > Let us know if you have more questions about our unusual but super friendly > little dance! > > Dan >

8 years

By-Donation

by Greg Allan via Organizers

Hey Folks, About two months ago, I had mentioned that by-donation models, in my personal opinion, would be great for folk dancing groups and mentioned one dance I was organizing in March would be by-donation. A few asked to know how it turned out. Well, it happened on the weekend, to great success. The number of attendees was extremely low, for a variety of reasons unrelated to the price of the dance. After all, I hardly think a lower price was going to turn people away! However, many of my musician friends showed up, put on a great set, I introduced a young fiddler to the stage who performed well, and everyone had a blast. Regarding the cost, I believe everyone averaged a donation of 15 dollars - more money than I had charged for any other contra dance I organized in Winnipeg previously. My math could be off. However, a conservative estimate of an average 10 dollar donation is still quite encouraging and promising, in my opinion. Apologies for inaccurate calculations, but since it was by-donation, I didn't mark anything down when people dropped money in the jar. Hope to see more of this in the future! Thank you for your interest. Greg

8 years

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