Re: [Organizers] Advertising for dance weekends

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