Users of different socials cluster heavily by age. My college students refuse to use Facebook. They use Instagram a lot. Discord is where they hang out, but Discord isn't useful for getting in front of new users. Facebook is getting less and less effective at that, too. Facebook started being uncool about 10-15 years ago, so the non-Facebook crowd is now into their 30s. I find that enough dances (not just contra) are organized around Facebook that there are plenty of dancers younger than that who do use Facebook solely for dance communication, but that doesn't find new dancers of that age group.
I tried Reddit and got over a thousand views on several posts! However, not a single person who actually came to a dance had ever seen one of my Reddit posts. I never found out who those others were, or what actually counted as a view. TikTok does put stuff in front of new people, but you have to make a video a certain way to get a lot of hits, which is much more difficult than just typing a message. TikTok is also starting to be banned in certain places, such as Florida university campuses. It mainly appeals to younger folks, maybe under about 25 now, so if you have a few of those, they might be happy to make and post some videos, and can do it authentically. The most useful thing I got out of our one TikTok post was the ability to pull it up and show someone one-on-one. That was quite effective, moreso than YouTube. No clue why they liked it better. I got almost 30 new members on Meetup right off, about four or five of whom actually came. Then, after a month, suddenly no more. I think they were trying to get me to pay more for placement. Maybe Meetup Pro is worthwhile? I've never tried Twitter. It hardly seems worthwhile to start, now. My dance is in all the local online calendars. I discovered that the Orlando Sentinel, our paper, was cribbing its listings from OrlandoatPlay.com, but got a date wrong. Out of curiosity, I asked the venue owner whether anyone showed up that night. He was not holding an event but was at the venue doing paperwork. Nobody showed up. So, that gave me a sense for the value of the online arts calendar in a major city's main newspaper. If they know what contra is and are looking for it, any web search should get them to your website. For others, by far the most effective is person-to-person, but that doesn't scale until you've already got scale. Getting covered in the media is always good. Holding public outdoor dances or teaching a dance at another group's event also work. In the end, though, people are pretty good at defending their time. After all this effort and going on a year of dances, we're still steady at just 20 dancers. --jh-- On Tue, May 9, 2023 at 11:51 AM Harris Lapiroff via Organizers < organizers@lists.sharedweight.net> wrote: > I can’t speak to what Rich meant by “our desired audience” but I > personally don’t think of Twitter as a place people go looking for local > social dances to attend, so I think it’s not most social dances’ desired > audience of “people who might come to a dance.” We use Facebook and Meetup > to advertise events and are planning to branch out into Instagram as well. > > (It’s possible this isn’t true of all communities. Maybe there are places > where people really do use Twitter to find local events! But it’s not > something I’ve encountered.) > > > On May 9, 2023, at 11:11 AM, Weogo Reed via Organizers < > organizers@lists.sharedweight.net> wrote: > > > > Hi Rich, > > > > I always thought of the folk scene as an inclusive community. > > "our desired audience" > > This hit me on a personal level. > > Why be exclusive? > > > > Thanks and good health, Weogo > > > > > >> On 5/9/2023 9:39 AM, Rich Dempsey via Organizers wrote: > >> We have disabled our Twitter account. In addition to our concerns with > current management, we've found that keeping up with many social media > accounts hard to manage. And some CDR organizers feel that Twitter doesn't > align with our desired audience. > >> > >> Rich Dempsey > >> Country Dancers of Rochester (NY) > >> > > _______________________________________________ > > Organizers mailing list -- organizers@lists.sharedweight.net > > To unsubscribe send an email to organizers-le...@lists.sharedweight.net > _______________________________________________ > Organizers mailing list -- organizers@lists.sharedweight.net > To unsubscribe send an email to organizers-le...@lists.sharedweight.net >
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