Workshop Report

A Zoom workshop on “Using Digital for Recruitment and Marketing: No IT Expertise Needed!” was held on 10 December 2023.  In this report Brian Kelly, facilitator of the workshop, summarises the content and a number of participants give their reflections of the session and provide summaries of their actions in the few days after the event.

Note video recordings of the talk are available: “Supporting the discovery of information about your side” (24 minutes long) and “Exploiting the Potential of Video” (42 minutes long)

Summary

For many side the challenge is to recruit new dancers and musicians.  They will often begin with a Google search for “looking for a morris side near location” If their location is Dorset they should find details for Wyld Morris near the top of the results.  How is this done? By ensuring the side’s TeamFinder profile contains the relevant information and is structured in a way which helps Google.  

A hashtag for a side is also useful. A side can use its hashtag in their publicity material or in short summaries in the programme for a folk festival.  The side can also announce its hashtag when performing to an audience: “If you took videos of our side feel free to use the hashtag #PoacherMorris if you post them online”  will mean that videos and photos can easily be found by, in this case, Poacher Morris.

Having a rich profile can help potential new dancers find information on your side – but before a new dancer makes the decision to contact the side they will probably want to watch the side performing. Since smart phones and computers are owned by large numbers (especially the younger dancers we would love to see dancing) videos of the side can be particularly valuable. But it is known that people typically only watch the first few seconds of videos published online so there will be a need to publish short videos. And since even short videos may fail to attract an audience there is a need to understand how YouTube algorithms (and the algorithms used by other social media sharing services) work.

The workshop concluded by providing examples of videos of dance sides which have had large numbers of views and outlined the Morris Federation’s plans for supporting member sides in the production and publication of short videos.

Reflections

Many thanks to the following participants who provided their short reflections of the workshop.

Rod Shute, Newton Bushel Morris, explained how:

What I will take away from the meeting was the knowledge that we should look at things from the onlookers perspective. Whether it be looking at a video or how the dances are put together. For instance the use of repartee between say the fool and the Squire. 

Your meeting was very useful, it opened my eyes to how joined up everything is, or could be. Thanks for holding the meeting and giving up your valuable time.

His colleague Saskia Carter, also of Newton Bushel Morris, described how

For many of us social media is overwhelming and we don’t know where to start or what is important when it comes to advertising our existence online. The workshop began with the mysteries of Google searching, which is the first thing people do when searching for a Morris side. We were encouraged to make the best use of the Morris Federation TeamFinder pages, which tend to arrive near the top of Google searches. Then there was a long talk about hashtags and their importance to improving the visibility of our sides’ internet presence.

Dawn Richardson, Old Palace Clog, gave her “thanks for the training on using digital for recruitment and marketing, it was a very useful session.  You have given us lots of food for thought and we need to think about being sensible about our approach so we are linking across platforms and not duplicating effort” and, with her colleague Joanna Idrizovic, outlined the actions Old Palace Clog intend to take to raise the profile of their side:

• Review Teamfinder on Morris Federation and encourage our followers to rate our side and for us to rate other sides (it’s about collaboration and the Morris community)
• Reconsider whether we want to relaunch our website

• Use other subjects than dancers in our videos to keep people’s interest – noting videos shouldn’t be longer than 30 seconds 

• We will now record in portrait, which has been a recent debate

• Our YouTube clips are 7 months old so focus on getting more uploaded with a description of the venue, location and date, with time stamps (thinking about our evening of dance in February)

Cracklewick Morris are a very new, mixed, ‘fusion’ side  (formed August 2023) which dances a range of styles and invents their own dances. Jacqueline King is in a good position to implement some of the ideas from the workshop in the early days of this new side:

I will certainly look at updating our Morris Fed profile. Also in the new year I will do some videos of dance practice  and will take you up on the offer of making a short video for us.

In addition, the day after the workshop Jacqueline created a TikTok account for Cracklewick Morris – Cracklewickmorris”  Incidentally a day after the account was launched a lovely Christmas video  had had 700 views!

 Pauline Woods-Wilson of Rivington Morris reported that:

“We already had the hashtag #rivingtonmorris on our Morris Federation Teamfinder profile – I will now add the hashtag to our web site, Facebook site, X/Twitter, Instagram and YouTube channel. “

Next steps

Two final comments were made which highlighted the need to provide a forum for further discussions and sharing of experiences in IT-related issues.

Kathryn Mann, Flowers of Ilmington, commented that:

“A really useful session.  I’m new to a side of older people who aren’t as internet savvy as I, but I still learned a lot about why hashtags are important, that we needn’t have a website, to pin ourselves on maps, why videos/reels are so important and how to market ourselves to the members we want to attract.  The session was quite YouTube heavy, we use Instagram and it’s a shame that was hardly mentioned, although Brian readily stated he needs to do more research on it, so perhaps it will be added to future workshops“

Finally Dan de la Bedoyere, Glastonbury Border Morris Dancers, whose side has a well-established TikTok account, shared a suggestion for sides wishing to make greater use of YouTube:

“I am finding VidIQ a useful tool for analysing and promoting YouTube videos“

and in response to discussions about websites for morris sides Dan said that this side used

“www.linktr.ee which is easier than setting up a website and it is free”

These comments highlighted the need to address additional topics, including specific areas such  as use of: Instagram )popular within the morris community) and broader topics such as whether websites are needed. I am pleased to report that a Facebook group called “Digital for Dance Teams” has been set up to facilitate such discussions.  All with an interest in making use of digital technologies to support their side’s activities are invited to sign up and participate in the discussions.