MH Mexico City November Blog - Outreach

We live in an era in which communication between people is more efficient, faster and simpler than ever before. Nevertheless, we at Moishe House Mexico City feel that the most effective way to bring people to our events is through warm and personal invitations. Technological tools such as the facebook fan page, the official website and the google calendar can be very useful when it comes to branding the and giving the whole initiative some sort of legitimacy; however, without an intimate approach to our potential attendees (telephone calls or word-of-mouth) such tools are useless. First, we will elaborate on the reasons why the use of standard internet tools is limited at best. Then, we will propose a couple of alternative strategies that have proven useful or seem to have greater potential.

Unlike other countries such as the United States and most of the developed world, mexicans tend to be very informal when it comes to social gatherings. To give you an example, for most events, any of our friends, or even ourselves, would confirm their assistance. The problem with this confirmation is that it is not a binding contract and no seriousness is attached to it. Obviously implying that those people are not necessarily going to show up and it most cases they will not call to apologize or cancel, i.e. it is socially accepted and expected for people to not show up even if they confirmed.

Our own experience has taught us that, from the amount of persons that "confirm" their assistance to events on facebook, only around 10 percent of them will eventually show up. This means that 35 persons can confirm their assistance, via facebook, to a Shabbez dinner, but out of those, only 2 or 3 actually attend the event. This makes it difficult to plan ahead, and we have found ourselves in situations in which we prepared food for 30, and only 9-10 people eat it. Another probable reason for this informality is that the social-networking-through-internet culture is something that has yet to settle. This is why we have began to rely less on facebook and more on personal contact through phone or sms (which are more binding although still limited).

There is very little foresight in Mexico City when it involves filling out or planning for a social agenda. This is why, rather than focusing on what to do in order to make people come to a specific event, we at MHMC have understood the importance of consolidating the house as a place where things are always happening. As someone living in this chaotic city, where millions of things are going on all the time, it is very hard to plan a week ahead. This is why we at MHMC feel that we need to establish the presence of the house in such a way that it will make people consider it as an option for their free time. Thus, inciting them to consult the calendar and check the events or just drop by for a quick visit. The different strategies that we have come up with to make this happen are varied and involve different aspects of the whole Moishe House initiative. The main goal of this strategies is not only to engage people more actively in our events, but also to arouse people´s curiosity for the whole project. In such a way that the Moishe House agenda can be present in the back of people`s mind as a general constant for their "free time".

One of the ideas that we had was to produce an electronic bulletin that will reach a specific crowd with a more personalized message. The bulletin would be monthly and it would let people know about the upcoming events. The reasons why we think this could be successful is that, unlike an electronic calendar through Google or an invitation through Facebook, the bulletin gives you a degree of membership that is not easy to convey through the website or through facebook. The interesting facet of this "membership" is that it will allow a more personal dialogue with the residents and the attendees, making it possible to create community without relying on the usual social-networking tools.

Being frank, the constant bombardment of events through facebook has made it impossible for the user to prioritize and commit to them. Most of the time, people just take a quick glance at such events, accepting or declining the invitation, postponing their decision to a later date that they might forget. The advantages of a mailing list is that it can speak personally to them (if the rest of the contacts are placed on the BCC field), making it easier to establish a personal relationship with the user than through other media (although there´s always the chance that people can mark us as SPAM). For this month we plan on sending a Hannukah greeting card, with our picture, to a large database we have gathered from our other projects in the mexican jewish community.

Our newest strategies concerning bigger gatherings was to target potential attendees and speak to them directly about the whole project, involving them as part of the production of the events. We want to focus specifically on group leaders. These people will be able to create a snow-ball effect and get people interested. Another peculiarity of our culture is that people move in closed-knit packs and are less individualistic. For this reason, gathering leaders would create a word-of mouth presence among 20-30 crowd. The reason why this has not been terribly successful is that we not found yet the best way to express the goal of the whole project, in a way that is clear and concise for other mexican jews. The Moishe House concept still appears foreign to most mexican jews. Our main goal is to first establish a word-of-mouth presence and then utilize our internet technology as an extra tool. Because our experience has taught us not to rely too much on the internet as a networking tool.

We have also began to diversify our events. The aim of such a strategy is to attract a more diverse crowd and at the same time not exclude people with different interests. Clearly, our previous plan ,of involving more people, is a perfect complement. Opening our house to more diversity and actively involving our previous participants seems like the next logical step. Apathy seems to be a growing phenomena in our community and this appears to be the best remedy. We think we need to change our philosophy from come to our Moishe House, to come to your Moishe House.

In conclusion, we at Moishe House Mexico City believe that we struggle with a culture that is quite distinct from other Moishe Houses around the world. Most jewish people in the Diaspora, particularly in the US, suffer from a lack of jewishness in their life. This makes attracting jews who long for a sense of community or belonging much simpler. Our problem is different. We suffer from an over-abundance of activities that do not address the needs and tastes of young contemporary jews. Add to this the previously mentioned cultural and social differences and you get a very different scenario from other Moishe Houses. For this reason, some of our solutions might seem unorthodox but we believe they are and will be successful. Given that our problem is different, it appears sensible that our solution should be too.

Art of Seduction in the Russian Moishe House

Inviting guests to my home used to be a simple task - call them up,
extend an invite, and done. Simple. Direct. Personal. Having an
agenda was optional. Ok, so once in a while I may send a text
message. I might even send one message to a few people to save time.
While this may not seem as personal, we knew each other very well, the
intent was clear and unambiguous - I wanted their company, and nothing
more. Whether the guests would accept my invite or not, life was
easy, and the consequences were few to nonexistent. Those days are
now long behind. In my few months of living in the Russian Moishe
House, my roommates and I had to develop this method to a science.

Contrary to the emotional connection I share with my close friends,
the connection we share with members of our community is unfortunately
a bit more artificial. Reasons for this are clear - throwing events
is fun, but also an obligation we face as an organization. We realize
this, and so do the guests. Granted, we love everyone's company, but
the price of growing a community is having to rely on marketing
tactics and attracting many people that we don't know too well.

We consistently rely on a number of measures to attract guests to our
events. As a primary means of event marketing, we utilize Facebook.
We do our best to post events at least two weeks in advance to give
people ample time to organize their calendars, but occasionally get
lazy in this matter. In general, a lesser time window before the
event tends to bring in less people, but the event fun factor also
plays a large role here. We typically send one or more reminders in
the days leading into the event. While Facebook marketing may suffice
for the most social events, we try our best to supplement it with more
personal channels of communication. Text messages are one example.
Granted, we send these to multiple recipients, but because we address
a smaller group of people, the invitations seem more personal, and the
fact is usually reflected in the quality of the responses. My
Blackberry only allows a maximum of ten recepients per text message,
so my invites are especially selective! On an even more personal and
selective basis, we make phone calls and extend in-person invites.

So far, we relied almost exclusively on these methods for bringing
guests to our events. However, there are never any guarantees or
metrics to accurately predict the number of expected guests for any
event - only loose correlations. The event content is another large
determining factor. If we the event is perceived as dry and boring
when advertised, the attendance will be low, and the few people who do
attend may strongly consider this experience in the future, regardless
of past experiences. Taking this into account, we try to make the
programming as fun as possible, and have the fact reflect in the
marketing, regardless of whether the event is purely social, or
primarily educational. Depending on the event time, duration, and
other specifics, providing food and drinks helps in bringing people
in, but the event programming is usually the bigger driving force.
Last, but not least, it definitely does not hurt us to live in an
upscale place and at a nice location!

This is how the game is played at the Russian Moishe House. We have
also been marketing our content on Twitter, but more so for the sake
of experimenting. We might even consider putting together a website
to boost our popularity. There is no single approach that is always
effective in this business, so we have to consistently explore
innovative ways to attract guests to our home.

personally speaking my blog

December 7, 1941—a date which will live in infamy—the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan.

It was in the wake of WW2 that Jews, among other ethnicity's, became "white". Prior to the war and the economic development of the 1950's Jews, along with Italians (pronounced Eye-taalyuns), Eastern Europeans, and Irish were considered "Ethnic Whites". Where previously the Jew had lived in the immigrant ghetto of the Lower East Side or similar communities they were now mainstreamed modern Americans. I am not one to extol as a vile evil, the notion of cultural cross-pollination. That the Jew has contributed as much to America as America has contributed to the American Jew is a certainty but what was lost was a degree of Jewish free space. In sociological terms, a free space, is a area or institution that exists for and of only members of one group. It allows them breathing space from the rest of society to self-conceptualize and to grapple with their unique identity on their own terms. Many of the endeavours of the Jewish people in America as of late have been an attempt to recover some free space. Moishe House is a prime example, creating an area, an institution of and for young Jewry to conceptualize themselves, the world around them, and their relation as Jews to it.

MH HOBOKEN BLOG

The most effective way to bring people to Moishe House events has been by talking to them in person. The internet is amazing, email, facebook messages, evites, etc .... are terrific tools but are, until you actually know someone, rather anesthetized ways to communicate with people. The best way to spread the good word is by having a good product and leting people bring their friends over and partake in the community. It has been our experience that when we get a random email or facebook message from someone they more likely than not will not actually come to the next program. By anaecdotal and unscientific methods I would guess this holds about 60% of the time (making a program attendance rate of only 40% for those who contact use through the internet). On the other hand, when we meet someone face to face and invite them to the next program the succes rate is much higher, say at 80-90%. When we meet someone in person we also follow up with adding them to the email list and continue to email them about events in the future.

MH cleveland. getting people to events.

The most effective way to bring people to Moishe House is word of mouth. There are a few people in our community who have brought the most people to Moishe House and if these individuals do not attend an event, then the chance that we will have new people at our event goes way down. We use facebook invites as an integral part of inviting people to events. Whatever is posted on facebook is what is officially going on at our house. Furthermore, we do call or email people about events who expressed that facebook was not a good tool to reach them. We do also send out mass text messages and make phone calls to remind people two days before an event and the day of. In the month of December we are going to make a poster of the dates and times of all our events for the month and post it in our living room. This way, anyone who is at an event can easily see what else is going on during the month. Depending on how this goes over, we are considering making a postcard for the month of January, with the dates, times, locations, and descriptions of events. We have not had so many new people at are last few events. So we are looking for new ways of promotions that do not include making fliers and posting them.

MHP - Outreach

For MHP, outreach is all about straddling the line between utilizing new media and maintaining close, personal connections. When MHP opened its doors in 2007, each of the founding members contributed the names and emails of their friends in the area who would be down for some Moishe-style community. We spoke with our friends personally and did a lot of emailing/phone calling to bring in people for those first few events. From there we received some press and started a weekly email list with over 500 members. As we have evolved, so has our technological outreach.

Now in our third year of operation, we have moved from a Facebook group to a Facebook fan page, we've transitioned from an e-mail listserve to a google group with a more streamlined newsletter (that's still readable on everyone's fancy mobile gadget ) and we've started a Twitter account. Our members like to hear from us in many different ways and we're happy to provide them those various avenues. Facebook is a great way to invite a large number of people to specific events, and Twitter has been very useful for last minute event planning and just giving an extra "Hello" or "Shabbat shalom" to our followers. We have mostly used our own forms of technology, rather than utilizing the Moishe house website to its fullest capacity. Perhaps that is something we could try in the future.

Part of our success at outreach is that we treat each person who walks through our doors as a potential leader in the Moishe house community and one of our good friends. We try to learn names and faces quickly - we have a photo wall that not only helps us with that, but also makes our members feel like stars on a wall of fame - and we review new people who come to our events at our weekly meetings so we can figure out the best way to follow up with them. In addition to cultivating those people who walk through our doors, we also work to partner with other organizations in the city to bring in new faces and spread the word of MHP to more people. We would love to get more press now that we've been around a few years and hopefully expand our reach to further parts of the city - all in an effort to increase our outreach.

MH Vienna

The most effective way so far, to bring people to our Moishe House, has been to put a chicken in the oven, open the window, and let the tasty smell spread in the street of Vienna. Crowds of people, eyes closed, follow the sensitive sense of their smell and end up having a great time at the Moishe House forgetting why they came here at the first place.

From our first events a year ago (House warming party, Mezzuza fixing party&Pizza) the word of mouth has been a very useful tool for getting new faces to join our events. Therefore, our job is to make sure that participants have such a good time, that they will want to share it with all their other friends.

Another way, which has been quite useful is..... Facebook! Yes Facebook definitly helped us to promote our events; We were very surprise to see how many more people started to join our events when posting on facebook. However, because not every single person has a profile, or use it on a daily basis, we still have to put the chicken in the oven and assure that people have a great time when they come.

The last method, which has also been playing a key role in developing our Moishe House Vienna community, is to simply take the phone, and call people to keep them updated, get them involve personally (for example, helping to prepare the event) or just to check how they are, in other word, to develop a real friendship and this is the best thing that can happen.

We wish you all a wonderful Hanouka!

All the best,

Daniel, Eytan, Michael.