The young people of freedom’s next generation are digital natives. They spend a high percentage of their waking hours online—watching videos, listening to music, building social networks and even reading occasionally. Because of this, FEE is putting a higher percentage of our resources–approximately 25 percent of our upcoming fiscal year’s budget—into online outreach that meets Millennials where they are.
Such ambitions require us to invest in both technology and talent.
We are continually upgrading the user experience on FEE.org, especially the ease of access to our online archive of classic books and to the 60+ years of articles from The Freeman. Just this past week, we uploaded the complete works of Leonard E. Read. It’s not just our visitors who are finding these treasures much more readily, but search engines as well.
We are achieving more user engagement than ever on social media. Our content is now displayed to about 1.5 million people per month on . This is roughly 30 times the number of our Facebook “friends,” meaning that FEE’s friends are moved to share our content with their friends more frequently than ever.
We are continually upgrading the website itself. In about a month’s time, we will launch an entirely new edition of FEE.org, with loads of engaging new features and a “responsive” version for mobile devices. Fully 40 percent of the traffic to FEE.org now originates from smartphones and tablets, so this new version will significantly improve the user experience for a major portion of our audience.
FEE.org recorded over 3 million sessions in 2014 and our traffic so far in 2015 is running at 27 percent above last year’s. We’re pleased that this growth reflects roughly proportional improvement in all our traffic sources—social media, search engines, e-mail, referrals and direct. Readership of The Freeman online is now over 200,000 unique visitors per month, and 56 percent of our visitors are within the 18-34 age range.
In furtherance of growth like this, we are pleased to announce the hiring of three very talented new staff members.
Jeffrey Tucker will be joining FEE in the new position of Director of Digital Development. He has been consulting for FEE part-time since Labor Day, and many of the improvements during that time are attributable to his leadership. A prolific writer and well-known speaker on behalf of liberty, he has a twenty-year track record in digital development and outreach at three very successful liberty-centered websites. With Jeffrey on board, we expect our online growth to accelerate substantially.
Daniel Bier has joined FEE in the new position of blog editor. The new version of FEE.org will include a completely redesigned multi-media blogging platform, highly interactive, customized for social media and serving as an aggregator, an institutional blog, and a distributed blog all in one. A recent graduate of Rutgers University, Dan founded and leads a successful blog in our space that has over 25,000 fans on Facebook. With the new platform and the new editor, we will dramatically increase the activity level on our Anything Peaceful blog, with regular posts throughout every business day.
Don’t think we’ve lost focus on our in-person programs in our enthusiasm to expand our online presence. Student seminars remain a hallmark of the FEE experience, and we expect to see a 33 percent growth in attendance at in-person student seminars this year.
Toward that end, William Smith has joined FEE as Program Development Associate to assist in crafting engaging seminars for our growing young audience. Will, a FEE alumnus, developed his talents for connecting students to the freedom philosophy while working for the IHS Find Scholars program. We’re excited he will lend his talents toward our continuous improvement of the customer experience at seminars.
