Are you a social media expert?

with people you know and meet people you don’t.  In fact, social media is all the buzz in advertising in today’s market. It’s free, it’s fast, and you can hit a large market.  Big companies are even hiring social media experts whose full time job is to tweet you, text you, and message you about hot deals and cool stuff.  It’s the next big thing in marketing.  But should you use it for your private music teaching studio?  I do.

Facebook.  I love Facebook, mostly for its ability to quickly and easily connect with a ton of people, specifically my friends, family, high school classmates, and even my piano students. You can quickly and easily get messages to all or some of the people you know, advertise your studio, and share tips and tricks for practice times.   But Facebook is rife with privacy issues.  If you’re going to post personal items on Facebook, you must be vigilant about using discretion and privacy settings.  After all, some, if not all, of your posts may end up in Google searches.  You also need to watch that some distant relative doesn’t tag you in an unflattering photo from your third cousin’s wedding.  It might reflect poorly on the image you are hoping to portray to your private lesson students.  Avoid posting anything that you don’t want the entire world to know or see.  Don’t post rants about people or places, instead, keep your posts positive, fun, and inspiring.  Better yet, create a separate page based on your studio website.  You can invite all your students to visit, as well as post events, ads, or information that you want your students to see.  It’s a great place to offer an incentive for referrals.  You can also join Facebook groups such as your local high school band page or church page.  From there, you can meet new poeple and make new connections.  Don’t forget to ask people to ‘like’ your page so they can find you later or share you with their friends.

www.facebook.com

LinkedIn.  LinkedIn is a more professional venue, and a great way to network with other private teachers, businessman, and other professionals.  It’s a great way to get your resume and credentials out there, as well as advertise your studio website.  You’re not likely to find young students on LinkedIn, but you will be able to network with people who can lead you to new students (such as their professionally employed parents).  Be wary of attaching your Twitter and Facebook accounts to LinkedIn.  It’s much safer to keep this account strictly professional with no personal references.  Include a great looking head shot so people remember you as a person, not just a name on the computer screen.  You can also join various discussion groups through LinkedIn, so you can find job openings or people looking to find a private music teacher.  Don’t forget to link your profile to your free Music Teacher’s Helper website.

www.linkedin.com.

Twitter.    The key to Twitter is in being succinct.  You only have 140 characters to get your message out there, so the more concise you can be, the better.  You can invite your friends and family to follow you on Twitter, and you can gain followers by following people you like.  Whenever you tweet, you should add a hashtag that compliments your tweet.  So if you tweet about piano practice, you may want to end your tweet with #piano or #musicpractice.  A hashtag is like  a keyword.  Other Twitter users can search for keywords, and hopefully, your tweet will come up.  Again, make sure to link your account with your Music Teacher’s Website.  Be careful of privacy issues, and keep an eye on your followers.  It is polite and expected to follow back appropriate followers on Twitter.

www.twitter.com

Google+.  Google plus is like Facebook without all the fancy bells and whistles (and with less privacy problems, too).  It’s a great networking tool, and I’m sure it will be gaining popularity as time goes on.  Invite your friends and family to join, and create ‘circles’ to categorize them in.  You can then associate with people that are in their circles, and thereby expand your own.  Being so concise will inspire your creative writing, too. www.google.com.

There are a few tricks to good, social networking.  First, post often, but don’t spam.  I love hearing what local business men and women are doing, but I get annoyed by the people that post every half hour.  I just don’t have time for that!  If your are networking to advertise, post things that are relevant to your studio, such as practice tips, composer tidbits, and available lesson spots.  It’s also a great place to offer incentives or advertise specials, if you have them.   Routinely look for new people to connect with by checking your family and friend’s pages and searching for groups and individuals.  Avoid ranting and raving or gossipping in your posts.  Keep your comments positive and helpful.  If you are going to post about your students, make sure you have their parents permission.  People love to see photographs, but be very careful what you post and who you tag.  If you want to post photos of your students, you should probably get written permission first.  Lastly, always be aware of privacy concerns.  If you don’t want the entire world to know, play it safe and just don’t post it.  Link your accounts to your free Music Teacher’s Helper Website so people know where to find you.

The first is the practical ‘house keeping’ – it’s an easy way to inform parents of term/holiday dates, exam/competition entry dates and upcoming recitals. It is also easy to have subtle reminders that lesson fees for this term are now overdue, or to remind parents of your cancellation (I find this often needs reminding around winter, when a large portion of the students catch colds and need to cancel/reschedule lessons).

The second use for the newsletter is to inform and educate parents. I use the newsletter to highlight appropriate articles from the Music Teachers Helper Blog (eg. Practice tips, sight-reading tips, how to accompanying well, etc), or to pass on articles from journals that I believe will be interesting. I always write a short section on a current theme that we are focusing on in the lessons. This month’s theme is a focus on fluency, in the lead up to the end of year competitions and recitals here in Australia. Last month’s theme was breathing with the music. One other use for this section of the newsletter is to inform parents and students of my own professional development. Studying music involves lifelong learning, and I believe it is important for my students to see that learning does not stop once they leave school.

The third and more unexpected benefit of the newsletter is as a publicity tool. I have gained a few new students for my waiting list after the parents of current students have forwarded my email onto other people who are interested in lessons.

So if you are considering writing a newsletter, I strongly encourage you to start. If you are unsure what you can write about to fill a whole newsletter, start slowly (perhaps one newsletter each quarter) and remember that you can draw on articles from many resources, rather than writing the newsletter in its entirety yourself. When distributing the newsletter, I email it to all parents (using the very easy ‘Email Students’ feature of Music Teachers Helper) and also print a few copies for parents to read while they are waiting for their child to finish their lesson in my home studio. I also pin a copy to the noticeboard outside the rooms at the various schools I teach at.

If you do write a newsletter for your students, please leave a comment with additional ideas for content below.

You can use the blog for a splendid tool for gathering much needed info for your studio and use of Music Teacher’s Helper. Below are a few ways to make the blog work for you:

• Click on one of the Categories in the right sidebar, which will bring up all the years of articles in that Category.
• Enter a work in the Search box at the top of the right sidebar. This will search all of the articles for the word in which you are searching.
• Like a particular author? Click on their name to bring up all the articles written by the author.

Remember to click on MORE to read the complete article, and leave a comment for the author. I know they appreciate your comments and will answer any question you might have.

Please enter a comment, or email me at ronnie@musicteachershelper.com if you have any questions, comments or suggestions concerning the Blog or Newsletter. Also let me know if you have a particular subject that you would like to share with  other members. A good article of interest by you could be published on our blog and newsletter for over four thousand of our members around the world to read and gather ideas to improve their studio.

Thanks for your support and interest in Music Teacher’s Helper.

Ronnie Currey
Director of Member Services/Editor
Music Teacher’s Helper
ronnie@musicteachershelper.com

It is quite easy to make these changes, as well as other changes, to your existing web  site. Go to (Home -> My Studio Website -> Website Preferences). On this page you can make either of the above changes as well as insert a quotation for your homepage, or show/hide the login sidebar and/or announcements.

If you have any questions on how to do this or anything else on your webpage, please do not hesitate to contact our fine support team, who stay on top of your questions 24/7.

MTH: If you want your site to be indexed by Google, the best way is to submit your site to them yourself. They will usually get around to indexing it within a few months. The url to submit your site to Google is:

http://www.google.com/addurl/

As far as how to rank high on the search engines, there are a lot of misconceptions out there. First, many people think that meta keywords are the words Google looks at the rank your site. This is no longer true. Meta keywords are basically meaningless these days, and Google practically ignores them. Instead, it pulls the keywords from the content of your site itself.

Google does pay a lot of attention to external links, though. Your site will rank much better if you can get other high-ranking sites to link to yours.

A good resource to learn about search engine optimization and how to get good rankings is

www.seomoz.org.

Elizabeth Biolchini graduated from Western Michigan University with a BA in Music. Upon graduation, Elizabeth traveled with her husband while he completed his military obligation. Six years ago they relocated to Michigan, where Elizabeth opened a private piano studio. She currently enjoys skiing and biking with her family and is an active member of the local music association.

Ronnie Currey teaches guitar, bass guitar, piano and voice to over forty private students. He is also the the Music Teacher’s Helper Director of Member Services as well as the editor for the blog and newsletter.

Ronnie was born in Chattanooga, Tennessee moving to the Denver area from Atlanta in 2000. Upon his arrival to Colorado Ronnie was hired by a Denver computer company as a sales executive, and within three months, promoted to manager. After nine months residing in Denver, Ronnie had signed up thirty private music students by leaving pamphlets at a local music store, and had to resign from his computer job. He currently teach between 40 and 45 students on guitar, piano, bass guitar and voice.

Amy McGlothlin is a saxophonist in Andover, MA. She currently is the professor of saxophone at Salem State College in Salem, MA and Gordon College in Wenham, MA. In addition to her college teaching, Amy maintains a studio of approximately 50-60 middle school and high school aged students. Amy specializes in teaching students with learning disabilities and is able to quickly tailor her teaching style to match each individual’s learning abilities. Amy is also a bagpiper and is the Pipe Major of the Clan MacPherson Pipes and Drums of North Andover, MA one of the United State’s oldest continuously operating bagpipe bands.

Ed Pearlman has focused on performing, teaching, and judging fiddle music for the past 25 years, throughout the USA and in Canada and Scotland. Before that, he studied with members of the Chicago and Boston Symphonies, and played with orchestras and chamber groups at Yale and in Boston.

He currently teaches at a conservatory and community music school in Maine.

Ed directed the Boston Scottish Fiddle Club in monthly workshops for 18 years, directed major concerts and festivals, and recorded a solo album and several with a fiddle orchestra and top soloists. In addition to Scottish and Cape Breton fiddle styles, Ed plays other Celtic, American, and Canadian fiddle music, classical and some jazz, klez and Hungarian.

Ed created and for 10 years ran a CD distribution company to bring music to the USA from Scotland, Atlantic Canada, Ireland, Brittany and Wales. He’s the music columnist for Scottish Life magazine.

Kristin Phillips has been studying piano since the age of 6 and with the guidance of her family and teachers, began teaching others by 14. After pursuing pedagogy in piano and business administration for a short time – to be continued at a later time, she transferred to studying church music ministry at Portland Bible College. She enjoys editing her website, writing in her spare time, teaching piano students of all ages, and teaching Sunday School at her church.

Ken Rhodes has been playing electric and classical gutiar since 1985. He lives behind the “Zion Curtain” in southern Utah and is currently working with two different bands. Although relatively new to teaching, Ken has two associates degrees in computers and a lot of patience, which both contribute to his ability to help answer questions posed to the Support Team.

Tiffanie Scarborough loves to help people, which is why she enjoys teaching and answering customer service e-mails. She has taught private flute lessons in Texas for about 11 years, piano lessons for about 5 or 6 years, and occassionally teaches a voice lesson or two. Her studio runs averages 65 active weekly-lesson students. She LOVES learning new things & learning about the latest gadgets and technology online and finding out all the details. She majored in Music and Math and therefore loves music theory, a great combination of the two subjects – She is close to finishing a Master’s degree in Music Theory. Other interests include learning foreign languages, traveling, coming up with ideas for inventions, figuring out different ways to organize things and information, decorating, learning about marketing, and the list could go on!

Tim Smedley is a professional cellist based in Manchester, UK and combines an active performing career with a developing teaching career. He plays both modern and period instruments and regularly works with some of the UK’s leading orchestras and ensembles in both fields He teaches at Junior RNCM, Manchester University and the Oxford Cello School as well as privately and his baroque ensemble, Compagnia d’Istrumenti, is currently Ensemble in Residence at the University of York.