Music Teacher's Helper Blog

Have you spent valuable time and energy putting all kinds of helpful information on your Music Teachers Helper website, only to find out that many of your clientele are not visiting it on a regular basis, or at all? Does it appear that students aren’t even aware of what’s available to them with this great tool that Music Teachers Helper has provided? Does anyone have ideas to share on how they’ve maximized the effectiveness of their websites by getting everyone on board?

I’ll  share my recent ideas.

Having gotten our spring recitals scheduled, I put the announcement on various pages of the website: date on the calendar; details and programmed pieces, as they are determined, on the Special Events page; time and place details in the Announcements area, with a link to the Google map, etc.  Instead of sending emails out with the recital specifics, I sent out the announcement: “Spring Recital Announced. Please go to the studio website for more details.” I followed with a link to my MTH website.  Like this:

www.JoyfulNoiseMusicalArts.MusicTeachersHelper.com

For awhile, you should use the full URL address, so your students will become more familiar with the website name, and possibly even write it down and bookmark it. Hopefully, this will help usher in those who are not as likely to use the computer for scheduling and getting information from their music teacher’s studio. Later on, you may say something like:

“Click here for details”.    By  simply asking at the following week’s lessons, “Do you have any questions about the upcoming recitals?” you will find out who went to the website. For those students that didn’t make it there, for whatever reason, it may be worth your time to walk them through the steps to get into the website, and show them around a bit. You may need to provide them with their login information…write it down on their music or notebook cover.

Here something a little more fun! To get the kids really excited to go online for studio and lesson information, I recently put an egg hunt the website.  I think I will follow it up a month or so later with a treasure hunt. You can really be creative here if you want to! You might even come up with a fill-in-the-blank questionnaire, where they have to use logic to find their way around the site pages for answers to specific questions relating to items on your website. If I do this, I’m going to make sure to give them some questions about my studio policies! lol!

For the egg hunt, I just popped in pictures of decorated eggs in various pages of the website. The students are asked to print out each page they find eggs on, and then bring them all in for a prize. There are also hints on various pages (in light yellow text) to the location of a hidden grand prize in my studio. I am adding another hint every couple of days, to get them in the habit of checking the website regularly. This will give the older students something a little more challenging to do. Pictures can be put on your pages in the following manner:

• Click on the photo icon on the page builder tool bar.

• In next window, click on Browse Server.

• In the following window, select photo (from here you may need to upload photos from your computer or clipart sights online.)

What creative ways have you used to find out if “Anyone’s Out There???  I’m looking forward to your input!

Thanks for reading my blog, and have a super day!

p.s. You’re welcome to check out my website to see how I did my egg hunt!