During a Breai Mason-Campbell talk at Lindy Focus she spoke about marketing as a way to increase accessibility to vernacular dance. It was interesting to notice how many people in the room hadn’t thought about print media and flyering across neighborhoods outside their immediate swing school area. For a moment, I was glad I used to have scene organizers in Denver that marketed heavily and in a variety of ways to set a great example of what efforts were required.
I’ve been thinking recently about other’s online marketing efforts as I reflect why I’m still pleasantly surprised when I see Dance Laugh Love and Boulder Swing Dance posts promoting their events across a wide swath of Facebook groups. It’s simply great to see this level of outreach! In contrast, there are local swing dance happenings where the swing school or club organizers don’t even share their events in Colorado Swing Dance or Colorado Balboa, groups where there are built-in audiences for that thing we collectively enjoy doing together. And that doesn’t even touch all the dance groups where people are seeking different kinds of dance to learn and participate in like Denver Dance Classes or Adult Dance Denver. And then you have your neighborhood groups to promote in like Five Points or Capitol Hill/Cheesman Park. Organizers should also consider promoting their live music events in groups like Denver Jazz Scene and Colorado Dance Music Life in the hopes of attracting music lovers. Finally, there are event-based groups like Events in Denver Colorado. There are so many outlets for sharing your dance classes, dance events and other dance-related happenings and we haven’t gotten into sharing your content on your social media profiles!
But perhaps you say there isn’t enough time in the day to share your event in a variety of Facebook groups? Here’s my workflow for knocking out up to 40 Facebook groups in 10-15 minutes:
Open my Facebook Groups to Post In worksheet in Google Drive
Open all my event links in separate tabs
Create marketing copy preferably using a link that will populate a nice social media image
Copy/paste, copy/paste, copy/paste
Other suggestions for easy online marketing:
Have and use your Google Business Profile. Take some time to compare the Swingin’ Denver profile when you Google search us versus other swing dance schools. We can post announcements and events there while linking viewers to those pertinent events.
Do calendar listings. If you want to do just one, do CitySpark since it reaches many metro newspaper calendars.
Treat your social media profiles as your business card and help people more easily find you.
Make your Facebook page a resource and not just a platform for selling