Create a Music Lessons Podcast For Your Studio
I want to first talk about why you should create a podcast or why a podcast would be beneficial to your business. For example, someone could look at the idea of creating a music lessons podcast and ask, “why is anyone going to want to listen to a podcast about a music studio?” “How is it really going to help me get more students?” This is a very fair question.
The Basics of Content Marketing
But before I dig into that, I want to talk about the concept of content marketing, what it is and how you can use it to help your music studio. Content marketing is marketing that is not for the purpose of selling. It’s for the purpose of educating people and adding value to people’s lives. This podcast is a great example of that. I’m not selling anything.
Establishing Your Reputation
Sometimes I’ll share with you the products that I have to sell, but the whole purpose of this podcast is to educate and empower music studio owners and helps establish my authority, my expertise, which then makes a listener more likely to buy from me. Content marketing is all about the long game. It’s not about making sales today. It’s about establishing a reputation for yourself.
Content Marketing and Your Music Studio
Any marketing expert is going to talk about the value of content marketing. Whether it’s a podcast, a YouTube channel, a blog, they’re all going to tout the value of it. You need to be in the content marketing game. I’ve seen a lot of music studios give it a shot. I’ve seen a lot of them try to write blogs and then the blog stops cold after a few posts.
Why Studios Are Removing Blogs From Their Sites
A lot of studios are taking their blogs off their websites. They blog about how to buy a guitar or about good practice habits. They’re blogging about things that they know about such as music and practicing. The problem with that is it’s not what their audience is interested in. Their audience consists of moms who aren’t interested in learning about how to buy effects pedals for their guitar. So nobody reads those blogs. Or at least your target market isn’t reading those blogs.
Knowing Your Target Audience
How can a music studio create a podcast that’s going to be of interest to moms? It all comes down to knowing your target audience. Moms are the ones that are writing the checks. So here’s how I want to talk about the problem or the challenge of creating a podcast or a YouTube channel.
Content Marketing Made Easy
You don’t want this to turn into a time suck. And it really doesn’t have to be one. For example, this podcast that I’m doing right now – I just thought of doing this podcast 10 minutes ago. I hit record and boom, away we go. But with your music studio, it’s really important that you can create a podcast that’s going to generate interest in your community and not eat up a lot of your time.
Celebrating Your Community in a Podcast
Here’s what I think would make for an effective format for a music lessons podcast. Some studios out there are doing it. Los Rios Rock School. The Music Factory in Orange County, The Music Compound. It’s a podcast that is a celebration of your community. A celebration of your students and your parents, it features the community in a unique way.
Don’t Make it About Music
A podcast that’s talking about music, in general, is not going to be of much interest to your community. Now you can talk about music, that’s fine, but it has to be from the perspective of the student or how music is playing out in your students’ lives. Again, with a podcast or YouTube channel, it could be a great way to go. I think YouTube videos can be a great starting point. And actually, with YouTube videos you can cut them up and then that can become a part of your whole Instagram strategy.
Turn YouTube Audio into a Podcast
You could take the audio from these videos and turn those into podcasts. Here are some different ways to create a podcast that would be of interest to your target audience. One is to interview local personalities, the characters in your community, or small business owners.
A Good Example of a Local Character
So for example, I’m from St. Louis and there was this well-known guy in the city named Beatle Bob. Whenever there was any concert in town, any night of the week, Beatle Bob would show up. He dresses like a British Mod from 1966. The man is literally in his sixties and he goes to the front and he dances in an upbeat manner. He probably has some mental illness going on there, but nonetheless, everybody in St. Louis knows Beatle Bob; he’d be a great person to interview for a podcast.
Celebrate the Personalities in Your Community
Do some searching to find the different personalities in your community. Start with the small business owners. You could do a survey of customers and ask them where they shop, where they like to dine, where they like to hang out, and then interview the owners of those businesses. Assuming that they’re locally owned businesses, of course. Obviously, if someone says they like to shop at Neiman Marcus, well you’re not going to want to interview the manager of Neiman Marcus. There’s not a really good story there.
Locate the Good Human-Interest Stories
If there’s some funky boutique that moms like to go to and is locally owned, there’s a good story there and moms would love to hear it. That will impact what they think about next time they go and shop at that boutique. They’ll think of you. Plus, if you interview the owner of that boutique, guess what? That owner is going to take that podcast and blast it out to her email list.
Polling Your Customers
By finding out where your customers hang out and where they shop, you then can get access to other people like them. You know this is something we talk about in the music studio mastery program. You need to identify your customer avatar and figure out where they hang out. Plus, you can interview local personalities like the fireman, the policeman, the school bus driver, school teachers, the Mayor, the postman, and so on. Anyone who is well known. You can do it through Zoom. You don’t have to physically meet with these people. You don’t have to be on a fancy microphone. You can do it on your phone and interview students.
Greater Numbers Bring in More Listeners
The more people you can have on an episode, the more that particular episode in your podcast is going to get spread through social media. And you don’t have to do the actual interviewing yourself. You could email your students and say, “Hey, I want you to answer these three questions recorded on your phone.” Take those recordings and make that your podcast.
Other Interesting Ideas
You could have a student each week read the weekend weather report. They could do a weekend calendar, things to do in Cleveland this weekend. They could go online and they find a calendar for fun family-friendly weekend events and read that. You could email the kids in your studio and say, “I want you to interview an adult in your life, either a parent or a family member and ask them about their profession.” Ask them these three or four questions and record the interview, and then email in the audio. That would be a great podcast.
A Music Lessons Podcast Doesn’t Need to Be Time-Consuming
This doesn’t mean that you have to do a lot of work on your end. There’s no reason why you couldn’t have someone in your office, such as a staff member, or even hire a teacher to help you. This is totally going to set you apart from your competition.
Building Up Your Community
A lot of music studios talk about community and the importance of building up that community. A podcast is a great way to do that because it celebrates your community and extends your reach to the community beyond your zip code. For example, that family-owned restaurant that’s been around for 40 years. Everybody eats there, but nobody really knows the story of that business. You interviewed those people. That’s going to make for a great podcast.
Honoring Other Small Business Owners
Those business owners are going to be so touched, so honored that they are now in your debt. They were invited to be in a podcast that’s going to help them, so they’ll spread it within their network.
Establishing Yourself as a Leader in Your Market
The whole idea of having a podcast is still relatively new. I mean, we’re really at the beginning of the whole podcast phenomenon. This is a great way for you to establish yourself as a leader in your market, and help rise above your competition. They will quickly catch wind of the fact that you have a podcast and now they’re going to be in a position where they’re going to want to do one of their own. However, if they do, are they going to look like a copycat? How are they going to be different than you? You will have already cornered the market and you will make it potentially more challenging for them. They certainly can’t position themselves as a leader in the market as an arts organization.
You’re Now the Competition
You were the first to introduce a podcast to the community that’s about the community. You compete with dance studios and karate studios. Everyone who’s trying to tap into this afterschool market is competing with each other. Everyone’s in a battle for attention and when you come out with a podcast that’s all about the community, it’s going to do wonders for your studio.
Extending Your Local Network with a Podcast
You could interview the dance studio a mile down the road. Your customers are going to that dance studio anyway. They drop one kid off at your place and then they drive down to the studio and drop another kid off there. You interview the owner of that studio and have them on the podcast. Guess what? That owner’s going to go and email it out to their list. And if they don’t do it, let them know that it would be a really good idea. Sometimes people just need that little guidance.
What Your Podcast Shouldn’t Be
The podcast isn’t going to be about you at all. It’s not going to be about your lessons. Don’t talk about that. Instead, talk about the people and their stories. Empower kids and make them a big part of the show. Everyone listening to your podcast is going to know that it’s being produced and put on by your music studio.
The Google Algorithm Awards Active Websites
This has a huge impact on your SEO or search engine optimization. Everybody wants to have that number one spot on page one on Google. Google wants to see activity on your website. A lot of small businesses, build their website and they set it and they forget it and it just sits there. It’s dormant. I mean it can be very effective and it’s getting you new leads and new customers, but that may not be enough.
Updating Your Website Doesn’t Need to Take a Lot of Time
However, if your website is being updated every week with new content, Google is going to reward you. Google’s going to look at your website and say, “Oh, this music studio, this is the one that’s the most active.” So what I do with my podcast after I’m done with it, is send the audio to Temi.com and it’s 10 cents a minute. They transcribe it, I get the transcription back very quickly. I then take that audio or take the transcription and edit it up a little bit and then turn it into my blog posts.
What I Do for My Blog
If you go to davesimonsmusic.com and go to my podcast at the top of the site, you’ll see that there’s also a whole blog. It looks like I’ve spent hours writing, but I spend maybe 30 minutes. I just take that transcription and I edit it and I make it a point to use clear language in there. I use keywords that I want to rank for on Google.
How You Can Get Started
While this is a completely different conversation – ranking on Google and search engine optimization, what it comes down to is that your podcast can become a great source and a great way to help your ranking on Google as well. There are so many reasons why a podcast would benefit your studio. I really encourage you to consider it and to take action. If you’re overwhelmed with the thought of doing a podcast, take some of these ideas that I shared in this episode and just start with just some YouTube videos.
