A Social Media Strategy For Your Music School
Today on the show, I want to share with you a marketing strategy that someone uses on Facebook which I think would really work great with a music school. Now, this person that I’m talking about clearly doesn’t deliberately think about a marketing strategy. Perhaps he found something interesting that he likes to share on Facebook, and whether he realizes it or not, he’s doing a great job of building his brand.
Just by simply paying attention or observing how people interact and engage on social media, we can learn a lot about what works on these different platforms.
– – – EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS – – –
Create Content that Appeals to Your Ideal Client
Content marketing is typically social media posts designed to appeal to your ideal clients’ interests. It isn’t necessarily focused on your business and certainly not sales messages. It’s content that your ideal client will find valuable, entertaining, informative, and educational.
A video of the student and their piano lesson in some copy about, “Hey! Great job, Billy, for finishing level 1 in your piano book”—that’s not really content marketing. You’re celebrating a student’s accomplishment in your school, but really the only people that are going to be drawn to that post would be that child’s parent or someone who’s actively thinking about music lessons.
The parent might start thinking about music lessons at some point in the future. Perhaps there are parents who have younger children that in a year or two might start thinking about it. They’re not the low-hanging fruit. They’re prospective customers, too.
Plant a Seed
There are two types of prospective customers for you. There are the prospective customers who are actively considering music lessons. Maybe they haven’t taken any action on it, but it’s something that they want for their child to sign up. Then, there are the people who aren’t actively thinking about music lessons, but they have a child who is the age for music lessons. The parent might start thinking about music lessons at some point in the future. Perhaps there are parents who have younger children that in a year or two might start thinking about it. They’re not the low-hanging fruit. They’re prospective customers, too.
Content marketing is really a way to appeal to these two types of prospective customers: those that are actively seeking out music lessons and those who fit the profile of your ideal client but aren’t in a place yet in their life where they’re going to actively start looking. Perhaps your social media content could plant a seed in their head like, “Wow, you know what? Maybe I should consider music lessons for my child.”
The name of the game is engagement, and the only way to get engagement is to create content that’s going to catch people’s attention and inspire them to engage.
Get Creative. The Sky is the Limit
Okay, so let me talk about this guy I’ve been following on Facebook. His name is David Rubin. He has this ongoing series where he posts a photograph of an intersection in St. Louis. It’s a photograph from Google Maps and he typically picks an intersection that most St. Louisans would know. Then, he finds an image of that same intersection but from 100 or more years ago. He takes these two images and perhaps throws them into Canva and places them side by side, each other, or one on top and one on the bottom. He posts on Facebook with the caption “Corner of Big Bend and Skinker 1910 and 2022. Which one do you like better?” Simple, right? And that’s it. That’s all he does. He keeps posting these over and over.
Make Your Content Relatable to Your Customer
What’s the lesson that we can learn from Mr. Rubin in what he’s doing on Facebook? Well, for one, I’m sure he’s just doing it because he’s interested in his hometown. He’s maybe curious about its history and finds these old intersections online and a new image of it. He’s creating content that people in his community would be interested in, and there’s always a lot of engagement.
Successful content marketing on social media isn’t all about you and your music school because if that’s all you’re doing on social media, you’re appealing to your current clients.
That’s Entertainment
I typically engage with these people and they usually say, “Oh, I like the 1910 version. I mean, why wouldn’t you? The cars look cool. The fashion looks amazing. And it’s interesting to see this well-known intersection. It’s interesting to see what it looked like 100 or so years ago.” I always check to see which buildings from the old photo are currently still standing. I find these posts entertaining. It’s a little history lesson that people really engage with them. They talk about things that they noticed in each photo.
Focus on Topics That Interest Your Ideal Client
So what can music school owners learn from David Rubin? For one, he’s creating content that isn’t about him. He’s not talking about his wife and kids, neither his job nor his travel which most people do on Facebook. Sure he does that, too, but instead he posts something that he and a lot of people are interested in, and he gets high engagement with it. I’m sure Mr. Rubin’s not thinking about his Facebook algorithm, but Facebook probably likes what David Rubin is doing. They probably are eager to share his content with a lot of people on Facebook.
It’s not about your music school. It’s not even necessarily about music, but it’s about something that your ideal client is clearly interested in that they can relate back to your music school.
The Truth About Parents and Social Media
The lesson is this: Successful content marketing on social media isn’t all about you and your music school because if that’s all you’re doing on social media, you’re appealing to your current clients. Actually, many of them might not be that interested in your social media posts. If it’s not a picture of their kid, how likely are they to spend a few seconds with your post?
When my kids’ school sends out pictures on their Facebook page, all I look for are pictures of my kids. That’s all I want to see! I’m happy for all the other kids and families, but where are my kids? Are they smiling? Are they happy?
Remaining top of mind in people’s minds is key, and this is where your social media brand building and email marketing can help keep your music school top of mind for people.
Focus on Topics That Reflects Your Brand
Your social media is really for your ideal client that’s not a client yet, and the way you get them to pay attention to you is to take a play out of David Rubin’s Facebook. Find or create content that isn’t about you but is focused on a topic that your ideal client is clearly interested in, that can easily be related back to your music school where a parent could look at your post and then look to see who posted this. When they see the name of your music school, they say “Oh, well that makes sense”.
You might say, “Well, you know, my ideal client, they’re moms in their 30s. So I’m going to do a post on women’s fashion.” Well, that might catch their eye, but then when they see that a music school’s posting, it just doesn’t really match up. It doesn’t really make sense. What is women’s fashion have to do with music lessons? Nothing. But if you took David Rubin’s literal strategy like posting before and after images of intersections around your city saying “Which do you like better?”, you’re probably going to get the kind of engagement that David Rubins getting, and it’s easy to create a tie in with your music school. Your prospective customer would say, “Why would a locally owned music school be doing posts about local interest? I guess this music school really has pride in our city, and I want to have pride in our city.”
Hook Your Customers Through Catchy Content
Content marketing is not about asking for a sale. So many music schools have most of their content on pure sales. People don’t go to social media to buy stuff. Well, that can happen when an ad caught their attention, but that’s an ad. That’s when you’re creating organic content. The name of the game is engagement, and the only way to get engagement is to create content that’s going to catch people’s attention and inspire them to engage.
Social media is a great way to build your brand. Get your name out there and positively impact people’s perception of you. I like it when David Rubin posts something with some local flavor to it, and when he doesn’t post something with some local flavor, I still read it anyway because I know that there’s a good chance that he’s gonna have something good in there. The same applies to email marketing. It’s the same concept.
How to Remain Top of Mind
People on your email list most likely have little interest in your business. They’ll probably gonna ignore your emails if it’s just all about promotions in sales, but do you know that it is possible to send emails that your prospective and inactive customers enjoy? Your student’s parents would say “I have no intention of signing up ever with these guys, but I enjoy getting their emails.” or “I was interested at one point, but I have a lot of friends who have kids that might be interested in music lessons.” Remaining top of mind in people’s minds is key, and this is where your social media brand building and email marketing can help keep your music school top of mind for people.
Brainstorm Content Ideas that Directly Speak to Your Customers
So I encourage you this fall to experiment a little bit with your organic social media. Think more about how you can create content that’s going to be of direct interest to your ideal client. It’s not about your music school. It’s not even necessarily about music, but it’s about something that your ideal client is clearly interested in that they can relate back to your music school.
Let People Know Who You Are
Now, you want sales. I know you want sales today. That’s where ads and other more maybe aggressive forms of marketing can get you those sales, but brand building and content marketing are really focused on the top of the funnel to simply trying to get people aware of who you are and what you do.
