The importance of including visual content in your dance studio’s marketing cannot be overstated. We already discussed how you can find images that you can legitimately use to post on your dance studio’s website or Facebook page. Now we’re going to discuss ways to simply and inexpensively create your own visual content — and offer a few ideas about how to use it effectively to promote online engagement. And don’t worry: You don’t have to be an expert photographer or buy a fancy camera or expensive graphic design software to do it! Just follow these 5 easy steps.
1. Quickly learn some basic principles of photography, and apply them on your smart phone.
2. If you plan to use photographs of your dancers’ faces, make sure you’ve had parents sign a standard photo release form before you post any of them online or print them on marketing materials.
3. Find and download an app you like, and use it to edit your photos and create your own infographics. There are plenty of free or inexpensive photo editing apps out there, along with others that allow you to add text to your photographs. A couple popular free apps (or apps with free versions available) that allow you to do both are Canva and PicMonkey. Many apps provide pre-made tools that allow you to crop photos to size for use as Facebook banners, on Instagram, and more.
Side note: According to your target demographic, if you’re going to add a second social media platform (after Facebook), consider the fact that 59% of the 18-29 group use Instagram, compared to 33% of those in the 30-49 age bracket. It’s not as popular as Facebook, yet, but the younger set of parents is definitely connecting there, too. It’s clearly the way things are moving. Compare those numbers to Pinterest users or any other social media outlet, and the choice becomes an obvious one.
4. Use a variety of text types, such as registration or recital information, dance team or class schedules, current promotions, dance-related quotes, or tips or statistics relevant to dancers. You may also want to create some funny memes, if that’s your style and fits the personality of your studio. (And yes, there’s an app for that, too.)
5. Encourage interaction by posting the image with a question or suggestion, such as “What’s your favorite dance-related memory?” or “Share if you feel the same way.” You can also up the ante by rewarding those who engage with your posts.
Stay tuned for another post specifically about how to run Facebook contests or giveaways. As an alternative, you could incorporate questions to get members interacting into the visual content itself. Keep in mind this statistic: Those who view directions along with illustrations are over 3 times as likely to follow them correctly as those who simply view the same set of directions without an illustration.
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