Nothing is as exciting or as nerve-wracking as a large, expectant audience. Students work so hard. Having that moment of applause from an enthusiastic crowd is a well-deserved payoff for all their efforts. That puts the pressure on you to make sure you get butts in those seats.
So, we’re going to help you out with seven ways to promote your concert or recital. While there is a difference between private music teachers who want recital attendees and a music teacher planning a school concert, any of these ideas can be tweaked to work for your circumstances, even if it seems the tips are most useful for one type of teacher.
- Take a “save the date” approach. Parent and family schedules fill up quickly between work and other obligations. Get on that calendar early! Well before you’ll start heavy promotion of a student concert or recital, send out a “save the date” email or postcard. If you’re a private music teacher, personally hand the parent the “save the date” postcard at the end of a session. You can send one more “save the date” reminder before you begin the big push. Putting together a beautiful postcard is easier and less expensive than you’d think.
- Video a short clip of a rehearsal to share on your social media platforms as a sneak peek. If your school has a student-run television network, ask them to stop by rehearsal one day to talk to some of the students and run a promo package.
- Ask your students who the key student bloggers, vloggers and podcasters are. Any locally Instafamous students? Have your students come up with a hashtag for the concert and then take to their own social media networks to talk about their music and the upcoming concert.
- If you’re opening your recital or concert to the general public, put together a little media package you can send to the local papers and websites. Is there a local Mommy Blogger who might want to share? Take a few photos of a rehearsal or use the short rehearsal video clip; package that with a short press release. In addition to providing the when and where details, include a statistic or quote on the importance of music education, add a quote or two from some students on what the concert means to them. Keep in mind, once you advertise and open the event to the public, you may be triggering certain copyright issues. Learn more about how to handle copyright permissions for performances here.
- Make it as easy as possible for parents and families to RSVP. Here’s another free online tool that will help you create fun event invitations that are super-easy for people to complete and will get them excited about the concert.
- You can make your concert a benefit. This doesn’t mean you have to charge an admission fee. Partner up with a local charity who wants to get their name out in the community. Give them the stage to give a short presentation on who they are and tell people how they can donate. In return, you can ask the charity if you can leverage their email list and social media networks to expand the list of invitees and make it a community-wide event.
- This tip should be obvious, but we’ll write it out anyway. Use your own social media networks to promote the concert. If you’re keeping the recital strictly to family and friends, keep your posts to those private pages.
Here’s our post-concert bonus tip: Send out posts and updates with photos from the event. Ask people to share what a good time they had. This will not only reinforce the sentiment that attending recitals or school concerts are fun experiences, but will give you good content to use to promote your next concert!
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