Students and Self Promotion
December 2, 2008 § 2 Comments
My dance class is shrinking slightly again. I lose students periodically to such things as giving birth, foot surgery, personal lives and exhaustion. I’m sure every class does. It takes awhile to build a program.
I began fearing I wouldn’t make a profit on the class anymore, or worse, it would actually cost me money again. I started considering canceling the class, but after teaching class tonight with a mere one student, and seeing her excitement for learning new moves and the feeling of accomplishment we both got from having made it through the whole vocabulary of movements I had put together for the class, I’ve decided that it’s absolutely worth it whether I have one student or twenty.
Babies get bigger and feet heal and obstacles pass. Old students will come back. New students will get interested.
I guess my biggest goal in teaching really is to share what I know; for a couple reasons. First of all, it’s fun! And I want people to dance with! My greater goal is to pass on what I know and stabilize a good Tribal program that could continue on even if I was to move away. It’s about passing the torch and sharing the love for the dance. And even if I only get to do that with a few students, it will have been worthwhile.
And that brings me to the aspect of gaining students. Self promotion. This isn’t my strength. I usually just do my thing. I’d have to make fliers and videos and advertise and make myself personally sellable as a teacher. Ugh. I work full time. I’m tired a lot. And I’m on the modest side. I just don’t have the time and energy for all that.
So, I guess I need to reasearch some easy yet effective ways to promote. Wish me luck.
JadeDancer.com 
I think the best promotion is through word of mouth. Seriously, I found all except my first teacher by asking people who they recommend.
Thanks for the feedback! I guess word of mouth just takes time. I’m sure when we start performing more that’ll draw some attention and get people talking. It seems like I found half my teachers through word of mouth and half via the internet. Never from a flier, so that may be a waste of time. But maybe I should get around to setting up a teacher website sometime.