Letter No. 26 [establishing your music studio: website II]
Dear Friend,
I’m so excited to share this next bit with you, because it really makes everything feel official. I remember creating my first website. Aside from the fun of designing the aesthetic and page layouts, it was finalizing to search for my website on Google and click to find something I had created for anyone to see. That being said, it was definitely a process of evolution—over the course of about 6 months, I slowly honed the look, feel, and content of my website as I learned more about my brand and goals.
My current website now looks much different from my first one, but the core pages I created have remained. That’s what I want to share with you in this letter. If you know these pages—the essential and non-essential—your website can easily evolve with you as you grow.
Essential Pages:
Your essential pages are like the main light-fixtures in a room. They’re necessary for someone to complete other functions in that space, and while there are myriads of fixture designs, they all serve the same purpose and shouldn’t distract from that purpose: to provide light.
Essential pages share the information about your business that is necessary for potential students to understand who you are, what you do, and how you do it. Below are the pages I recommend as essential:
Home: This is the first impression you’ll make on visitors, so think about what you want that impression to be. Do you want to share pictures of you teaching, a meaningful quote, and/or a video of you performing? There should be something visually interesting on this page. If you don’t have any photographs available, there are many free stock images available through your platform or on the internet.
About: This is a good place for your core beliefs and a picture of you along with a little information about yourself (usually one or two sentences to a paragraph). Make sure your photo looks professional and matches your over-all message. People are also more drawn to a photo where you’re smiling…openly? With your teeth. Not sure how to say that…but you know what I mean.
The information you share can be fun as well—you can include an interesting detail, like that you’re an avid kite flyer and participate in a kite festival every year, or that you want to go to all fifty states and have already been to such-and-such an amount. We love stories—show readers something personal (it doesn’t have to be intimate, but you never know how someone might connect with you over a little detail).
Music: This page acts like an interview process for YOU. You can have videos of you teaching, or performing (or both), but viewers should be able to ascertain for themselves a general idea of your skill level and teaching style. This is another opportunity for you to share what’s important or special to you—do you have a favorite composer or time period? Do you have a favorite activity to play with your students? Now is the time to share those things. If you don’t have any videos of yourself teaching or performing, I’ll be writing another letter about creating those videos.
Contact: Once viewers have browsed through your other pages and have decided they want to get in touch, they should be able to reach you in a click. Provide the information boxes you wish them to fill (like their name, email, etc.), and provide your email and a short note. It could like something like one of these examples:
Non-Essential Pages:
If your essential pages are like the main light fixtures in your room, your non-essential pages are like candles. :) They add ambience and character, and scent, to a room, and non-essential pages add more depth and value to a viewer’s experience. So a few ideas for these pages:
Blog: you could share tips about teaching, theory, practicing, and running your business (just to name a few areas). Blogging (consistently!) is also great for your website’s SEO, and a blog adds free value to your viewer and shows you are knowledgeable in your field.
Social Media accounts/links: Because everything is so connected on the internet now, having a social media platform is another way to boost traffic and build rapport with future students. It’s also a great way to foster community among current students, as you can share pictures from recitals or competitions during the semester, as well as videos of what you’re working on. Social icons somewhere on your website header or footer are where viewers expect these links to be, but you can also share portions of your feed on a page.
This is on one of my illustration pages, and provides something visually interesting for viewers to discover.
Free print-outs: You could have a page with free PDFs of a few activities or flashcards you’ve conjured up, or coloring pages related to playing your instrument.
Resources: This could be a list of: fiction and non-fiction books related to teaching, practicing, and music in general, method books, books on running a business; blogs you’ve found helpful; YouTubers; favorite musicians and composers; local clubs and competitions; and album titles of repertoire to listen to.
Hopefully you have a better idea now of the possibilities for your website and pages and how you’ll go about setting them up. I also hope you enjoy the process of this stage, because it’s one of the funnest parts (I think, anyway) to establishing your business/studio.
In my next letter, I’ll be talking about setting up your physical studio. :)
Until then,
Tara