10-Minute Social Media Hacks Your Dance Studio Actually Needs

Hello friends, I'm Amanda Barr and I'm Rebecca Lou Brennan, and welcome to Dance Principals United, the podcast.

Together we are passionate about helping studio owners with the business of running their studio.

Join us as we talk everything from marketing, systems, studio culture, motherhood, life, and everything in between.

This is the Dance Principals United podcast. Hey friends, and welcome to an episode of the Dance Principals Girls United podcast. How are you, lovely Bec?

I am super awesome. Dancing is back and everything is crazy busy, but loving it. How are you?

Good. Hey, can I ask you something?

Yes.

I started watching a TV show last night and I need to know if you've watched it or not.

Yeah. Okay.

The new Gordon Ramsay documentary.

No, but I love Gordon Ramsay.

I know, because we went to a Gordon Ramsay restaurant in Vegas, didn't we? Yes.

Yes.

What was that in? I can't remember. Hell's Kitchen. We went to Hell's Kitchen. What? I can't remember.

It was— it's not in a casino.

Okay. It's on its own. It was on its own and we loved it. And you was so all about— is it the Wellington? Like Beef Wellington and stuff?

Beef Wellington. Yes. The best.

We did that. Anyway, new documentary on Netflix with him. We were just having a chat off mic about rents for buildings and that made me think. So it's about him opening his new, like, big I don't know, flagship place in London that's in one of the highest buildings in London. And he's opening 5 restaurants, like over 2 floors. And it's so like he has the whole thing. Wow. And talks about his rent is £5 million a year. And I presume that's pounds, which would be double our money, right?

That is.

So that's like, yeah, 10. I'm like, holy shit, right?

That's insane.

I was like, oh my God, you'd be so into it. And he's like, him at home, but then him getting ready for this restaurant opening and like, you know, choosing the chefs and choosing the menus and choosing the, you know, everything, the decor. It's about the construction. You'd be so into it.

Well, I just finished Lincoln Lawyer.

Oh my God, that's so good.

I love that series. So I just finished that until the next series comes out. So we're looking for something new.

Well, there's only like a couple of episodes. It's only just come out. It's that or— wait, we're going off script as usual. You watch The Traitors.

Never heard of it.

Oh my God. Traitors.

Yeah. UK.

Okay. So good. Kind of like Survivor.

Mm.

The celebrity version. So good. Kind of like Survivor, but kind of like a big game of like, you know, like a murder mystery kind of game where they kill each other and you have to work out who the murderers are. Oh, and like, you know, people get eliminated and like, so is it Reality. Reality TV. Like, like a game.

Reality TV.

Like Survivor. But, but, you know, it's actually in a posh castle and it's very like almost gothic.

Do you know what I'm super randomly obsessed with right now? MrBeast.

Wow. No.

Have you ever watched it?

No, I have thought I should be fair.

I'm telling you, because I was always like, eye roll, and my kids are obsessed with it. I am telling you, like, I cried the other day on one of those episodes.

It is like Honestly, it is so good because it's now on like Netflix or Disney.

Beast Games.

I just watched something.

Yeah, I don't know. I think we watched it on YouTube. I don't actually know how we watch it, but the Beast Games, like, and the money these people are winning, it is—

I've actually thought I should watch it because I've seen it spoken about in so many like marketing podcasts, honestly, and stuff. Interesting.

You would love it.

Okay.

Not what we're talking about today.

Not what we're talking about today. Well, kind of. MrBeast is kind of what we're talking about. Because we are talking about social media and he is the king of social media. A lot of people say— I now can't remember because this wasn't planned in my notes, but like he has like one of the highest YouTube, I think, subscriber, I believe, or highest paid YouTuber or something along those lines. All the same thing. We're not talking about YouTube, but we are talking about social media in your dance studios. Do you like that segue?

I did love that segue. That was totally planned.

Anyway, so good. We wanted to talk about social media. Because I feel like so many studios are making it hard. And so we want to talk about some tips to not make it so hard, right?

Yes. And I think the first thing we need to start with is those of you who say to me when I start chatting, because I'm always the first person to chat to people if they're coming into our world, as you know, in Tribal Studio Growth Club, or not most of the time, they'll always just go, I hate social media.

Yeah, feel.

And it's the thing that they push to the side over everything else, like they'd rather do costumes, email parents. They'd probably rather talk to a parent, invoice.

There's a lot of things I'd rather do rather than—

Yeah, yeah. Social media. And I'm trying to explain to them, and the first thing I say to them always, Amanda, is, have you scrolled on Instagram or Facebook today?

Yeah.

And even if it's 9 a.m., I guarantee you they have all scrolled on those things. And then have you opted into a brand in the past fortnight on either of those platforms? Yes, absolutely.

How many did I click on last night and how many shops came up? Yeah, same.

Yeah, same, same. So not utilizing that and not working on that means that you can't grow your studio, in my opinion. Like, it's actually would be very, very, very difficult in today's world.

Yeah.

You know, it's so interesting now. You know, I even think about my kids and how much less time they spend outside than what we did.

Oh, absolutely.

Like, it's just so crazy to me.

You know, I saw a really interesting stat. Now, I can't remember the generation that they talked about, but like young people, right? We're talking like whatever that— is it Generation Z or whatever?

I don't know.

The young ones, like people in their like 20s, for example, that it has actually changed, that they're more likely if they want to investigate a brand they go to social media before Google. Of course. Whereas older people go to Google first. That was— yeah, and that used to be the thing. But now the trend is, is that you actually look it up on Instagram first. Yep. Now some of those 20-year-olds are not in our target age range quite yet, but they're very close, right? It's very easy for a 30-year-old to have a 3-year-old child that's about to start dancing. That is not, you know, unheard of. No, um, not unheard of. It's pretty common. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, so you You know what I mean? It is so important that our Instagram looks great. But what we wanted to talk about today is like, there is a version of great that doesn't make, have to be so hard. I've heard so many studio owners telling me that they have, look, a full-time social media person or someone that does it 20 hours a week or whatever. And to me, that just seems excessive and just money that's being taken away from you as the owner. From the profit of the business.

I can't even fathom that because I own a pretty big studio and we are very big on social media and there's no possible way that that could ever be a full-time position. I don't even think it could be a part-time position. Hmm. It's probably a 2 or 3 hour job per week for us and we probably go do it more than most studios. Like, we probably put more stuff out is what I'm trying to say.

Yeah, absolutely.

I can't see it being more than that unless the person's inefficient.

And doesn't know what they're doing. So that's where I kind of want to come to, because so many people are telling me, you know, they're paying one of their, you know, 20-year-old teachers or whatever 10 extra hours a week to do social media and they're getting 2 or 3 posts. And then I bring it up and I'm like, cool. So did this post take 2.5 hours? Because that's concerning. And sometimes it does. I know what it's like to sit there and stare at a screen and go, what the fuck am I going to post and what am I going to create? Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Absolutely. But if they're given more leadership and guidance about what is good and what you require, then it shouldn't have to take that long, right?

Yes. But I always say this, like, we have the best organic content you could ever want from any business. Like, plumbers don't have good organic content. Like, what are they going to do? A picture of a toilet? Like, you know what I mean? Like, we have cute children loving life, having a great time all the time.

Yep.

And yet we don't feel like we have enough content. I just don't get that. And I think it's about empowering your staff because if your staff are allowed to take videos and content and if they're allowed to share it, which we have them share on our stories, and yes, there's definitely education around what is good content and what's not. Obviously we educate on that, but at the same time, I think sometimes you have to let it go because people won't want to let it go.

Let it go.

You knew that was coming. But like, people don't want to post, you know, if someone's not in uniform or if they're not looking immaculate or they're in a ballet class but they've got a t-shirt on. And I totally get that because old Bec would have been exact same. But I was showing you our preschool reel on the Paws Instagram yesterday. I think it was yesterday because we were working together yesterday. And I said to you, I would never have let this happen before because it's a super cute reel, very organic, oldest class from the last week, but it's week 2 or 3 that that content was taken from. And we have a lot of trials. Yeah, in complete clothes, random clothing, complete non-pose, non-dance outfits. And I'm fine with it.

It's interesting because parents want to see a snapshot into what your studio is. People want to see behind the scenes. That's why, you know, we talk about reality television. People love reality television because the thing I loved about Gordon Ramsay was seeing him at home with his children. Right. You know what I mean? And not him in work mode in full, like, you know, very posed kind of style stuff. You want to see what people are really actually like. And people aren't stupid. If they see that like perfect photoshoot that you had taken at the studio, number one, that doesn't actually tell them anything about your studio except that I have great promo photos. Number— that's one big problem. But it actually scares some people off. I've had that conversation with some dads before who have been like, oh yeah, I'd love to take my daughter there. You know, oh, but all the mom says, oh, I'd love that, but it's on a Wednesday afternoon and my husband couldn't do the ballet bun, so she, she can't go to that class, right? You know, because I've seen their photos and every kid on their social media has perfect ballet buns. And I'm thinking, you go to that fucking class, I guarantee you there's like— yes, that was at their promo photo shoot day, they all had perfect ballet buns with the perfect, you know, ribbon around it, the— in the matching color. And yes, some people's studios do look like that, but a lot of people's don't as well.

Yeah.

You know, the reality is, is that kids rock up with a version of a bun, you know, and a version of all of those things. And I think it has to actually reflect what our studio actually looks like, right?

Absolutely. And I can see how that would be petrifying for a parent who, you know, I know Bebe would come home from school and her hair as a little person would be the biggest. It didn't matter how immaculate I had her hair in the morning, it would be so feral.

GGs. Like that too, as you can imagine.

Yeah, I can.

I can.

And then we're rushing them to get to like— there is so many moving parts in parents' lives. And yeah, I totally agree. They don't want to see that and it's unnecessary to see. You know, my best posts are always the simplest, like kids sitting around having a break together. They love that.

Yeah, because it's behind the scenes.

Yeah, it's real life and it's fun and it's just showing, yes, the reality of the studio. Now I can hear a lot of studio owners' heads going, well, I've told my staff to do it, but they don't do it. I don't have time to do that because, you know, we're an RAD school and we have to have this immaculate ballet. And don't get me wrong, I love RAD and I love immaculate ballet. It's my thing. Yeah, but it's not appealing to the client that's coming in like you're saying. And, you know, you've got to follow your staff up on it. We're really strict on following our staff up. My ballet teachers, for example, who are much better at it now. I said to them, how do we know we have this incredible ballet training at Paws if you don't ever put any of it on social media? How does anybody know about it? You know, how do you— do you know about the random karate class that's down the street from you?

They're actually doing—

do you know about the Pilates? You know, we talked about you starting Pilates. Is there some Pilates thing popping up on your social media?

Yeah.

If it's not, you're never going to see it.

Absolutely.

That's why and how we opt into brands.

Yeah, absolutely. I love that. And I think it's around setting your staff up for success around it, you know, starting by, you know, we did a tribe call this morning around expectations for staff and talking about— we also talked about values and being super clear with your values. So I think that if your staff are trained well in terms of Knowing what you value in the studio, knowing, uh, you know, what the expectation is in terms of them, in terms of taking photos, videos, whatever. It really helps to make sure that this is easier job for you or the person who's doing it.

Okay.

So what that looks like is explaining to your staff, hey, when you take videos, I don't just want it to be the front center person. You know, that might be what it is. I wanna make sure everyone's included, or I don't just want the tricks. Like, no one wants to see a leg mount on a photo. Leg mounts are not pretty in photos. Like, you know, I wanna— this is what I want to say. I want to see smiley, happy kids having fun. It doesn't need to be perfect. And you can talk about the expectation because it ties back to your values. Uh, Bec, you said one of your values at your studio was family. And so that value of family is the smiley, happy kids having fun at dancing, not the incredible ballet technique, which I know you have but isn't as important to always you know, be like showing that high-end ballet, only, only, only high-end ballet.

No. And I wasn't meaning that by saying— I was just saying, absolutely, we need to get ballet on the Instagram because there genuinely are people who want to do ballet. And yeah, it's just flipping your mindset on this, I think, is the big thing. There's a couple of things I want to say, just the basics of this first as well. Amanda, make sure that you have a public profile, not a private.

Oh my God. It's crazy that we can say that.

But I know when we were in boxing a few studios about Expo, when we did it in Queensland last year, because we, you know, we'd never done it in Queensland, we'd introduce ourselves and say hi. Yeah, I wanted to introduce and see if they knew that we were doing it there. And the amount of times that I would inbox a studio and be like, you can't inbox this account.

And it says even if their profile was public, but then they couldn't receive messages from people that they didn't follow.

So many.

Like, how do you do that as a business?

So then someone looks at your brand friend on Instagram and then they try and message you and then they can't message you. So then they're not going to bother, obviously.

Absolutely. That just blows my mind.

Yeah, it blows my mind.

Owning a dress shop but shutting it and having the door locked, like, to me that just seems so silly. Like, invite people in. You want to have conversations, right?

Absolutely.

Number one.

Yep. Another thing that I see people talk about is, oh, my parents don't want the kids on social media. This kills me. And I'm going to be really controversial now, but someone put in our tribe page the other day, I don't know if you saw on our tribe page saying, oh, there's a couple of kids who don't want to be on social media and don't want to be recorded. What's your policies on this and how do you guys deal with it? And my answer is they don't come into my studio. Yeah, I can't protect them. I've made the mistake before.

Yeah.

And it was genuinely a kid that couldn't be. Yeah. Because of DV or whatever. And so you, you actually can't protect them because they're performing. Some sort of a parent's going to bring a phone out.

Yeah, at a midgie concert, an end of year, like after class, they're taking a photo and that kid's in the background.

Like, it's not possible to protect them. And I made that choice in there to not have them. Yeah, in the studio, not in a horrible way.

No, it's coming, but it's like, hey, I can't do what you need.

Exactly.

I'm really sorry. Like, if you can't offer you a place.

But our primary school has a social media account on Facebook where the kids are photographed every single day.

Yeah.

And I'm fine with it. And I would say 99% of parents are fine with it. And I just think tagging those parents is free marketing for you and realizing that you need to grow your business by putting it out there. I don't understand how business— it's funny when people complain and say my business isn't growing and I'm like, cool, let's have a look at your social media. There's nothing on their stories, which is a simple click the envelope onto one of your posts and put it on your story. It takes 3 seconds a day. I'm sure you've scrolled scrolled through Instagram and Facebook for more than 3 seconds. So that's, you know, totally possible. There's nothing on their stories. There's barely anything in their feed and they don't— and they're not running an ad.

Yeah.

I'm like, so how are people finding out about your school?

Carrier pigeon. It's all via carrier pigeon.

Literally. I just— it's so crazy. No one's reading newspapers. Like, I just don't understand how they think people are just going to come in. Most studios, 9 out of 10 studios are not on a main street where people are walking past all the time. It's not like you're in industrial, yeah, you're in industrial areas or whatever that is where nobody drives to unless they're specifically going to the mechanic next door to you. Like, it's just not a thing.

Absolutely. Absolutely. So I think that's really important is investing the time, but also making it, you know, back to the it not taking so long, making it easy on yourself, you know, having a shared drive with all your staff, you know, whether that's a like, I don't know, iCloud, you know, Google Photos, whatever, but something set up so that you can get content from all of your team. And then whether it's you or someone else, it shouldn't be huge amounts of time. It should only be, you know, the clip you talked about before, I would say was done on CapCut or edits inside Instagram. Those two apps are both great. So good. Uh, you know, it probably, there was like 3 or 4 little clips that were obviously taken by different teachers in different classes at different times. There was music. That was it. Bang, the end. It didn't need to be so much, so over the top. And. You know, if you are doing that, you should be able to post that every day because putting that together should really, once you get better at it, you know, first few times it's gonna be hard. Like anything else, it takes a little bit of time to get, you know, learn the new app or whatever. But if you are getting your teachers giving you good content every day and then you are putting them into, have this little formula that you put 3 little clips into a reel, it shouldn't take more than 10 minutes every day.

It should not.

Absolute tops.

Yep.

And so, you know, those people who are spending and throwing money around on this huge, like, social media team and stuff, like, majority of studios, 99% of studios do not need to do that. No, because I also wanted to have a chat. Actually, can I have a rant about Canva?

Please. I do love Canva though.

Oh, I fucking love— who doesn't love Canva? I'm sorry, I'm in a very sweary mood today. But like, who doesn't love Canva? It's a great product. It is awesome. However, how boring are Canva posts on social media, especially bad ones? Bad Canva posts just make me want to like vomit. But, you know, I've started seeing from a lot of studios, that's all they're posting is Canva posts. And it's almost like announcements like, come join us. Come join us. Uniform now available. It's exam week. Bring a friend week. Come join us. Free trial. Like, how freaking boring.

No one's gonna follow that.

No one's gonna follow that, number one. It looks like shit, number two. And it isn't a true reflection on the incredible work that you are doing with your students every single day in your studio. People want to see the joy. They want to see the kids having fun. They want to see the connections. They want to see people loving dance and loving their community, not just a fucking Canva graphic.

So true. Sorry, rant over. Can I keep going or can I have a rant?

You can go.

Bad AI images with children with 7 fingers.

Oh yeah.

Look, that's the new thing. I love AI too.

Yeah, I do love some AI images.

Amanda put it. Amanda is gun at AI. I just want to say that because she won't talk herself up, but I don't think there's anyone I've met that is as good at AI as she is. And I know you're going to do a gun session at Expo about AI and how to use it, but she put a post together for me. If you guys check it out, it's on my Paws Studios Instagram. It has 27,500 views.

Yeah, crazy.

That is one of the biggest views of any of our videos ever. And it's in— it's so cool though. So I'm not saying you— I'm not saying it's bad, don't use it. But if you are going to use it, you need to actually learn how to use it properly.

Number one, use it properly. And it also has to be— have its place in terms of, you know, it being either clear that it's AI or infused with reality, because we don't just want to live in a world where there's no reality, right?

Yes. But when I'm seeing websites and Instagrams with children with 8 fingers and their eye looks a bit weird, like, oh, we saw one the other day with weird dancing too.

Yeah.

Come on, guys. You know, it's just—

we have such cute kids to take photos.

We do. We do. And if you don't, then use the photos that are— there's so many photos on Canva that you could opt in if you're, you know, a new studio who doesn't have kids yet or whatever it might be. There's plenty of those stock photos that you can use on Canva or learn how to do AI better. Correct. Number one, come to Amanda's expo session for a start. You are very big on educating our clients on that, like our SGC members, our tribe members. You're you'll do so many sessions because you are on the forefront of AI.

Yeah, I'm trying, like, very much. I'm on calls every week learning, upskilling, not just in AI images but in lots of different things. I just love AI images because I always wanted to be a graphic designer, you see.

Did you?

Always. Really? Have we not discussed this? Um, that was like what I would have been if I wasn't a studio owner. Like, I almost started like studying it at the same time, and I love doing that. But that's why I like Canva and I like AI because it kind of lets you flex that. Even though I don't really know how to use, you know, Photoshop, for example.

I don't even know what I would have been if I wasn't a studio owner. We should ask that on the Tribe page. I'd love to know, like, what everyone would have been if they weren't a studio owner. My dad wanted me to be a lawyer.

So that was my other thing, was to go to law school. Yeah, too much Legally Blonde, I feel like, in my life. But I would have loved it because I would have—

I love a chat on a microphone.

Yeah.

As do you. I feel like we would be talking about—

I don't know what you're talking about. No, that was like, I, you know, I did legal studies in year 11 and 12, and that was another— the graphic designer actually came later. Like, I was thinking that at like 25. I don't know if I thought about that. Or an IT programmer. My dad was an IT, and like, we wrote— like, I wrote my first piece of software with my data studio software when I was like 18, 19.

Anything worse than doing that?

And literally, I love It's funny because I still do like similar things to that. Like I love doing tech. Yeah, I hate it around AI more so and making it work and can't think of anything worse.

But I still teach.

So what else would you have done? You worked in retail. I did love that.

I didn't love it. I was good at it.

You get to talk to people. You're in sales.

Yeah, I think teaching would have always been there somehow. I do love teaching. Like, that's probably the thing that I—

Yeah, I do too.

Teaching, not just teaching kids, teaching.

No, that's right.

Teaching.

I love to teach anybody.

Yeah, teaching anybody.

Yeah. I'm like, you know, that's why I love teaching as well. That's why I love what we do, because it's teaching. Even though I'm not teaching little girls ballet anymore, I'm teaching something else.

Anyway, we digress.

We do digress. Anyway, our point is social media does not need to be so hard as you make it. Don't build it up to be this huge thing. Don't let it, you know, things take as long as you allow them to take. Only allow it to take, you know, 2 hours a week, but like you actually have to do it still. Don't, when I say don't let it take, not take, that doesn't mean you only get to do one post a week. You've got to post multiple times.

Well, I said this to one of our brand newbies for Studio Growth Club who only joined a few weeks ago. And I said to her, time block 11 till 1 on a Monday, you are going to do your social media and nothing else. And just get it done. Get it done.

Know that you want to do it for the week. 4 posts in that 2 hours, 5 posts, 6 posts, whatever the number is. But like, be like, I am going to get this done. And if you start doing 4 posts consistently in that 2 hours, do that for 3 weeks and go, okay, I'm now going to make it 5 posts.

And you know what my top tip was? Because I reckon 99% of us wake up in the morning, the first thing we do is check social media.

Absolutely.

Just go on to your social media and just push that little envelope and share 3 or 4 things to your stories. Remember, stories are not about— it doesn't matter if you're showing the same thing over, over, over. We're trying to get new people in, new people who haven't seen your brand yet.

Scroll down and share old stuff too.

That's what I'm saying. Like, just push the envelope on the post and it'll go straight to your story. Simple. Add to story, add to story, add to story. It'll take you maybe 15 seconds.

All right, I better go add something to my story right now.

Thanks so much, guys. Hope you enjoyed that session, and we will see you next week.

Bye-bye! We hope you enjoyed this episode of the Dance Principles United podcast. If you'd love to learn more from us, we have a special offer just for our podcast listeners. Go to the link in the show notes right now to get 2 weeks free in Dance Principles United Tribe. We would love to see you there.