Soundbytes founder and MD and Inspire Club member, Hazel Hannam shares 8 TOP tips for recruiting new choir members
1. Make sure your choir is well defined
Is it clear to your audience the kind of choir you are? Is it a choir that performs and puts on concerts regularly? Is it a mixed/ladies/children’s choir? Is it auditioned or a ‘no need to read music’ choir?
2. Relating to the above point, have these points and their clear definitions laid out in a really easy to navigate website
This should have nice pictures of you as the leader, singers enjoying themselves, different locations etc. Include a good logo and I always include the fee for each differing choir so that it’s plain and above board (no hidden costs, and if there will be extra costs, I’d make these known too) Don’t be shy about being proud of what these choirs mean to your singers – get the singers to write testimonials (you don’t have to write their real names if they don’t want)
3. Advertise new terms, starting a month or so in advance, in local magazine
4. I advertise our FREE concerts in the same magazine
So, in total I would have placed a small quarter-page ad in the same local mag 4-6 times per year consisting of ‘New Term Starting’ and ‘Come to our Concert’ ads.
5. From time to time I would have A5 flyers printed, given to the choir to give out or put up on local notice boards
Ensure every post you publish builds engagement!
You need to know what to do to get your posts ready to do a choir recruitment campaign and then make sure every post is written to get more engagement and new sign ups!
6. Encourage your choir to invite as many friends and family along to your concerts as possible
If your concert is a fundraising event, make sure everyone knows about it. Ask the recipient charity to include the concert in their mailing list/newsletter/social media or website.
7. Be nice, be kind, be welcoming and…
Be inclusive so that anyone who does take the brave step to venture in will feel relaxed and happy and WANT to come back, assign them a buddy to help them settle in or just to chat and say hello.
8. All newbies are offered a ‘Try Before You Buy’ first week so they have nothing to lose!
About Hazel Hannam…..
I had always loved singing from a young age, singing my first solo in a church Christmas carol concert aged just 4! And that was the moment I knew I wanted to sing for the rest of my life…
As an adult I attended the City Lit in London and took many jazz singing courses and travelled around England singing jazz at weddings, parties, product launches, along with playing many jazz
gigs, Pizza On The Park, The Consortium at the Royal Albert Hall and many Pizza Express jazz nights.
After some years, I decided that I wanted to share my love of singing with people who also loved to sing and after being inspired by Gareth Malone’s first choir series in 2008, I decided that I would start my own choir; a no audition and no need to read music community choir, and in 2009 Soundbytes was born.
I studied conducting under Neil Ferris and took various singing, voice and breathing workshops to gain a greater understanding of how we sing.
In 2019 Soundbytes celebrated it’s 10th birthday and we marked the occasion by hiring out the Leatherhead Theatre and invited a jazz band the Meredith White Quartet, a vocal trio 3’s A Chord and fellow community choir from Kingston, SingingItBack. It was a sell-out concert and raised lots of money for a local charity. Soundbytes has raised more than £27,000 over the years for local
charities, a fact that we are immensely proud of.
Over the years I have started new choirs for other organisations like the WI, Royal College of Anaesthetists, The Chartered Institute of Professional Development and for a mental health charity Mary Francis Trust, and am currently running 6 choirs online. I aim to go back to in-person rehearsals in September and will continue some choirs online as this has been a popular option for many.
To read more go to www.hazelhannam.com
Ensure every choir post you publish builds engagement!
You need to know what to do to get your posts ready to do a choir recruitment campaign and then make sure every post is written to get more engagement and new sign ups!
