There’s a subtle difference between PR and marketing. Here’s a story to illustrate it – one of Aesop’s fables.
The sun and the wind decided to have a competition to see who is the strongest. They saw a man walking along wearing a coat and agree that whoever could get the man to remove his coat would be the strongest. So the wind blew and blew and blew. But the man just tightened his coat and continued to walk. Then the sun came along and shone. The man, warmed by the sun, removed his coat.
If we take this story and imagine that the wind is ‘selling’ – bombarding people with opportunities to join choirs, sign up for workshops etc. This is marketing. The sun is what I call ‘shining’ – telling everyone how marvellous singing is and what good it can do for you. This is PR.
You can, of course, shine everywhere. A blanket approach to shining is fine! A recent example of is something I created and shared on my Facebook profile
It’s not overtly selling my choir, there are no links to join. It’s just a feel good photo clearly showing the effects of singing and being together as a community. Other examples of singing are radio interviews, TV appearances (locally, these things are easier to do than you might think – Twitter is a great contact point for media people). You can talk about what you do and how it makes people feel and all the wonderful things we know about choirs without overtly selling.
But we do want to sell! We need to have people in our choirs! We need to earn a living! And so we need to market ourselves/choirs.
Firstly, Who are your target audience? Is it middle aged middle class ladies? Males voices? Teenagers? Children? I’ve found it useful to create a client avatar – a drawing of a potential singer and all the things about this fictitious character – how old, where they live, what they do for work, what their other hobbies are, who they live with. It’s quite good fun! Once you’ve established your niche (and it’s no good saying ‘my choir is for everyone’ because clearly ‘everyone’ is actually ‘no-one’) then you need to find out where your clients hang out.
I launched my first community choir at the primary school where I was the music teacher. I had a three pronged attack to my audience.
- Leaflets/flyers left in local places, notice boards, at the polling station!
- Facebook – I got someone to create a page and a group for me with a little logo
- Playground nagging. I was targeting parents at the school (mummies mostly) so I talked to them all. Repeatedly.
Once the choir had launched I asked where they had heard about it and the spread was across all three. I launched with 28 singers growing to 40 over a period of around 6 months and half were from the school and the others were form ‘the real world’.
I moved house and area and set up another choir. I used the same tactics. Located the choir in a school, nagged in the playground, a few flyers and a Facebook group. I also managed to get a piece in the local online newspaper and an interview on local radio.
This choir (my current community choir) launched with 128 on the first night and only 4 ladies were parents at the school – and that included me. I continue to recruit new singers using my Facebook profile and through the choir themselves. Often it’s people’s friends who want to join because they’ve heard such marvellous things about the choir (indirect PR) or they’ve seen us perform locally (don’t underestimate the power of this!) We currently maintain around 135 singers
My ICU Liberty Singers choir was born on Twitter. Medics like to hang out on Twitter. I launched that choir with over 100 singers because I got the Dean at the Faculty of Intensive Care Medicine involved – it’s literally not what you know but who you know.
All of my workplace choirs have come through connections from my community choir. I’ve tried (and failed) at LinkedIn and Facebook ask’t proved fruitful for this. I’m either not talking to the right people or else I’m not saying the right things. But my community singers know who to talk to and what to say and by putting forward for wellbeing things, they’re endorsing what I do already and so it usually works.
Wherever you choose to market your content needs to be consistent and strong. To get engagement on social media use questions relevant to the people you’re talking to. Comment back when they answer, take the time to engage properly. Don’t just ‘post and ghost’. If this all seems like a bit much, I schedule time in my working day to do these tasks. I’m also a huge fan of scheduling posts which makes it less gruelling as a task.
Live videos on Facebook or reels on instagram are brilliant – they offer more of your personality and have a much better engagement rate.
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!
PR radio stuff can feel daunting but as long as you’re confident about your subject – you’ll be fine! I contacted BBC Radio Nottingham to talk about how singing is amazing. How wonderful it is to be back singing together in a room post covid. How we’ve felt after our very first gig back since the pandemic. All feel good stuff – local radio love it!
If I’m recruiting for a new term, I try to have a strategy. For example, I’ll use my personal Facebook profile to do 5 posts a week. 4 of them are singing PR and 1 is selling marketing. I use the local Facebook groups to advertise but often you must be an active part of that group taking the time to engage with people rather than just turning up, posting then disappearing. I have my own public Facebook group for the community choir (the actual singers are in a membership group) and I post in there as much as I like – often live videos.
Set yourself a goal. How many new singers are you looking to recruit? Share this with your singers! Ask them to share things to their networks! Usually, our singers are our biggest supporters and are only too happy to help. I always say to mine, I’m not looking for more people as such, but if there’s anyone you think might benefit fro sharing our joy, then ask them to get in touch.
Have a clear logo. Invest in a graphic designer if you’re not sure. I bought my logo from www.123rf.com and another was designed for our ICU charity. Using these on t shirts, hoodies etc are all excellent PR for you.
The main point to take away is that PR and marketing are never a finished job. PR goes on forever and ever. Your singers starting their experiences on social media are part of this. Creating testimonial slides and sharing them are more PR – I make these on canva – easy to use and free. If you can’t face doing this, ask someone to do it for you! One of your singers will probably love to do it!
I hope this gives you the confidence to shine!
“I’m Kari and I run a 120 strong community choir in Nottingham as well as an online choir for ICU staff, another for NHS Blood and Transplant and a small choir in my friend’s hair salon! I create 4 part arrangements of pop songs which appeal to all of my singers and teach everything by ear” Find Kari at www.libertysinger.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!
