DanceStudio-Pro
As a dance studio owner, you’ve undoubtedly had some ups and downs over the years when it comes to managing your business, but for many, the COVID-19 pandemic has presented one of the greatest challenges yet to maintaining dance studios. Luckily, there is still one place where you can host completely COVID-safe dance lessons and stay in touch with your fellow dancers: the virtual realm.
Hosting online dance classes comes with its own unique set of challenges, but there are upsides to virtual events as well—you can expand your studio’s reach because dancers can access your classes from anywhere with an internet connection. Plus, you have a chance to bring fitness and fun into participants’ lives during a difficult time.
At DanceStudio-Pro, we know the importance of leveraging technology during uncertain times. Our dance student management software helps dance studios stay organized with everything from student registration to tools for online classes.
With a background in offering digital solutions for evolving dance studio operations, we’ve compiled a few considerations that will put you on the right track to hosting successful virtual events. Consider these top four ideas for hosting fun and effective virtual dance lessons:
Offer private and group lessons.
Offer live and on-demand content.
Make your dance classes fun.
Invest in the right technology.
While you may not be able to host identical events to those that you held in-person in the past, these tips will have your students pirouetting, popping and locking, or waltzing across the floor at home just as they would in your physical dance studio. Let’s take a closer look at each tip!
1. Offer private and group lessons
In your studio, you likely offered both one-on-one as well as group lessons to your students so they could choose which option best suited their needs. There’s no reason you can’t continue that model with your virtual classes to diversify your class schedule and keep students on track with their progress.
Offering different types of classes also helps your studio appeal to a wider range of potential new students, helping increase your revenue even during this turbulent time.
While your live virtual classes will look a little different than your in-studio instruction, there are good reasons to continue offering both choices:
Private lessons offer personalized instruction for dancers at all experience levels. In these solo sessions, dancers have the instructor’s undivided attention to ask questions and receive personalized instruction. Private lessons can benefit new dancers who need more one-on-one help to get up-to-speed or advanced dancers who require a more specialized training schedule. These lessons also allow students to communicate with the instructor more easily in a one-on-one video call and get immediate feedback.
Group lessons allow more students to participate and offer the camaraderie of a typical dance class. Group lessons over video call can often host up to ten or twelve students, recreating what an in-person group session would look like. Group lessons offer the chance for students to still feel involved in the dance community, even though they’re physically separated from their peers.
When starting up these live online classes, you’ll want to adhere to some virtual event best practices to keep your operation organized and professional. Fonteva’s guide to virtual events offers tips like maintaining active communication, anticipating technical difficulties, and logging data from each event to track the growth of your online classes.
We recommend that you pay close attention to the tip to anticipate technical difficulties. This means you should take simple steps like ensuring you’ve got a strong internet connection before starting your classes—you don’t want to cause confusion for your students when your video stalls on an image of you in first position for two minutes! Or, you may choose to pre-record some classes so students can practice on their own time.
2. Offer live and on-demand content
One of the benefits of using virtual instruction for your dance classes is that you can offer not only live private and group classes, but also pre-recorded content that remains available indefinitely. This taped content can be an invaluable resource to offer your students as they can practice specific moves from their lessons or access a class after the fact if they missed the live option.
Additionally, offering on-demand content is another way of increasing the number of connection opportunities with your dance students and re-engaging them after they might have drifted away during the first few months of the pandemic.
You can offer this content on your website or YouTube channel, but one of the easiest ways to distribute these pre-recorded lessons is with your dance business app. Your students can access any lesson directly from their phones to jump right back into their training without missing a beat. With a well-designed app, your students will also have easy access to information like class schedules and a studio message board all in one place.
Also, consider investing in recording equipment such as a high-end video camera and wireless microphone to create professional videos that may even attract a wider online audience and encourage more students to join your classes.
These technological investments will pay off even after the pandemic ends because they’ll help you bring in new in-person students out of the pool of those who first found your studio through seeing your high-quality recorded content online. Having high-end equipment can also enhance your future in-person operations because it will allow you to record auditions and recitals and put these recordings online for students and their families to watch.
3. Make your dance classes fun
The most important success factor for your virtual dance classes is the same as your in-person classes—making sure everyone has a good time! Don’t let the planning process for developing your remote classes get in the way of feeling the joy and sense of fun that sparked your passion for dance in the first place.
Continuously evolving your in-class activities to keep things fresh and exciting can play a major role in keeping dancers engaged at your studio.
If you celebrated students’ birthdays in the past during your in-person classes, keep that up by doing birthday shout-outs during your online classes. If you hosted special themed classes where everyone dressed up in 80s attire or festive holiday costumes, don’t let that tradition slip away in your transition to virtual instruction. Your students will appreciate the extra effort and continuity of all the special events they loved participating in at your studio to the online space.
Extra efforts like these examples can help lessen the sting of not being in the studio and can help students receive the same fulfilling dance experience in your virtual classes as they would in your in-studio lessons.
4. Invest in the right technology
If you’re just getting started transitioning to a virtual studio presence, you might be overwhelmed thinking about all the management aspects that need to be put in order before you can start your virtual classes. From keeping track of student information to selling tickets and tracking attendance data for your virtual events, it can be hard to know where to start when faced with all of the dance studio management tools available in today’s world.
Fortunately, DanceStudio-Pro’s guide to dance studio software offers an overview of the top digital resources for keeping your day-to-day operations running smoothly. When choosing the best software for your studio, this guide presents several tools that your software should include, such as:
Student and class management tools to keep track of student enrollment data and class schedules
Ticketing software to handle all your event sign-ups
Integrations with email messaging platforms to be able to communicate with students quickly and easily
Investing in quality dance studio software with multiple key functions will ensure you have everything you need to remain organized and efficient in your operations, all from one centralized location. With a solid management software footing, you can rest assured that every aspect of your virtual presence is taken care of and your virtual dance classes can go off without a hitch.
By following these tips, you’ll have all the tools you need to provide an enriching virtual dance class experience for your students. You can create an experience that rivals the in-person classes offered in your physical studio in the past.
Keep in mind that if you start to face new challenges in your attempts to pivot virtual events during the pandemic, you’re not alone. There are plenty of resources out there such as this guide for planning virtual events that are focused on leading all kinds of businesses through this evolving and challenging time period.
One meaningful piece of advice we picked out from this guide is using the power of virtual events to foster genuine human connections in uncertain times. When you’re planning, remember how appreciative your students are of your efforts to bring the dance community together virtually. Good luck and have fun!