When setting up a guitar teaching business, recruiting new students, and even trying to find guitar gigs, many of us know about the importance of having an online presence through our website and various social media outlets.
While we know it is important to have a presence on these pages, such as YouTube, Facebook and Twitter, we’re not always sure about the best way to use these networks in order to minimize our time spent on them, but maximize our interaction with current and potential students.
One of the fastest growing, and therefore most important, social networks is Twitter. With it’s 140 character posts, easy to use platform and simple layout, Twitter has quickly risen to the top of the social media hierarchy alongside its main rival, Facebook.
While many of us know we need to have a Twitter page and Tweet to help promote our guitar teaching business, we’re sometimes unsure, or have misconceptions, about the best way to use Twitter to achieve this goal.
Because of this, RGT has put together this short primer on how to set up a guitar Twitter page, how to properly interact with and build your follower base, and how to get the most out of your time spent Tweeting with other guitarists and tutors from around the globe.
If you have any questions about this guitar Twitter page primer, or how to use Twitter for guitar teachers, post a message or Tweet to the RGT Twitter Page and we’ll be glad to help you out.
How to Set Up a Twitter Page
The first thing that you will need to do in order to get started Tweeting, is to set up a proper guitar teaching Twitter page.
Though these pages are similar to what you may already have on Facebook, Twitter pages are a bit more low key, and so are quick and easy to set up, allowing you to start sending out your first Tweets in no time.
After opening a free account with Twitter, you will need to choose a username and address for your Twitter page.
This is a very important step in the process, as you can change your name at a later time, but not your guitar Twitter page address, so you need to make sure you pick a good and relevant url right from the start.
If you are looking to recruit students and promote your Mars based teaching business, as a funny example, then www.twitter.com/marsguitartuition would be a great address, which would give you the Twitter handle, @marsguitartuition.
Having a relevant Twitter page name and handle can go a long way in making sure that your page shows up in the right searches and for the right search terms. If somebody searches Twitter, or even on Google, for “Mars Guitar Tuition,” and your page is the first to show up, then that will mean a lot of potential students visiting your Twitter page.
As well, you will need a small and large photo to use on your guitar Twitter homepage, which you should choose carefully as these will be what people see when you Tweet, as well as when they check out your homepage for more info on who you are and what you do.
If you have a logo, that would be perfect for the small photo on your Twitter page, or a photo of you playing or teaching guitar would also work well. For the larger photo, you could use the banner from your Facebook page or website if you have one, or a larger photo from a gig, private teaching situation or workshop you have done in the past.
Just make sure that you try and use two distinct photos, not different versions of the same picture, to provide a more engaging experience for your followers.
The last essential item you’ll need when starting a guitar Twitter page is a short bio that goes over the photos at the top of your homepage.
Here, you need to quickly get to the point as you have a limited space to tell people what you do. An example of this could be, “Looking for #Guitartuition on Mars? Visit www.marsguitartuition.com for the best lessons and prices on the planet.”
Notice how I used a hashtag on “guitar tuition” so that your page will show up in searches, as well as posted a link to the homepage to draw potential students to your website where they can get more info, and hopefully sign up for lessons.
Once you have these items in order, there are options in your Twitter settings that allow you to customize the colors and design of your page, which you might want to do if your website and other online sites use a consistent color scheme.
As well, Twitter will prompt you to add friends and similar pages to your followers list in order to get you started. You can opt to add contacts from your email accounts, but that’s up to you.
If you are looking for a first follower on Twitter, why not stop by www.twitter.com/RGT_Guitar and give us a follow to get started with your Tweeting the RGT way.
Growing Your Followers on Twitter
Once you have your guitar Twitter Page all set up and ready to go, the first thing you will need to do is grow your followers so that there will be people out there listening when you post a tweet, pic or video to Twitter.
While it is easy to find your friends, by importing contacts from your email address, or by searching out friend’s names and pages, you will want to start growing your Follower base beyond close friends in order to expand your reach when sending out Tweets in the future.
To help you get started with growing your Followers on Twitter, here are three steps that you can take in order to begin following others, and in turn, having them follow you.
Before we dig into these ideas, the easiest way to let people know you have a Twitter page, and allow them to follow you, is to tell them. So don’t forget to post a link to your Twitter Page on your website, send it out to your Facebook friends, put it in the About section of your YouTube videos, and add it to your email signature, all great ways to get the word out on your new Twitter page.
1. Follow Other Pages
Probably the easiest way to grow your Twitter followers is to simply follow other relevant pages and people in your field. By doing so, every time you follow someone they will get a note from Twitter telling them that you have followed them. This will give them a chance to check out your page, and if they think you have interesting things to say and are talking about a related field of interest, then they could follow you back.
The last point is probably the most important. Make sure to follow people and pages that are into the same things you are, such as guitar, guitar teaching and maybe a genre of music you like. You are much more likely to connect with people, and grow your follower base, if you interact with other guitarists and guitar tutors, rather than following celebrities and athletes for example.
To help get you started, head to the search bar on Twitter and type in the words “guitar tutor” and start to follow a few pages that come up that look interesting to you. After you do that, you can search for other terms such as “guitarist,” people in your area such as “guitar UK,” or pages in your field such as “guitar magazine.”
Following other pages and people who share the same interests as you is a great way to start seeing who’s out there, and get people to notice you, when first starting on Twitter. Once you have a number of pages and people on both your Following and Followers list, you’ll be ready to go on to step two in this section.
2. Tag Pages and People in Tweets
Another great way to connect with people and pages on Twitter, and grow your followers in the process, is to tag people and pages when you send out a Tweet. To do this, you simply put an @ symbol before their Twitter handle, the words after twitter.com in their page’s address, and it will send them a note that you tagged them.
An example of a Tweet like this could be, “Looking forward to the annual @RGT_Guitar conference coming up in September! Are you going to be there?” When sending out a Tweet like this, you will have let the RGT page know that you tagged them, and so they might “retweet” your post, which we’ll discuss in the next section, or write a comment back, or check out your page and decide to follow you back.
Tagging people and pages is a great way to let them know you are on Twitter, show that you have shared interests, and start a conversation, all great ways to connect with people and grow your followers. When tagging pages, you can mention them in Tweets like the example above, you could share one of their videos, links to their website, a recent news story on them, or just tag them to say hello.
Whichever way you choose to tag other people and pages on Twitter is great, so try out a few and see how they go. If people don’t respond, especially if they have thousands of followers, don’t take it personally. Twitter can be a busy place, so just keep tagging them, and others, in a polite way, remind them that you are there and have shared interests, and hopefully in time they’ll respond and you can connect further from there.
3. Engage With Other Tweeters
This is probably one of the most important ways to build and maintain relationships with your followers, and one of the ones that unfortunately most people ignore when they start hanging out on Twitter. As you build your Followers, you will see Tweets scrolling down your newsfeed from the people that you have in turn followed, and this is a great chance to interact beyond tagging people in Tweets.
If you see a Tweet that you find interesting, “favorite” that Tweet by clicking the favorite button on that particular Tweet in your newsfeed. As well, if you feel that a Tweet from someone else would be interesting to your followers, you can “retweet” it by clicking the retweet button on that tweet, which will in turn post it to your followers, and send that person a note saying that you retweeted them in the process.
Also, many times people will post questions or open comments on Twitter, and this is your chance to engage them and connect with people who have shared interests. For example, someone might Tweet “Has anyone tried out the new pickups by Brand X? What do you think?” If you’ve checked out those pickups, you could reply with your thoughts.
Even if you haven’t tried them out, you could retweet it as a quote to your followers and ask them if they have any opinions. Either way, you have connected with this person, helped them out by giving your opinion or asking your Followers to help out, and in turn connected with them in a positive fashion.
You can also use Twitter to ask questions and engage in conversations with people and pages that way. From asking for advice, like the Brand X Tweet, to seeing if people like the new album from Band Y, or seeing who’s going to the latest reunion show by a famous band, asking questions is a great way to start conversations and enhance your presence on Twitter, growing your followers in the process.
Far too often, people will start a guitar Twitter Page and then either not post any Tweets, or simply post updates about themselves and not interact with other people or pages on Twitter. Remember, you can talk about yourself and promote your ideas, services and products on Twitter, but in the end this is a social network, so be social with people.
It may take more time to answer questions from followers, or retweet and tag people in your posts, but by doing so you will quickly meet more people in your field, engage with them in conversation and showcase what you do as a guitarist and guitar tutor. All great reasons to be on Twitter in the first place.
Now that you have a good start on building your guitar Twitter page, and growing your followers and engagement with people on Twitter, let’s take a look at one of the most common things associated with Twitter itself, hashtags.
What Are Hashtags?
Up until recently, one of the big differences between Facebook and Twitter was the use of hashtags, the # symbol, when posting on Twitter. Now that Facebook has adopted hashtags they have leveled the playing field a bit, but it’s too early to tell if hashtags will have the same impact on Facebook as they have so far for Twitter.
By adding the # symbol before any word in a Tweet, you are tagging it as an important word in your post, so the “keyword” of that particular Tweet. This helps people search and find posts by keyword on Twitter if they want to see what everyone is talking about around one particular subject.
This means that if you Tweet “I am practicing #guitar today and loving it!,” then that Tweet will come up in any search for the word “guitar” on Twitter, allowing you to be discovered by other people that share the same interest.
In turn, if you are looking to find people that are talking about a particular topic such as #guitartuition, #guitarteaching, or most importantly, #rgtguitar, then you just enter any of those words into the Twitter search bar and every Tweet with that hashtag will show up.
Hashtags can be very helpful when finding other relevant Tweets on a topic you enjoy, or for helping your Tweets to be discovered by other people who share those interests, but you need to be careful not to over do them.
Sometimes people get a little to excited about hashtags and Tweet in the following manner, “#Practicing #Jazz #Guitar today and #listening to #GeorgeBenson.” Though this will wind up in a lot of search results, it looks funny on the feed and won’t go over well with followers.
As a suggestion for the best use of hashtags, try using one or at the most two hashtags per Tweet. That way you will show up in searches, while not overloading your Tweets with #’s at the same time.
Facebook vs. Twitter
One of the main items that always crops up when discussing Social Media for guitar teachers and performers, is how does Twitter differ from Facebook?
When launching and running a guitar Twitter page, many people treat it the same way as they would their Facebook guitar page, which can be a bit awkward for your followers as both platforms are inherently different in how they operate.
To help you distinguish your postings and follower engagement between Twitter and Facebook, here is a short rundown of how you need to treat Twitter in order to make it stand apart from your dealings on Facebook.
1. Length of Posts
The first, and most important, thing to keep in mind when using Twitter is that there is a 140 character maximum for any Tweet you send out. Whereas you can make status updates as long as you want, within reason, on Facebook, on Twitter your text is cut off after 140 characters.
So, you need to be aware of this when writing and posting Tweets so that you don’t end up cutting off your thoughts as they hit the Twitter newsfeed.
This will mean that you’ll do a bit of editing when first getting used to Twitter, but over time you will develop the knack for writing short, to the point Tweets that get your point across within the 140 character limit.
2. Post Frequency
As Facebook uses a selective newsfeed policy, where you are only shown a portion of the posts made by your friends and pages you follow, any post from your Facebook page will have a life on that newsfeed for about 3 to 4 hours.
On twitter, there is no selective newsfeed, so people are shown every tweet from every person and company that they follow. Because of this, you can post much more frequently on Twitter than you would on Facebook.
Now, you don’t want to overdo it and swamp people’s newsfeeds, but posting once every hour or 90 minutes during your day, if the Tweets are relevant and interesting, can be OK. The industry recommendations from people who study these things, yes people do study Twitter, is 5 to 7 Tweets per day as the ideal range.
That’s not to say that you have to post this much, but if you were looking for an upper range to how many Tweets you could put out in a day without overdoing it, that would be a good range.
Since people could be following hundreds or thousands of other Tweeters, your Tweet will probably only have a life on the top of their newsfeed for a matter of minutes at most. So when using Twitter it’s OK to post more than you would normally do on a Facebook page as a result of the differences in their newsfeeds.
3. Lists
To help organize all of the different Tweets that come through on your, and your followers, newsfeeds, you can create “lists” of people and businesses you follow in order to corral their Tweets into smaller, more manageable groups.
A few suggestions on which lists would be beneficial to have would be, Guitar Students, Guitar Teachers, Guitar Companies, Friends, Family, etc. This way you wouldn’t have to comb through all of your Tweets to find a specific group of people, they would all be in one list.
To start, try making a few lists right off the bat and then add new pages and people that you follow to those lists as you go. That way you can keep things organized right from the beginning, rather than having to go in and sort out all your followers later on, which can be a big task if you have hundreds or thousands of followers to go through and set into lists.
4. The Newsfeed
As was mentioned earlier, the newsfeed is fundamentally different between Facebook and Twitter from a length of post and frequency of posting perspective. Another difference is how you see posts/Tweets when looking at a newsfeed on both Facebook and Twitter.
Whereas Facebook likes to show full pictures, video preview boxes and other multi-media items, Twitter is all about text and links. This means that you have to draw people into any Tweet with the 140 characters you have to work with when posting a photo or link to a video onto your Twitter Page.
Again, it will take some time when first learning how to write an interesting and engaging Tweet, one that gets your point across and draws clicks, retweets and favorites from your followers, but over time you will get better at it and it will come more naturally.
5. Trolls and Spam
The last difference that we’ll look at between Facebook and Twitter is Spam and Trolls. Both sites have their fair share of spam bots and people out looking to get a reaction from others in a negative way, but not to worry there are ways to handle this type of behavior built right into Twitter.
If you receive anything from someone, especially a Direct Message, which is like an email from that person on Twitter, saying something like “I can’t believe Tim is talking about you like this, you have to check this out!,” NEVER click on it. This is spam.
Unless you know someone personally, or the question/comment they are posting or emailing you as a direct message seems like a legit question and coming from a legit person, then never interact with that person or tweet/message.
There is nothing more embarrassing than having spam Tweets be sent out to your followers, though it can happen from time to time if you’re not careful, so just use common sense and if something seems fishy, it probably is, so best to leave it alone.
If you get a spam message, or something that looks like spam, you can always block that person from clicking on their picture and following the options on the screen in the box next to the “Follow” button. This way they will never be able to contact you again.
To Automate or Not to Automate
One of the big questions that a lot of people have when the start a Twitter Page, especially when they are already on Facebook, is “Should I pre-schedule Tweets and should I use a plugin to post all of my Facebook posts onto my Twitter feed?”
To address the first part of this question, I would say that it can be handy to pre-schedule some Tweets during your day or week in order to make sure that you are present on Twitter even when you are busy and can’t Tweet yourself.
To do this, you can use a free program from Twitter called Twitdeck. This program allows you to pre-schedule Tweets to go out even when you cannot be on Twitter yourself.
While this can be beneficial, you want to avoid falling into the trap of pre-scheduling all of your Tweets at the start of the week and then not going back on Twitter until the next time you schedule a batch of Tweets. Remember, Twitter is a social network, and so you need to be social for it to be a successful endeavor for you.
Go ahead and try this out, pre-scheduling Tweets, but make sure that you are also interacting with people on your Twitter Page as well by answering questions, posting questions and following up to any responses, in order to build relationships with your followers and interact with them in a meaningful way, beyond just posting links throughout the week.
For the second part of this question, I would not recommend linking your Twitter and Facebook accounts using plugins designed for this action, as it again takes away from the social nature of Twitter, and Facebook for that matter.
What you want to avoid is having duplicate posts on different social networks, as people might be fans of your Facebook page and followers of your guitar Twitter page, and you don’t want to always show them the exact same posts on both pages.
So, you can post the same idea on both networks, a link to your latest YouTube video for example, but make sure they are unique posts, with unique text and posted in a way that is appropriate for each of these two different social networks.
While it may take a little more of your time to do this, your fans and followers will appreciate the fact that you are actively engaging them on each network in a way that is personal and not just done through an automated plugin.
Top 10 Tips For Guitar Teachers on Twitter
To finish up our look at how to build and run a successful Twitter Page for Guitar Teachers and Performers, here is a quick list of the Top 10 Tips to use as guidelines when setting up and running your Twitter page.
Do you have a Top Tip that you would add to this list? Head over to Twitter, post your tip as a Tweet with @RGT_Guitar and tell us what you think.
1. Twitter is a social network, so make sure you interact with your followers and people you follow in a social and engaging way.
2. While Facebook posts tend to stay on newsfeeds for up to 4 hours, Tweets can disappear from site in under 30 minutes for some users. So post more often on Twitter compared to Facebook, as long as they are interesting Tweets.
3. Never open or click any link or direct message that looks like spam. Better safe than sorry when it comes to spamming your followers by mistake.
4. If you see an interesting Tweet from someone, mark it as a favorite, retweet it to your followers or post a reply to that Tweet. This is a great way to interact with people, build relationships and provide your followers with engaging Tweets all at the same time.
5. Don’t just post about yourself and your own teaching/playing on Twitter. Share links and Tweets about other guitar teachers, relevant news stories, and links from your favorite artists in order to keep things fresh and varied in your daily Tweeting.
6. When someone Retweets something you’ve posted on Twitter, make sure to reply with a “Thanks for the RT.” Not only is this the polite thing to do, but it allows you to start interacting with people that find what you have to say interesting at the same time.
7. Use #’s when appropriate, don’t overdo it though and fill your Tweets with hashtags in order to try and dig up search traffic on Twitter. Usually one, or maybe two, hashtags is the max for any one Tweet.
8. Make sure that you put a link to your website homepage in the bio section of your Twitter profile, as this is an easy way to draw potential students and booking agents to your website.
9. If you mention someone in a Tweet make sure you use the @ symbol before their name so that you give them a little nudge that you are talking about them on Twitter. Another great way to meet new people and build industry relationships through Tweets.
10. Have fun! Twitter can be great for building your teaching business and helping to find potential performance opportunities, but it’s also a fun place to meet new people that share your same interests. So use Twitter properly, but enjoy your time on there, which will make it easier to get out and Tweet each and every day.
Do you have a question or comment about this building a guitar Twitter page? Head over to the RGT Twitter Page or the RGT Facebook Page and let us know. We’ll be glad to answer your queries and help out any way we can.