Tips for Marketing Your Workshop

Many of us are uncomfortable with the words “marketing” and “promotion” because this is a teaching from the heart and not a commercial business. However, the reality behind a successful workshop is about creating a network of students. Today’s world does require us to work smart and to reach out to people through any and all avenues available.

While we will support your workshop via the CI website and monthly newsletters, you will need to do your own marketing. First, allow enough time to market your event.  If you can, start a full year ahead of time. Assemble a contact/mailing list of all potential students. Send an invite per email to all relevant people in your network. If you have your own website, develop a workshop page. Doing monthly posture groups builds your network.  Success is in the follow-up.  One contact is not enough – keep getting your workshop out in front of your prospective students. You may want to create your own “newsletter” as a vehicle to stay in touch with your network.

Social Media is a powerful tool. If you haven’t started a Facebook, Blog or Twitter account (or one of many other options), this may be worth considering. Consider these free options:

  • Ask friends, family and others who might not be part of your target group, to share your event in their (social) network (this is where the share buttons come in handy).
  • Tell every new person you meet during the promotional period about your event and ask him or her to share your event online.
  • Ask each person that responds to your invitation (whether they will come or not) to share the event in their network. Thank them for doing this.

Twitter – Tweet your course on twitter.com: Use a Twitter account to share details of your upcoming course. Tweet about how many spots are available. Provide a link to your course online. Your followers may even re-tweet to their friends. Engage other twitter users to develop a following. Start by following @opusartsupplies of course!

Facebook – Post it to facebook.com: Share a link to your class, create a facebook event page, or post it to your status or wall, with the workshop name, date and time. Invite people to email you for details.

Blog  – Start a free blog at www.blogger.com or www.wordpress.com: If you’re not blogging already, it may be time to start. There are many free blogging services that require virtually no technical skill to start – if you have an email address and can use a basic website, you’ll be fine. Blogs require some maintenance, but as long as you are posting content consistently, you may develop regular readers. Write about a topic that your audience would be interested in, and you may find they are sharing your blog with their networks