Posts Tagged Business of Tango
Tango Marketing and Twitter
Tango teachers and organizers in different parts of the world and with different audiences have success with a variety of different marketing tools and strategies. In the social media world some dancers have found Facebook to be very effective and more are also starting to use Twitter.
Great Dance has a Twitter “how to” for dancers. Check out the comments for some examples of individuals who have found Twitter useful to market themselves or their organization. Dance.com has a piece about dance teachers and organizers who are using Twitter.
Kristie Wyler, artistic director of Metro Dance in Plymouth, MI, is an avid tweeter. With nearly 800 followers and over 1,000 tweets, Wyler is one of the most popular teachers on the site. She uses Twitter not only to spread awareness about general dance related issues, but also to stay connected with her students and students’ parents. For Wyler, who goes under the handle MetroDance (http://www.twitter.com/MetroDance), Twitter is a great way to keep her studio connected to the broader dance community. It’s also a way for the dance community to feel connected to her.
Do you use Twitter? Have you found it useful for connecting with other tango dancers? If you are using Twitter, don’t forget to follow us, @KnowTango.
Tango in the recession
Tango as an industry has had a very interesting response to the recession. (Note: the content of this post is based on subjective and anecdotal evidence from talking to organizers, teachers, and DJs across the US and some from abroad. My sample size was low and there may not be any statistical significance, but this is what I observed.)
In the second half of 2008 and the first half of 2009 as the recession was first ramping up, it seemed as though people were steadily increasing dancing relative to the past. Classes seemed to be more full, milongas more packed than they’ve ever been, and everyone was commenting on how great the recession has been for tango. No one really understood why this was the case, but the most common explanation that I heard had to do with the fact that people seemed to need human connection more than ever and tango was a great (and relatively cheap) way of accomplishing just that. Another reason I heard, and the most compelling to me, is that milongas and practicas provide great “bang for your buck” in terms of hours of fun per dollars spent (relative, say, to a movie or going to a bar). Of course this does not explain the increase in classes and festival attendance which, arguably, have a much lower “fun return on investment”.
In the second half of 2009, it seemed like people were moving further away from classes and festivals and more towards just the milongas/practicas. Attendance levels at all tango events were still higher than in early 2008, but classes started to fall off and festivals definitely noticed a slightly lower attendance than they were expecting based on the previous year’s numbers. If this observation is correct, than the second reasoning offered above may have been growing in prevalence in people’s minds.
In the last month or two of 2009 and the beginning of 2010, people I spoke to said tango overall is shrinking. Organizers report fewer entrants, teachers report fewer students (especially beginners), and every tango professional reports that their income is taking a hit. I find it interesting that the tango industry cycle is offset by the global economy by about 1.5 years.
What have you noticed in your work or travels? If you are a dancer, do you find that there are more or less people at the events you attend regularly? If you are a professional, are you finding that there are more or less dancers or students at your event?
Learning about tango events
The way we learn about tango events is changing dramatically, and there is extreme variability around the world.
About ten years ago, the only way to learn about a tango event was to pick up a flier (at another tango event, or on some bulletin board), grab a local newsletter/magazine, or to subscribe to one of the many email list servers that sent out notifications in your area. These methods of acquiring tango information still exist, but the increasing ease of putting together a website and the growth of Facebook have really changed how people learn about new events.
In the United States, most people learn about their local tango events through their regional website or via Facebook, or some combination of the two. In fact, our fans on the KnowTango Facebook Page (selection bias aside) said that they use Facebook as a tool to double check regional listings or, more importantly, to see which event will have the most dancers. The scope and scale of the social element — knowing where your friends are going dancing — is totally unprecedented in the tango world and I think we are going to see that continue to expand in the future.
That said, use of Facebook for tango tends to be very regional. In the US, for example, it’s high, but in countries such as France, Germany, and Argentina, it’s significantly lower. So what do dancers in those countries use to publicize their events? And how do people know about new events? For now, at least, I think we are still tethered to the world of paper fliers and newsletters.
