In the first post (Importance of a Web Presence: How Has Word of Mouth Changed?) of this series, we looked at how word of mouth has evolved and is now more powerful than ever – but only IF you have an online presence. In this article, guest blogger Kevin Kao takes a look at one of the first important steps to take and one of the easiest ways to establish an online presence without a website.
Importance of a Web Presence: How to (easily) Stake Your Claim Online
by Kevin Kao
Best Way to Establish a Web Presence—Easily!
If you did the searches at the end of the last post, you’d notice a black row of carousel-style pictures placed prominently across the top of search results for some of your search terms.
These are Google Places listings, location based search results, also placed on a map in the results page.
Claiming or creating a Google Places listing is one of the best and easiest ways for a piano teacher to establish a web presence; a piece of online real estate for you to make a good first impression to locals—or people who are new in town/planning to relocate to your area and needs a new piano teacher.
Why Google Places?
Well…It’s GOOGLE.
There are other places people do searches online (e.g., Bing, Yahoo), but Google’s search queries outnumber all the other engines combined—by a Rachmaninoff hand’s margin. (Har har)
You also don’t need any knowledge in creating or designing a website in order to get a Google Places listing; the geniuses at Google already designed it for you!
Biggest Bang for your Buck
Take another look at the picture above. There are 3 things I’ve noticed:
- You can’t miss it! It’s set to a darker background; it takes up a bunch of room at the top of the page right underneath the search query.
- What’s BELOW it? Ads! People who actually PAID Google to be shown—below your FREE listing.
- Pictures! Whenever I open a book at the bookstore, the first thing I do is find those glossy picture pages in the middle. (Then I put the book back on the shelf and look for more books with pictures). Pictures grab our attention; Google knows that.
Lastly, with local listings, you only compete with other local businesses in your niche for rankings. That’s huge considering how much that increases your chance of ranking higher and being seen.
I have a Listing Already?!
For some of you, Google might have already pulled your information and made a basic listing for you.
Since this is most likely the first contact any potential student and parent have with you (getting your own website found in searches is a lot harder), it’s important that your listing is an accurate representation of your studio.
Claim your studio listing so that you can properly manage your brand and image on Google. Make sure all your information is correct and up to date.
Time to Create your Listing!
Search for “google places” in Google, click on the first result. You’ll need a Gmail account to get started. The process is relatively simple, so start now because Google will send you a postcard with a pin on it that you’ll use to verify the listing.
Coming Up!
In the next post in the series, we’ll get into the nitty-gritty in how to best optimize your Places listing so that it’ll rank higher in search results. Also, I’ll share some ways and exact scripts (special for all you spoiled Wendy readers! Me included) you can use to get testimonials from current students and families.
(Update: When I first started researching for this article series, only about half the piano lesson searches returned results with local listings—now all of them show local results across the top.)
(Update 2: Local listing results used to only come up with specific cities entered in the search but now they’re there even without searching specific locations; and the results are specific to whatever city I’m in while searching.)
READ ALSO:
- Importance of a Web Presence: How Word of Mouth Has Changed for the Piano Teacher
- Marketing Piano Lessons 101
- Marketing Piano Lessons 102: Moving to a New Community
- Dollars and Sense Posts: All things about money for the piano teacher
Kevin Kao just celebrated his piano studio’s one-year anniversary after moving back from San Diego where he taught class piano at San Diego State University under the guidance of Dr. Mitzi Kolar. He’s currently teaching piano lessons in Irvine, California to an awesome group of kids (mostly boys) and a few adult students. He also writes a blog for piano students and their parents designed to educate parents about piano lessons and answer commonly asked questions through his posts and interviews.
Love this series idea. I moved from Minnesota to Colorado, and built up my piano 95%+ through the internet. It works!! I live in a very hipster neighborhood so the parents are all my age, and the internet is definitely where they go to look for a piano teacher. One of my best friends teaches piano back home in Minnesota, and she has absolutely nothing on the internet and her studio was built from personal connections and word of mouth in small towns! Totally different! After a year, I’m finally starting to get some referrals too, but they usually look me up on the internet before they email me!
That’s awesome! It’s the same thing with me right now too, all my students since I started my studio last year have been from online and I’m just now starting to get referrals too–now that my studio is almost full!
Btw, you’re a BEAST in Crossfit!!
This is a great post. I teach from home and I’ve tried to get my information on Google, however they require that you input an address and I am extremely weary of doing this. I do not feel comfortable bearing my personal address for the world to see. Is there a way to get on Google without inputting your address? I would love to do this! For now, word of mouth, my website, and The Piano Teachers Directory it is!
-Jennifer
That’s a great question, Jennifer. Since Google is trying to place businesses specifically on their maps, then I’m fairly certain there’s no possibility of using this without an address.