Do you want to play more organ recitals in various countries but not getting any invitations? Are you struggling to find a decent organist position or perhaps you are not getting people to play wonderful organ music you have composed? Or maybe you want to teach organ in your studio but can't find students to sign up for your lessons?
If any of the above is true, you need to create a special strategy to establish your credibility and authority in the organ world and one of the best tools I know today is blogging. Blogging changed my life. It allowed me to travel the world playing wonderful instruments, make new friends and develop professional relationships with hundreds of organists worldwide. I'm no longer dependent on external gatekeepers, like boss or pastor. Because blogging is so empowering, you need to use the most efficient strategy so that you don't get glued to the computer all day long. In fact, I use 80/20 rule where I only do the 20 percent of activities that provide 80 percent of results. This way I ensure that my physical, emotional, mental and spiritual health is in balance. Here's my 9 step strategy I use to get more opportunities for organ recitals that I hope will work for you also. 1. Setting up a blog. This means I selected a domain name for my URL address, chose a platform and basically wrote an ABOUT and CONTACT ME page. Also connected my Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn profiles and any other social media platforms I use to my blog. 2. Setting up newsletter opt-in form. Now comes the time to add a special form from Mailchimp where people could enter their name and email address to receive a free gift from me. This could be a valuable video, audio or pdf or mini email course. I then put this opt-in form on various places of my blog. 3. Writing my blog posts. With this step I'm ready to write my blog posts. I can use text, photo, audio, video or any combination of them. I set up my Mailchimp RSS to Email campaigns so that every post I publish would be sent to my email subscribers automatically without me even lifting a finger. 4. Getting traffic to my blog. Of course when I publish a blog post, no one knows it exists. I have to go out into some strategic places online where my future readers congregate and get my content in front of them with the call to action so that after consuming my content they would choose to become my email subscribers. 5. Building relationships with my email subscribers. Once I have people who subscribe to my blog I need to build trust with them because they will become some of my closest fans, my future evangelists. I do this by providing helpful and inspiring content to them. 6. Finding target venues. If I'm thinking about playing more organ recitals in the future, my next step is to find more interesting places with organs I would like to perform on. I make a list of 30, 50 or 100 organs that I want to play. 7. Building relationships with people in charge. Once I have identified the target venues, I connect with organists who are leading musical life in these places. I have to do this on a deeper and human level so that they would not see me as a stranger but really as a friend who can help them. 8. Building trust with people in charge. To build trust I usually invite organists to my podcast for conversation. This is good for them because everyone needs publicity and more people who appreciate their work. Since I have my little audio show "Secrets of Organ Playing Podcast", I can provide more reach for them. Win-win situation for everyone. 9. Asking for recitals/getting invited. At this stage my guest organists no longer view me as a stranger. I'm a person who can help them and actually I myself have earned the privilege to ask for something from them. Like an opportunity to play a recital in their festival or concert series. Sometimes I don't even have to ask them, they offer a recital opportunity for me. That's how powerful blogging is for me. These 9 steps ensure that I build my expertise, platform, authority and credibility online which in turn convert into multiple opportunities for me like playing recitals, finding organists who play my music, coaching clients, and customers who buy my trainings and services. What about you? Are you ready to empower yourself?
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