Get found
You do not need to post every day. You need the four things a stranger checks before deciding to turn up.
Almost every guide about social media for studios is about growth: posting cadence, hooks, trends, the algorithm. That advice assumes you have hours a week and want an audience. You have four nights of teaching and you want people in the room on Tuesday.
So this guide is about a different job. When somebody hears about you, they will look you up on Instagram before they look at your website, and they will decide in about fifteen seconds. What they are checking is whether you are real, whether you are still running, what it looks like, and how to actually come.
Getting those four things right is a one-hour job that pays every time somebody looks you up. Everything after that is optional.
Take your name on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok and YouTube even if you have no intention of using two of them. It costs nothing, it stops somebody else taking it, and it means when you do want one it is not already gone.
Use the same handle on all of them if you possibly can, and make it your business name with nothing appended. A handle with an underscore and a number in it looks like a personal account, and people mistrust what they cannot type from memory.
If your first choice is taken, choose one alternative and use that exact alternative everywhere. One consistent second choice beats four different compromises.
The bio has to answer what, where and how in one line each. What you teach, the city or neighbourhood, and what to do next. "Salsa and bachata classes in East Atlanta. Beginners welcome. Tuesdays and Thursdays." A stranger now knows whether you are relevant to them.
The profile picture should be legible at the size of a fingernail, because that is the size it will usually be seen at. A wordmark or a simple logo works. A photo of a full room does not, at that size.
The link goes to your schedule, not to your homepage. The person clicking has already decided they are curious. Do not make them navigate.
The most damaging thing on a studio profile is not a bad post, it is a last post from fourteen months ago. A stranger reads that as closed, and no amount of good older content argues them out of it.
This is the real reason to post: not reach, proof of life. One thing a week, from your phone, out of a class you were already teaching, is enough to clear that bar. Thirty seconds of the room moving is worth more than a designed graphic.
Get the students in the frame, with their agreement, because people looking to start want to see people like them, not choreography they could not do. The most useful video you can post is an ordinary beginner class going well.
Facebook matters less than it did for reaching people and more than you would think for being found. It is a real page with your name, hours, location and website on it, which is one more consistent source agreeing with everything else about you.
Make it a Page, not a personal profile and not only a group. Fill in the same name, phone number and website you use everywhere. Add the link to your schedule.
It is also where events actually still work. A monthly social or a beginner course launch as a Facebook event will reach the people who already know you, and it costs nothing.
Pick one platform to actually use and let the others be correct but quiet. For most dance studios that is Instagram, because it is visual, local and where the people looking for classes already are.
Being on four platforms badly is worse than being on one properly and having three accurate profiles that link home. A quiet profile that is right does its job. A half-abandoned one that is wrong actively costs you.
Write down which one you are choosing and how often, so the decision is a plan rather than a slow drift into silence you feel guilty about.
The click was intent. Spend it on a schedule they can act on, not a hero image they have to scroll past.
It cannot carry business details, it cannot be handed over, and it will not appear where a Page appears.
Every inconsistency is a small reason for both people and search engines to be less sure you are the same business.
People are trying to work out what the room feels like. A phone video of a real class answers that. A canva tile does not.
The profiles are yours to set up. What we make sure of is that the link in every bio lands somewhere that converts: your own schedule page showing this week, with a way to pay for a class on a phone in under a minute, so the person who clicked out of curiosity can become a booking without emailing you first.
I run a dance business too, and I have done every step on this page for my own. If you are setting up and something here is not landing, write to me and say where you are at. I will tell you what I would do, whether or not you ever become a customer.
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