Understand Your Audience!

After reviewing the expense of running regular, open community events, we determined that it is not sustainable without charging money. We may decide to give this approach a try later, but in the meantime, we have decided to have one-off events infrequently (probably every couple of months).

Recently, we have had a few opportunities to do some community work outside the normal weekly dance lessons we hold at our workplace. The first was to teach dance at the local YMCA as guest instructors. We really enjoyed this and were especially excited about the environment the YMCA creates for its members and the community. There are a lot of nice fitness programs and a good amount of diversity among the participants (age, ethnicity, etc.). We applaud the great work the YMCA is doing. We had a blast teaching and from the feedback our enthusiastic crowd gave, they had as much fun as we did.

The other opportunity was to teach at a private party. The hosts are a delightful couple who wanted to throw a salsa party and had been thinking for a while about giving dance a try. We had a great time teaching there as well. Interestingly, only about half of the party-goers participated. We believe this was primarily due to the difference in commitment between attending a dance lesson and a party. Naturally, nearly everyone who goes to a dance lesson participates since they are there specifically for the lesson. At a party, people are there for the party itself and the opportunity to participate in a dance lesson is just a side thought. We did get the sense that those who did not participate wanted to, but were too shy despite gentle encouragement. In reality, the statement, "people are there for the party", is a generalization that lacks depth. We'd argue that the most prominent reason people go to parties is to socialize. Given that most attendees have made a commitment to socializing by deciding to attend and that they have followed through on this commitment by showing up, we can probably increase participation by giving extra attention to the social side of dancing. It would be simple enough to start with social games that everyone would be comfortable participating in and easing into dance, thereby making the experience less unnerving for the shy and self-conscientious. In the end, it comes back to really understanding the audience/customer/client/etc. and figuring out how best to reach them.