Eugene Cantera of the Dallas School of Music

Marketing Music Education with Kathleen Heuer

Eugene Cantera of the Dallas School of Music:
Are You Making These Common Website Mistakes?

Eugene Cantera is a partner at the Dallas School of Music and a founding member of the dlp Music Program. He serves as the Director of Social Media for both organizations. He is a saxophonist but teaches many instruments and performs in the Dallas area in the rock and jazz genres. Eugene recently returned from an artist in residency at the Wilderness School in Adelaide, Australia where he taught and performed with several ensembles.

Eugene was kind enough to join me on this week’s podcast, where we talked about some tips & tricks to optimize your website and social media. A large percentage of the Dallas School of Music’s clientele is online, so they’ve developed some serious digital chops along the way.

The Top 10 Mistakes on Your Music Program’s Website

1. Poor Overall Aesthetic Design – Want good examples? Check out Google, Amazon, or Samsung: simple, clean, functional.

2. Marginal Functionality and Navigation – you must make it easy to get around your site in just a few clicks

3. No Optimization – let’s face it, many of you have no idea what SEO means nor do you have the time or patience to learn. But adding relevant keywords and phrases to your site is only the beginning of the process that will help people find you.

4. Lack of or Poor Choice of Keywords – these improve the overall chances that your website will be indexed by search engines.

5. Lack of or Poor Descriptors – meta tags are yet another device that provide information to search engines. Though they aren’t a “magical solution” they can definitely help ensure your website appears on search engine results pages.

6.Lack of or Poor Choice of Images – most music sites use outdated images or worse, those cute spinning quarter notes. But the moms, dads and admins that you want to attract are more savvy than that.

7. Little or hard to find Contact Info – this is our pet peeve. Your contact info should be easy to obtain in just one or two clicks!

8. No Main Message – what’s your message? Are you fundraising? Are you passionate about music education? Is your site about a particular annual event or a specific band program?

9. No Social Media – if you are not using Twitter and Facebook for starters, you are missing a chance to connect with a large and growing number of like-minded people. If you are using social media, it should be proudly displayed on your site and you should actively solicit followers.

10. Static Content – The number of outdated sites we see is astounding. If the last update to your site was done in 2008—Houston, we have a problem. Your site should always reflect what’s currently happening in your organization and outdated info should be removed or archived.

Need help with any of this? We specialize in custom web design and hosting for music oriented sites. Check out our program here.

Warm Regards,

Eugene Cantera, BME
Director of Marketing and Social Media
The Dallas School of Music, Inc.
972-380-8050 Ext. 212

UFO sound effect found here.

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