Next time you are up Albury Wodonga way be sure to check out the 'Rock N Roll Dance Albury Wodonga' Facebook page. see link below:
https://www.facebook.com/rocknrolldancealbury/

This page is designed to bring rock n roll out of the dark ages and introduce it to social media in the area. the trouble I personally have found with Rock N Roll as a 27yr old is that information is not freely available. Particularly to those who dont know it exists!... It's not as bad for those who know where to go but still not as efficient as it could/should be.

It became evident to me that we (as a community) have a big issue when I went to melbourne and could not find any rock n roll venues to dance at in the city with any easy. I restored to calling pubs and bands that i know are good. i decided to give up as everything is in the suburbs. I realised that we have a similar issue here in Albury/Wodonga. I know to go to the commercial club for the dance floor and bands but who outside of the rock n roll community would know that? not many. information about rock n roll classes and venues is not readily available in a familiar format. in a nutshell, that means facebook. the information the way people want it.easy to share, update and link to. I decided to take on the initiative myself in my spare time to try to resolve the problem and these are some of my lessons for those of you out there wanting to attract more members or encourage youth to join your club.

We are building a community up here and in particular a youth community in Albury Wodonga. we now proudly have around 16 young couples regularly showing up to classes and road tripping to festivals in the area. 12 months ago there was one young couple. The facebook page has played a big part. Any time we go dancing in non-traditional public scene (i.e. pubs and clubs where there isn't really a dance floor or rock n roll music) we direct everyone to the facebook page where we put up the weekly classes instructed by the amazing Johnny Phung and the twin city rock n roll club. I believe this is the trick. Venturing out into venues that don't typically support partnered dancing exposes everyone in the venue to partnered dancing who otherwise may have only ever seen it on TV. we have had a 100% success rate in generating interest in rock n roll dancing every time we venture out into these new areas. weekend after weekend, month after month.

There is always issues with generating new male leads. I'm working on that too. it all starts with facebook. if the weekly event is created then all the members of that class now have a simple medium to invite interested parties to the classes. all the information is there and they even get reminders automatically. even if the person only likes the rock n roll page, they will still see the weekly classes pop up we no extra effort on our behalf. when they are ready they will show up to a class. on top of this, its important to have your members like the page and have them say they are attending the classes. the more numbers you have attending at the classes, the better your class appears to an outsider and therefore the more legit your school seems.
girls are easy to get to dance. we now have too many girls and are teaching them to dance with each other. this is so when we go out on a weekend the guys can see all the girls wanting to dance but there being no guys so they are forced to dance with each other. with a vigilant eye you can spot the interested potential leads and go talk to them. your only job is to break it down, make it seem really simple, explain the shortage and the need for them. Your job is to protect their self of esteem and their pride. after all, dancing is an expressive thing and most men are terrified of looking silly in front of girls and guys by making mistakes... particularly with dancing. push them to the facebook page... your job is pretty much done. the seed is planted and the information is freely available to them and regularly popping up indirectly in their news feed.

Another benefit of the facebook event is that anyone who says they are going will have it pop up in their news feed indirectly so all their friends can see it. if you get 10 members going with 500 friends each.... thats a lot of potential new dancers. plant the seed... wait and see if it takes.

This kind of turned into an essay... sorry about that. I love Rock n Roll dancing and these are some of the trick i've learnt in my community building efforts.

If anyone has any questions or would like to know more please feel free to message me through the Rock N Roll Dance Albury Wodonga Facebook page... I am the admin for the page.