Brazil

How a Music Teacher makes over $300,000 a year using YouTube

All it took was a guitar and a selection of online guitar lessons for the musician Heitor Castro to achieve fame and make a living out of it. In fact the videos posted by him on YouTube are so successful that one of them has been viewed nearly 3 million times. And Heitor is quickly to admit that social media played a major role in recruiting students for his music school, called Mais Que Música, which is a leading school based in Rio de Janeiro.

“When I started in 2006, I was a pioneer in using YouTube for music lessons here in Brazil. When I posted the first video , there was nothing like that at the time. I remember that videos couldn’t be larger than 2MB. Often you had to compress the file to the point that it looked like you were watching the video underwater, so blurry, “he says laughing. The now 45 year-old businessman and musician manages four subsidiaries of Mais Que Música and also provides his courses digitally – DVD or Streaming – which includes the same curriculum as in his schools.

He says he started using the web, based on the need of his students. “I didn’t want beginner students to forget some of the essentials of each class, like what is a ‘guitar chord’ etc. I started using YouTube to produce reminders such as ‘careful with this chord – don’t hold the chord like this’. The feedback was amazing. No one had seen anything like this in Brazil or in the world at the time and it clearly made me different. ” he explains.

These days, most of the older videos that Hector uploaded to YouTube have been deleted, but you can still find one from his beginnings in 2006.

In addition to YouTube, Heitor uses Facebook to promote his lessons and recruit new students. “I post a lot of small sound bites of my lessons and make sure to boost a post a day,” he says.

All this social promoting and online selling seems to be paying off. The online Store Mais Que Música, is generating sales of more than $300,000 a year and continues to grow. The investment into e-commerce generated DVD sales continues to grow at 30% per year. “If I had not invested in social media early on, surely I wouldn’t be as successful as I am today. I got lucky using YouTube and I’m convinced that this tool has changed my life,”concluded Heitor.

Heitor’s story is only one of a number of entrepreneurs all across Brazil that have started embracing the opportunities the digital world provides. We have been showcasing a number of stories from entrepreneurs across Brazil and just as Hector who became an entrepreneur, other entrepreneurs can benefit from social media as well. With Tyngu , we are introducing a new platform with more than 85 online lessons on Facebook , Twitter, YouTube focused on teaching new users the essentials on how to use these platforms professionally. Click here to check us out.

Tags:

Brazil, E-Commerce, entrepreneur, Facebook, music, Social Media, youtube

Small Businesses

How one shop owner uses his customer’s Facebook posts to drive sales

Having a customer walk in the store, with cell phone in hand, wanting to purchase an entire look based on a Facebook picture, is a common thing at Buya, a clothing store founded by Bruno Moraes, in Itapetininga, Sao Paulo.

This is because the fashion store owner, uses some of Brazil’s most popular social networks to publish pictures of his entire clothing line and in most cases the model wearing the clothes, is nobody else but the customer herself. One of Bruno’s strategies is to ask some customers to send photos of them wearing clothes and accessories that they bought in the store. “I quickly realized that customers were taking selfies and doing photo shoots on their own of their newest outfits and were posting them on our Facebook page. This was resonating with our followers and resulted in new customers walking into our store, asking for the entire outfit they saw on our Facebook Page. Knowing this, I even started inviting individual customers to be our models for professional photo shoots.” Facebook is not the only place Bruno publishes customer pictures. On Instagram, where Buya has nearly 2,800 followers, he focuses on posting some of the store’s most popular images.

At Tyngu, we constantly stress in all our courses, the importance of using relevant and engaging visuals. Bruno learned the importance of images when he started using Orkut, Brazil’s first social network. “I learned about photography and the importance of images early on because one of the strengths of social media is to attract customers with the help of images.” he goes on to explain.

However, not everything that looks great and is popular across social networks actually ends up looking good on a customer. “I’m always honest. I know customers love what they see online, but if the client try it on and doesn’t like the way it looks on them, then I will always suggest another piece that it is better suited for the look and style that the person is going for. ”

“Social media represents on average 30% of the store’s revenue but the immense visibility itself is reason enough to be active across digital channels. Today, Social Media allows us to be seen throughout Brazil. Without Social Media, we would be forced to invest in local advertising, with results limited to our town and region at best.” he says. “We must leverage the Internet because that is where people spend most their time. We live in a connected world where people are connected all the time.”

Tags:

Brazil, E-Commerce, entrepreneur, Facebook, Fashion, Online Marketing, Pictures, Stories

Brazil

How a successful entrepreneur is using Whatsapp for her business

Gabriela Cavalcanti , 29, discovered a way to make money using social media. As the owner of women’s accessories shop, G.Cavalcanti, in Poá , São Paulo, Gabriela makes on average 220 sales deals per month by using Whatsapp.

Being a true entrepreneur, Gabriela Cavalcanti tested several ways of communicating with her clients and discovered that social media was more effective connecting with her customers as opposed to e-mails. “Not to mention that everyone finds me more easily on Whatsapp,” Gabriela adds and further explains what kind of marketing tactics she has up her sleeve by saying, “I definitely dedicate a considerable amount of time to creating and managing posts on the store’s Facebook and Instagram accounts. But when it comes to closing the deal and communicating prices, I stick to using Whatsapp. I learned that, by using Whatsapp, I can interact more directly with the client and use the opportunity to further explain my brand by showing other product options and giving tips on product usage, for example.”

Thanks to the Internet and the power of Social Media, Gabriela’s brand is now available across several Brazilian states, and she is able to reach loyal customers far beyond the state of São Paulo. “I focus on publishing fashion related tips and content by making sure that the images are eye catching and beautiful. The type of image you post combined with the right, enticing copy can make the difference of selling a particular piece or not,” she explains and goes further to state that it is important that you read up and learn about effective posting techniques from other successful marketers and entrepreneurs as the industry is constantly evolving.

Gabriela’s story is typical for today’s successful entrepreneur looking to grow their business in today’s environment, where people are increasingly connected via social media and mobile devices. On Whatsapp alone, there are more than 600 million active users, which is ample opportunity for professionals, entrepreneurs, and companies of any size.

However, let there be a word of caution. Impactful social media marketing and e-commerce isn’t something that can be easily implemented whenever it is required. Lilian Ambar, Digital Marketing specialist and Social Media manager, points out that to be effective across various social media channels, requires planning and preparation. “Communicating with consumers via social media requires know-how that needs practice and training. Furthermore – working with some of the social media channels without the appropriate skills will most likely lead to a trial and error kind of approach, which can result in some unnecessary costs until the right approach is found.” To prevent this, Lilian suggest signing up for the various online courses that a company such as Tyngu provides and as Gabriela mentioned earlier, in order to read up on trends and marketing blogs to see what is new and learn from best practices.

Overall, the opportunities for young entrepreneurs looking to drive sales using the various digital media channels are clear. Thanks to social media and mobile devices, entrepreneurs such as Gabriela are able to reach customers far beyond her immediate circle of friends and neighborhood by reaching parts of the market that only 10 years ago would have been unreachable to most vendors.