Social Media Marketing forTutors

There are a countless number of social media websites out there. Wikipedia lists hundreds of them, but there are undoubtedly many more. But are you really expected to be active on each one of them?

Of course not.

Choose a few.

Whichever social media sites you feel most comfortable using, start with those ones. As far as marketing as a private tutor goes, the three most effective websites are Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Here’s why:

Facebook for Tutors

When it comes to social media, Facebook is still top dog. Facebook has over 2 billion active users and generates more than one billion search queries a day. So what does this mean? Well, it means that people are using Facebook like Google. They’re using search terms like ‘private tutor London’ to find people like you who can help them.

As with all social media platforms, it’s always a good idea to keep business and pleasure separate, so set up a business page for your services and encourage your friends to like and share your page on theirs. That’s the great thing about Facebook; it can provide you with localised advertising in a matter of no time if you’re already active on the platform.

Once you have a business page, be sure to promote yourself regularly, whether advertising that you have capacity to take on new tutors or posting content from your website or guest posts.

Note: Following Google’s latest Penguin algorithm update, the search engine now places increasing emphasis on social media shares when it comes to determining website rankings.

Twitter for Tutors

The holy grail of social media marketing, Twitter is fantastic for promoting your tutoring services. With its strong business focus, a lot of people on Twitter are there for the very same reasons as you – they want to connect with people and find new clients. This makes it easier to reach your intended audience.

Remember to follow people who you think will be influential in putting you in contact with parents and students - parenting websites, local schools, communities, local churches. One of the advantages that private tutoring has in terms of marketing over other niche industries is that everyone knows someone who has a child of school age, and every parent wants their child to do well at school.

Think of Twitter as an extension of your customer service and show people that you’re interested in their thoughts and opinions. One of the best ways to find conversations to join on Twitter is by searching using hashtags.

At the moment, some of the most popular hashtags in the tutoring industry are: #tutoring

#privatetutoring

LinkedIn for Tutors

As a social media site, LinkedIn tends to be geared towards ‘business-to-business’ marketing. However, it does present opportunities for tutors to make connections with other tutors, agencies, education centres, schools and colleges with scope to generate referrals.

Connect with tutors and agencies through your profile and initiate conversations through LinkedIn’s private messaging system. Introduce yourself and say hi and see where the conversations lead.

What to Post on Social Media and When

Knowing what to post and when is often the biggest hurdle that tutors face when using social media. So, in order to help you make the most of your time spent creating content and blog posts for your website, I’d like to share my idea of the perfect content posting schedule:

Personally, I suggest following this posting schedule with every new blog post you write on your website:

Okay, I know that it looks like a lot of effort, but people’s social media feeds move quickly. Even a second away from the screen can result in someone missing your post.

So the trick is to post regularly.

However, it’s important to bear in mind, that you can’t simply use the same post several times over; you need to vary the text used to deliver your message.

Personally, I’ve found the following structural pattern to be the most effective at encouraging likes and shares across all channels:

• 1 headline-based post

• 1 question-based post

• 1 quote-based post

Other than publishing your own content, you should also bear in mind the three C’s of social media as part of your strategy:

1. Create. Establish yourself as a thought leader by sharing great content and value created by you.

2. Curate. Gather great content from around the web within the education niche and be recognised as someone who is an established service provider.

3. Chat. Engage in conversations based on your shares and develop relationships which can then be taken outside of the social sphere.

By following this structure as closely as you can, it won’t be long before your website starts to get noticed by search engines and potential customers.

Top Tip – Social Media Automation

Don’t have enough time to make all these social media posts? Don’t fret, neither do the professionals. More often than not, they use social media automation tools like HootSuite to schedule their posts in advance. Just remember that when it comes to social media engagement, there’s no substitute for having actual conversations with people.

Video Marketing for Private Tutors

Another increasingly popular way to market your tutoring services online is through video marketing.

Short videos usually perform very well on social media and if you target the correct key phrases, they can appear high in Google searches too.

Perhaps the biggest benefit of video in the tutoring industry is that it gains students' trust. Short promotional or informational videos provide a snapshot of your personality and all you really need to get started is a smartphone and video editing app.

Getting Started

Find a well-lit room with a plain background you can film against and prop your phone in landscape mode at the correct height. You can buy smartphone tripods to make things easier but with a little trial and error you'll soon find a good height and angle.

Alternatively, you could invest in a professional video recorder that will improve the overall quality of your videos but the initial investment isn't essential. If you plan to post short videos regularly, a smartphone is ideal - it's portable, lightweight and modern devices produce great visual and audio quality.

Whenitcomestopromotingyourvideos,thefirstplacetoembedthemisonyour own website. Regardless of where potential students find your details, if you have a website, rest assured it will be the first place they go to gather more information.

One of the best things about video is that it can be repurposed for a variety of different platforms.

YouTube remains the most popular video streaming site with over 5 billion daily video views. Uploading your videos to YouTube with the appropriate metadata is also a good way of gaining traction in Google search results.

On social media, people watch more than 100 million hours of video on Facebook and 82% of Twitter users engage with videos.

A good strategy for video marketing is to cast your net far and wide initially and then focus in on one or two platforms once you know how they're performing.

How to Get Press Coverage for your Tutoring Business

One of the best ways to generate publicity for your tutoring services is to think bigger.

Media coverage is a great way to spread the word about your business and it’s not as difficult as you think. Having worked as a freelance journalist for both national and local newspapers in Scotland, I know a thing or two about how to get your name printed in black and white.

For Local Media – Give Them a Good Story with Local Interest

Getting your business mentioned in the local press is all about having an interesting story to tell. Here a few ideas for stories that you could potentially pitch to your local newspaper:

1. A success story about one of your students. Perhaps you helped a student go from a C grade to an A grade, which helped them secure a place at university?

2. Business is booming. Maybe you’ve seen a significant % increase in demand for your tutoring services over the last 12 months. What could be the potential reasons for this surge?

3. Expanding your services. Perhaps you’ve just created jobs in the local area by becoming a limited company and hiring your first part time employees?Or maybe you’re now offering tuition in a new subject?

4. Local industry trends. Have you noticed more requests for tutoring younger/ older students? Is there a common reason that students are seeking your help? Is there a local issue that should be addressed here?

5. A New partnership. Maybe you’ve just formed a new partnership with another company? What impact will this have on the local community? How will your students benefit from this development?

For National Media – It’s Not Only What You Know

For private tutors, getting column inches in national newspapers is harder, but my no means unachievable. Some of the best known tutors in the UK have achieved their status by reaching out beyond their typical audience.

Of course, the first thing you’ll need is a story that has national interest, which isn’t always the easiest thing to create when you’re mostly operating in your local area. However, being an industry insider, perhaps you have an inclination of what would be an interesting story for a national newspaper to cover?

If you do, then why not pitch your story idea to a journalist, citing any potential sources they could use to develop the story and say that you’d be interested in being quoted in the article?

Journalists are always on the lookout for new story ideas and are always keen to expand their list of contacts.

In order for this strategy to work however, you’ll need to choose your pitch carefully. From my own research, the media outlets that cover the private tuition industry regularly are:

• The BBC (a difficult one to pitch to)

• The Guardian

• The Independent

• The Telegraph (requires a subscription to read)

• The Huffington Post

• The Times Educational Supplement (TES)

Beforeyouapproachanyofthesepublications,thefirstthingyoushoulddoissome research.Searchonthewebsitesofthesenewspapersandmakealistofjournalistswho regularlycovertheprivatetuitionindustry.Then,oneatatime,pitchyourstoryideato themdirectly.

Mostjournalistdetailsarereadilyavailableonnewspapers’websitesbutiftheyaren’t,a quickgooglesearchforthejournalist’snamewillbringuptheirpersonalwebsite, directoryprofilesorattheveryleast,theirTwitterpage.

It’simportantthatyoumentioninyouremailthatyourideaisasolepitchtothemandthat no-oneelseintendstopublishyourstory.Iftheyrunwithyouridea,great,butifnot, moveontothenextpersononyourlist.Asampleemailpitchtoajournalistmightgo somethinglikethis:

Subject: Article Pitch – Private Tutoring

Hi Jane,

My name is John Smith and I really enjoyed reading the article you had published in the Guardian/Telegraph/Independent (delete as appropriate) last week on…(mention article headline) and I think I may have a related story idea that readers would be interested in.

As a private tutor myself, I’ve noticed…(mention your idea in no more than two sentences) and I think people would be interested in hearing more about this trend/event/statistic.

Some useful sources could be…(be as specific as possible and include URL’s to content that will actually be useful).

If you think this story has potential, I’d be interested in being quoted in the article.

Regards,

Don’t get me wrong, pitching an idea to a journalist and being mentioned in the press isn’t a piece of cake, and it will probably take you a few attempts to build up proper relationships with journalists and find good enough story ideas, but the results can be very effective for your marketing.

Action – Create a Media List

1. Using Google’s news stream, start to compile a list of all the journalists who have written about the private tutoring industry over the last few months.

2. Identify websites that may be interested in publishing your news and gather the contact details of their news editors.

3. Write a tailored email using the template above to alert these people about your news story and encourage them to get in touch for more information.