Student, where art thou?
The idea of becoming a private teacher is attractive and profitable, but scary and challenging at the same time. One should consider this as a “business” which requires discipline, motivation, but first of all, thorough knowledge. Before starting a teaching career as an individual teacher (but also if you have already started), consider following steps.
- Create a well-thought-out course
- Have a professional-looking online profile
- Share your profile and course everywhere
- Speak up. Be active on social platforms
- Keep your students’ attention
1. Create a solid course
Be a profi in what you are teaching. First of all, identify what you are going to teach. Define the course objective and set constraints. If you want to prepare students for tests (or teach any general language course), focus on this specific niche. Don’t be too broad. Pick up your specialisation, create learning materials based on it, master it.
2. Have a professional-looking school profile
Build trust and manage course orders more easily. This may sound scary at first, but there are bunch of platforms where you can create a free school profile and become a one-teacher-school. Instead of posting a course in generic classifieds (announcement boards), use specialised websites for this. Their main advantage is that they provide you all necessary functionality and outlook. In special fields, you can describe what the course is about, specify its outcomes and skills learners will gain after completing it. Setting schedules will help potential students register for the course.
3. Share your profile
Seek out all platforms where your potential students can find your course offerings. After you create a school profile and put the courses you teach there, let all platforms find them. How? Post your school and course links everywhere. Here are the most prominent channels where you can post these links and find students.
- register a company at yell.am and post your school profile
- enter your school name on Google Maps
- create a school page on Facebook and post all your course profile links
- create a business account with your school name on Instagram and post course links
- create a page with your school name on Linkedin and share your course links
Write me if you’d like to do this together.
4. Be active on social media
Speak up. Your potential students should know about you. You should gain their trust before they decide to book a course from you. A well – proved way of getting recognition and growing the number of your students is through being active in “student space”. There are lots of communities and groups where students state their questions. Go there and answer these questions. Students (even if not yours) need guidance and advice. Be their mentor. Some of these questions can be a good source for an entire article.
5. Write articles
Build reputation among colleagues and potential students. Write about your school, about your journey of becoming a teacher, about hassles you encounter on your professional way. Share your experience and the experience of your school (even if it is a one-teacher-school).
6. Increase your online visibility
Appear on the first ranks of Google, Yandex, Bing and other search engines in order students find you easily. By creating course profiles, communicating in forums, writing articles you generate content. What does this mean and how can this help you find students? We all live in a digital world. Content (most importantly, quality content) is the key to any growth and student acquisition. Using correct strategies when writing something (generating content), i.e., correct keywords, correct text structure, etc. you increase your chances to be found in search results (in Google, Yandex, Bing, etc.). The more your school and courses appear in search results, the higher are the chances for you to be visible to your potential students.
Key takeaways
- Develop quality course content
- Create a presentable course profile
- Share your course profile in all trustworthy channels
- Be active in communities
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