Social Media Marketing Like A Pro

Social media can be a great way to reach out to potential online students. There are currently 313 million people on Twitter, LinkedIn has 450 million members and there's a whopping 1.7 billion monthly active users on Facebook! If you want to do social media marketing like a pro and save yourself a bunch of time, keep reading. 

Whether you're just getting started with your online tutoring business or have been tutoring online for a while, if done right, using social is a powerful marketing strategy. Promoting your business on social media can help you fill up your tutoring schedule but your time is precious and you don't want to waste it spending hours posting on a load of different platforms.

If you don't have any social media accounts yet, then you might be wondering “where do I start”? Should I use Facebook, Instagram, Twitter or something else? There are so many different options that it can be daunting. It's tempting to open 10 different social media profiles and try to advertise on all of them. Don't do this! Consider what tutoring you offer and match the social media channel accordingly.

Facebook is the biggest so there are plenty of potential students of all ages interested in a range of subjects. But if you tutor a more visual subject, like graphic design for example, you may want to opt for Instagram or Pinterest that are more geared towards sharing visuals. LinkedIn is popular with professionals so if you offer business English tutoring or a specialist subject like exam preparation for architects, this could be a good place to promote. I recommend starting with one or two accounts, testing them out to see if they complement your tutoring business and then adding more if needed. 

The more accounts you have, the more time it takes to post comments, articles and videos. Jumping from one account to another is tedious, repetitive and results in lots of wasted time. There's a solution.

Buffer

Buffer brings all your social media accounts under one roof so it saves you time and lets you focus on building your business and tutoring your students. There's a free version of this cool application, which you can sign up to here.

Social media marketing like a pro:

When it comes to promoting your online tutoring business, consistency is key, so making regular posts increases your chances of being found by your students. Luckily, buffer has a very handy scheduling feature to help you automatically send out regular posts throughout the week for when you're too busy doing something else. Want your tutoring business to look like it has its own online marketing team? Watch the video below to learn how to sign up to Buffer, link all your accounts, create posts and schedule them during the week:

Social media tips

• Use the scheduling feature on Buffer to schedule several posts. Allocate one or two hours a week to adding a selection of posts to your Buffer queue that will automatically be sent out from Monday to Sunday. That way, if life gets busy or you have an increase in tutoring sessions that week, you'll still maintain your social media marketing.

• Whether it's a YouTube video, a carefully crafted Facebook post or a blog article for your website, creating valuable content takes time. So, you want to make the most of this time investment when promoting your tutoring services. Don't just send out one tweet with a link to your website and wait for the crowds of paying students to inundate your inbox! Chances are, that's not gunna happen. Share your content in several different places. Not everyone checks their Facebook all day every day. Some people prefer searching for tutors on LinkedIn or Google Plus rather than Twitter. Doing this will expand your reach, build up a following, increase your ranking on search engines like Google and ultimately generate more sales.

• If you don't have any videos or blog posts yet, you can share some related content from other sources that your target market might find useful and intersperse this with promotional posts about the benefits of your online tutoring.

Marketing on social media is powerful and can make a big difference to the success of your online tutoring business. But, it also takes you away from your tutoring so you need to be smart with your time. Whichever social media platforms you choose to use as a way to market your online tutoring business, using Buffer is a sure fire way to save time, increase your social marketing reach and get more online students.