Learn how to promote your Ask An Expert answers on social media.

In 2019, it’s estimated that there will be nearly 2.77 billion social media users around the globe, up from 2.46 billion in 2017.

How many of them are you currently reaching?

Let’s face it: it’s easier and more convenient to access information and communicate via social media than by using traditional media. Discovering new ideas, methods, and people has never been simpler.

For a tutor, social media represents an important opportunity to share knowledge and gain brand credibility while continually driving diverse new student traffic toward your profile. With the right combination of Ask An Expert, brand strategy, and social savvy, you can quickly develop a thriving tutoring brand.

Posting is promoting

One of the primary reasons that students book lessons with tutors who have lots of ratings, reviews, and hours is because they feel they can trust their brand. If you’ve established credibility, then potential students who discover you via social media can easily see the value of your expertise. Bop Design posits that 80% of consumers are “more likely to evaluate solutions from the brands they follow on a social network.”

Hence, as a tutor (a brand), curating a successful social media presence should be high on your list of priorities. This is especially true for new tutors, who don’t yet have the ratings and reviews to lend credence to their brand.

When it comes to using social media to drive students to your profile, consistency is key: put as simply as possible, posting regularly increases your statistical chances of being discovered by new students. However, don’t just post the same stuff each time you log on! In order to grow and succeed, your social brand needs to balance self-promotion with other meaningful forms of engagement.

Luckily there’s a framework that breaks it all down to an easy-to-remember ratio (even if you’re not a math tutor).

The 4-1-1 Rule

The 4-1-1 rule was popularized by Tippingpoint Labs and Joe Pulizzi, founder of the Content Marketing Institute, in 2015. In essence, the 4-1-1 rule helps ensure you’re varying your social content, keeping your posts new and interesting, and most importantly, engaging with other social media users. For a tutor, this rule suggests that out of every six social media posts:

Four posts should be relevant to your brand, and sourced from others.

It’s not called “social” for nothing, and if you’re a tutor, you’re in the people business. Engagement, or using the features of social media to interact with your audience, is what makes social media so useful to your brand. Think of engagement through commenting, liking, sharing, and retweeting as networking. Seek out organizations, brands, and people that share your tutoring philosophy and create or share great stuff, and find ways to work their content into your overall posting strategy. Just be sure you credit the content’s original creator, and if possible, tag them in your post to widen your reach.

One post should be a “hard sell” with a call-to-action.

Even on social media, you sometimes need to “ask for the business.” You can do that in many ways, like posting a direct link to your Wyzant profile, inviting someone in your social network to try a free trial lesson, or advertising special discounts available only to those who follow you. Work to make these kinds of posts interesting or fun, with an eye on both shareability and conversion. Make sure you use hashtags to get your content on as many screens as possible.

One post should be a promotion of your expertise, created by you.

The content you create to promote your tutoring brand on social media should always point to the underlying resource potential students are seeking out: your expertise. These posts should be engaging, interesting, and easily shareable. Some of the most compelling content you can create to showcase your mastery of subject matter to your social audience is your Ask An Expert video answers.

Video answers: your most-versatile social resource

Ever since social platforms rose to the #1 place for promotional content and advertising, it’s become challenging for small brands to reach and connect with their audience. That’s part of the reason why the use of video has evolved into a huge trend in online marketing (and why we designed Ask An Expert video answers). Videos are mobile-friendly, easy to access and share, and generally result in positive growth for brands that utilize them over other posting options on social media.

More video is consumed on YouTube than any other social network. Over 1 billion hours of video are watched daily on YouTube, in 88 countries, in 76 languages. YouTube is also the world’s second-largest search engine after its parent company Google.

Each one of your Ask An Expert video answers is hosted at Wyzant’s YouTube channel, where students who are already using the platform to search for help for everything from the ABC’s to quantum theory can find you.

Just grab the URL to your video answer at the top of your browser to share on social, or right-click the video and select “Copy Video URL” for a link to your video answer on YouTube.

One answer, three posts

Once you’ve recorded one video answer, you’ve simultaneously created three pieces of unique social media content that fit squarely into your 4-1-1 strategy. How’s that for efficiency? Here’s how you can stretch your video answers to their fullest by presenting them in different ways.

Content Idea 1: Post the video

Often, it’s the simplest tactics that work most, well, simply. 75% of brands use visuals on social media, so in order to stand out, your tutoring brand should too. The great news is, it’s easy. Just paste your video answer link into your social post (where it can be played by anyone who views it) and include text that tells viewers who you are, what they’re watching, and how they can see more. Don’t forget to put your content in front of as many people as possible by including a popular and relevant hashtag.

Content Idea 2: Use a teaser graphic

Same video answer, different presentation. Studies show that people are better able to recall 65% of the visual content that they see three days later, compared to just 10% of purely written content. Try teasing your Ask An Expert content with an image instead of delivering the video straight to your followers’ feeds.

By using the screengrab feature on your computer or device, just save an image of the question as it appears in the video (usually around :05). When you post, insert the image, and write an interesting caption that includes a link designed to drive followers to your answer.

Content Idea 3: Post a link along with a popular hashtag

Adding a hashtag that threads all of your video answers together helps anyone who discovers your post find every other similar piece of content you’ve posted. In the example above, the “#coding” hashtag is used, with a tease of the question, followed by a link to Miles’ video answer.

An important note: Miles clearly did their homework. #Coding is a widely used hashtag that’s likely to be searched by the kind of users Miles hopes to reach, and by “filing” their Ask An Expert content with other social users’ similar content by including it (which is okay, because it’s relevant - don’t spam hashtags with unrelated content), they’ve managed to extend the reach of their post exponentially when compared to using no hashtag at all. Miles also used the #AskAnExpert hashtag, so every user who follows the tag, but not Miles, will also see their post when they’re scrolling in search of help.

In our next article, we’ll provide a deeper dive into using hashtags to promote your tutoring brand, and a few more useful tips for reaching the most potential students on social media as possible.