One of the most lucrative gigs of the past 50 years has been to be a private tutor for various subjects.
Academic tutors who assist students in subjects like math, history, science etc. are some of the most obvious examples. But nearly every musical instrument teacher, for example, is also a private tutor.
Less obvious examples still are people such as life coaches or nutritionists.
If you have skills that other people can learn from, you can be a private tutor and make a very decent living.
In order to build up your student base, however, you'll need to be sure to promote yourself as a private tutor.
Many private tutors become disappointed when they find out that finding students isn't as easy as printing some business cards or sending a few emails.
There are many private tutors for many different subjects out there, and in order to successfully communicate your value, it's important to promote yourself in a few key ways.
We put together this guy to help private tutors understand the best ways they can promote themselves. Don't think that you have to spend a ton of time acting on these tips that we've put together, either.
In truth, so long as you are consistent and spend 15 minutes to half an hour a day working on one or a few of these promotional tactics, you'll start to see results.
If you haven't already, you'll want to make sure to create a decent looking website that people can find if they are to search you on Google or another search engine.
Typically, if someone hears that you are a tutor and is thinking about hiring you, one of the first things they'll do is run your name on Google.
They may decide to hire you (or non-hire you) depending on what they find when they search your name.
This is why it's very important to have things like a professional-looking website. If prospective students can easily find your site and verify who you are and what you do, they may be more likely to send an inquiry to you than if they found nothing at all.
Think about your habits as a consumer. Do you tend to buy things or hire people without first doing any research as to what it is you'll be paying for, and what you can expect in return?
With the Internet being immediately accessible from all sorts of different devices, people have more opportunities than ever to research the tutors they hire. The more visible you are online as a tutor, the more likely you are to convince prospective students that you are competent, professional, and helpful.
Another big reason that online reputation is paramount to your success is a private tutor is simple: when people want to find a private tutor, they are likely to use Google to help them find one.
If you make sure that you are easily findable by people in your area, you're likely to get all sorts of inquiries from prospective students who are looking for tutors.
You'd be surprised how many tutors completely neglect their online reputation of visibility. Sure, they may have other ways of finding students, but they are missing out on one of the best ways to ensure a consistent stream of new students.
One more means of improving your online reputation is worth mentioning here.
If you start to appear in online media (such as on a blog or other online magazine), it is likely that prospective students will immediately see you as an expert in your field.
If you are a math tutor for example and are interviewed by a blog that publishes articles about math or other academic subjects, people are going to be impressed.
This is another example of things that most tutors don't bother with. But the reality is that if you have even a small media portfolio of appearances on blogs or other websites, you have articles about you that are serving as permanent promotion (so long as the blogs or websites stay online!).
Sometimes professionals forget that they in and of themselves our businesses.
By treating yourself as a business, you may be able to make a lot of headway in promoting yourself as a private tutor on social media.
What do we mean by this?
For one, you don't need to use your personal social media profiles as a way to promote yourself as a private tutor.
In fact, it's probably better that you have separate Profiles that you post to which are all about you as a tutor.
Posting even semi-compelling content to these profiles may result in your content appearing in the feeds of people who are looking for tutors.
This type of promotion oftentimes scares private tutors. After all, you may be an expert in math or chemistry but feel that social media is not your bailiwick.
The key was social media private tutors is not to overthink it. You're not trying to be a social media influencer or a YouTube or after all, but spending a few minutes each day coming up with a post idea and publishing it will start to result in a lot of content over time.
You would be surprised as to how easy it can be to get even a small following on platforms such as Instagram, TikTok, etc.
And, at the end of the day, you don't really need to have a huge following to impress prospective students. The fact that you have a social media presence at all as a private tutor is bound to impress them. It's something that most private tutors simply don't pay attention to at all!
