Get your business online, for free, fast!
I get asked a lot of tutoring questions, and this is one of them …
“I want to set up a website eventually but it does mean it will be longer until I can start tutoring. Any website wisdom out there?”
If you're thinking of tutoring, it's a great question to ask. I put it out on Instagram this week and tutors were generous enough to share their wisdom. So what kind of answers came back?
Here are some of those pro tips …
“I get all my clients through Facebook.”
“I don't think you need a website to begin tutoring. Social media is your friend, so use that to advertise your business.”
“I still don’t have a website. It’s on my to do list. Doesn’t stop me from growing through.”
“I don’t have one either. Word of mouth is good enough for me!”
In a separate poll I set up, two thirds said a website is a nice-to-have, not a must-have.
And those answers match my answer, which is also no, you don’t need a website for your tutoring business right from the get go. It’s a lot of work if you do it alone and a website can be quite an expense if you get someone to do it for you.
There’s a but …
But … some kind of online presence that isn’t just social media is a really good idea, mainly because it’s yours. Social media can be an amazing tool. But it's very much rented ground. You have no control over the algorithm, so you can never fully manage the reach and visibility you have. And if your account is hacked or if you are locked out, you lose your business instantly.
So this week inside the Tutor Like a Pro! membership, along with Katie our fabulous VA, who is also an ex-teacher, our weekly live call was a mini-masterclass looking at a way to get your online presence up and running using completely free tools. The plan was to do it without the time and effort a complete website would take. So what was our online-presence-without-a-website-solution?
We created a landing page from scratch. A landing page is your business page online. We added the details of "Awesome Tutoring Services", our new tutoring business - not ™ :) We added a 'book a call' link using another free online tool. And we added a button to download a freebie. We had a simple but valuable freebie ready to go for our members. That freebie, called a lead magnet, is something people will exchange their email address for. And that’s how you start building your email list. Email marketing is one of the most successful ways to add value and start that conversation with someone who may become your client. With email marketing, YOU are controlling who sees you and when they see you, not the social media algorithm.
Inside the membership mini masterclass we added a video run-through on how to sign up to the free tools alongside that ready-to-go lead magnet. And because our weekly group calls are always recorded, members can go back and watch the call, pausing as often as they like to follow what we did, step-by-step, at their own speed.
The result? It's easily possible to have your own online presence up and running in a day using some great tools to do really useful things for your business. For free. You can introduce your services, offer the option to book a call with you and add value to your ideal client with a useful freebie. You can start building your email list so you can open the conversation with people to build that all important know-like-trust factor which leads to bookings.
Here’s the original question again.
“I want to set up a website eventually but it does mean it will be longer until I can start tutoring. Any website wisdom out there?”
I think we might just have answered it in a very practical “show, don’t tell” way because, as teachers, we know modelling is always the best way.
What wisdom can you add? Thanks for sharing it with us in the comments!