As educators, many of the freelance language professionals I work with feel that marketing is something completely alien to what they do (or did) in the classroom.
They often see teaching and marketing as two very different things. Teaching is about educating people and helping them make progress, whereas marketing is about promoting yourself and trying to sell things.
They envisage marketing their business on social media as being like going into a room with a megaphone and shouting about how great they are.
(Actually, we’ve all known teachers who do that, haven’t we?)
But effective social media marketing is much more like good teaching than you might think.
And you probably already have many of the skills you need.
Needs analysis
Firstly, it’s all about understanding the needs of your students or potential clients.
As teachers, we’re used to listening carefully, finding out what people are struggling with and understanding what they want to achieve. We also draw on our experience to recognise problems or needs that they might not yet have identified themselves.
In the classroom, this is called needs analysis. In marketing, it’s called market research.
Of course, we still need to check our assumptions. Just because we’ve worked with a particular kind of learner before doesn’t mean we know exactly what every potential client wants or needs.
But the ability to listen, ask good questions and understand things from someone else’s perspective is an enormous advantage when it comes to marketing your business.
Creating a learning path
Once we’re clear about what our learners need and want (though these aren’t always quite the same thing), we think about how best to help them achieve their goals.
In teaching, that might mean designing a syllabus or learning pathway.
In business, it’s about designing the service or offer that will help your clients get the results they’re looking for.
Just like a good syllabus, a well-designed offer takes people from where they are now towards where they want to be. You’ve thought about what might trip them up along the way and how you can give them the best possible chance of success.
And once you’ve done that thinking, your marketing becomes much easier.
You can explain what you’ve created, who it’s for and how it helps, because you understand exactly why you’ve designed it that way.
Sharing what you know and what you can do
You can come up with the most amazing ways of helping people, but if no one knows about them, they aren’t going to help anyone.
Imagine telling a class full of students that you could help them get to grips with the present perfect, but you’re not going to because they might think you’re showing off.
Ridiculous, isn’t it?
And yet that’s effectively what many freelancers do when they’re reluctant to talk about their expertise or the services they offer.
Social media gives you opportunities to share what you know, demonstrate your approach and help people understand how you could support them.
You might share an insight from your work with clients, explain a common misconception or talk about a problem you’ve helped someone solve.
And yes, you can also tell people what you offer and invite them to work with you.
Letting people know how you can help them serves their interests as well as yours.
But while this is essential, it still isn’t the whole picture.
Building rapport
Good teaching is also about building relationships.
We want our learners to see us as credible, trustworthy and reliable, and to feel comfortable enough to ask questions, participate and make mistakes.
Much the same applies to marketing.
People are more likely to consider working with you when they’ve had opportunities to get to know you and your approach.
And the skills involved in writing an engaging social media post that gets people thinking and talking aren’t so different from creating a good classroom activity.
You think about what will interest your audience, how to make the topic relevant to them and what might encourage them to contribute.
Then you pay attention to their responses and use what you learn to inform what you do next.
Of course, social media marketing involves some additional skills, and there’s more to finding clients than creating engaging posts. You also need a clear strategy and an understanding of how your marketing supports your business goals.
But you have a lot more to build on than you might think.
So, feeling better about social media marketing now?
As a language teacher or trainer, you’ve already spent years developing skills that are incredibly useful in marketing: empathy, listening, analysing needs, communicating clearly and building relationships.
You can bring all of these into the way you promote your business.
And the next time you sit down to write a social media post, perhaps it would help to ask yourself some of the questions you’d ask when planning a lesson.
Who is this for? What do they already know or believe? What might they find useful or interesting? What would I like them to understand or do as a result?
It’s a pretty good starting point.
If you’d like more ideas about putting this into practice, you can also explore my Finding and attracting clients resource centre.
Need some ideas for what to post?
Understanding how marketing works is one thing. Coming up with something useful to say every time you sit down to write a post can be quite another!
That’s why I’ve created 30 Ideas for Social Media Posts, a free guide specifically for freelance language professionals.
You’ll get 30 adaptable prompts to help you share your expertise, build relationships and communicate the value of what you do.
I’ll also send you a short five-day email series showing you how to use those ideas more strategically, so your content supports your business rather than simply keeping you busy.
Get your free 30 Social Media Post Ideas
