Eight Online Marketing Ideas to Get Your Tutoring Business Noticed

 

Getting that light bulb sensation when you have a brilliant idea is slowly becoming rarer and rarer these days because people are contented with what they have at the moment. Thus, people tend to become lax about everything around them, including the brand of your tutoring service. Protecting your brand involves protecting both company and personal entities involved. Your tutoring business must flourish at all times. Moreover, if you do not market often, your tutoring business information may be overshadowed by others who provide alternative service options to your client. To keep yourself in the game, here are 10 tips in online marketing to ensure your tutoring business stays noticed.

1. Content dynamics

Because of the vitality that search engine optimization has brought to the changing internet, you have the helm in your content management. Using press releases, landing pages, and other websites involved, one effective online marketing strategy is to utilize your content on your website to reel in clients who you've piqued the curiosity of.

2. Viral Marketing

One of the most difficult to carry out, viral marketing is a strong online marketing tool strategy where you exert little effort but the results are extreme in nature. The secret behind viral marketing is to create an item or an idea that will provide a lasting impression for your market. When people think about it, they will definitely associate it with your tutoring services.

3. Keyword Management

If you have a blog, website, or if you post articles online, always optimize your content for more than one keyword. Keywords are vital in putting your website on top of search engines. With the proper use of a set of keywords, you will find that when people search for such information, your site comes up first. Use effective keywords to allow more clients to try out your service.

 4. Be Specific

People enjoy online seldom, especially since it involves patience, where there are little to have patience. If they read something they don't like, then the pursuit is automatically specified to cross through specific individuals. The goal is to provide specific information that is relevant in one's world.

5. Proper Content Structure in your Online Marketing Style

With the right headers and subheadings, your business may be noticed, especially as you cling to effective business practices. Utilize the advantage of your structure to ensure that your message is carried out smoothly throughout each transaction!

6. Getting a Unique Message Out

Companies must have heard what you plan to say, so make sure to shift that phrase every once in a while. Such unique message is something fresh for everyone, especially for prospective clients. This will put your business in the map and in the interest of many prospective clients.

7.  Navigational Management

Getting your website or site linked or connected to the world is a strong point in upholding your website. Through strong or weak connections, it is important to strengthen your navigation as such an audience will be necessary in pointing out educational-connected navigation components.

8. Item Specific Management

Because of the continued rise of item management by computers, item specific management will help narrow down which areas need service and which do not. This is vital in spreading out authenticity of general service appeal.

Until next time, make sure to get your tutoring business in shape. The bottom line is that you should utilize your marketing skills to the best to keep your business in the game...no matter what happens, but let's think positive!!

 

What is MentorMob and How it Can Be Used with Your Clients?

In the hustle and bustle of resources that are present for tutors to use for their clients, finding a way to integrate everything seamless has always been a challenge. This can take a long time to do if you simply search and bookmark the links to give to your students. Moreover, it comes out as tacky and lackadaisical of dynamics because who wants to click random strings of links? Don’t worry though, there’s this system known as MentorMob that combines your tutoring aid with your flair for creativity.

What Really is MentorMob?

Whenever you listen to music, you create a playlist so you can simply scroll through it when you want to. Moreover, your music is there right when you need it. This is the principle of MentorMob, but you switch music for study material! MentorMob allows you to create playlists of study material in a certain progression that may vary from article to pop quiz. This way, you’ve got the resources ready for your students to read and the quizzes in check for them to take. These learning playlists are very effective because they provide you with a system that is not boring and not a collection of randomized strings.

How You Can Make the Most out of MentorMob

MentorMob is a knowledge-as-you-go thing where your students can enhance their background on a certain topic as you continue your tutorial. Since it is internet-based, your clients can access the material very readily. MentorMob is a great supplement to the learning process wherein you can provide your students with access as they wish.

How to Use the Service

First of all, you select the sites you want to include in the playlist through the service interface. Then, simply following the guidelines and the four-step process at hand, you can order these sites as you see fit. Moreover, you can insert quizzes in between articles to enhance the learning process you wish your students to engage in. This becomes an effective development potential for your students.

MentorMob is a creative service that benefits your students because of the user-friendliness and the dynamic approach in the learning process involved. The service is very easy to use and it combines the prowess of technology with the development of tutoring.

 

How Many Tutors Should I Hire? A lot or Just a Few?

 

When your business starts to pick up its pace and you may feel that things are getting too difficult to manage, it’s time you thought of hiring more tutors to help out. Sure, everything looks great and dandy when you create a team, but to what extent should you hire more tutors? Here are ten reasons to hire few tutors you, and not just loads of them.

1.     Compensation Reduction

Let’s keep it simple: when you have more tutors, you have more people to pay. Thus, your income is reduced because of the tendency of splitting your earnings according to the financial model you propose.

2.   Uncertainty of Workload

Tutoring is a case-to-case basis job where people may or may not request your services. Thus, if you have too much tutors under your belt, then the chances are you may the human power but not the work. Your tutors will simply get disappointed because you weren’t able to give them jobs.

3.   Increased Conflict

When you hire a lot of people, you are bound to face more conflicts than you would with lesser people. Avoid unnecessary work hiccups by keeping the work atmosphere condensed with a few people working with you.

4.   Failure to Establish Connection

Hiring a lot of tutors spreads your business too thin. You may not build effective relationships or connections because different tutors will deal with different people at times. When you’ve got everything together in a small bunch, strong relationships can be formed among clients to enhance business transactions.

5.    You Spend more time validating

When you hire a lot of people, you do a lot of background checks. This can be tedious at times, especially if you’ve got to make sure your tutors have the right credentials to back up what they do.

6.   Things get more difficult to manage

Managing 30 people is not easy. If you are hands-on in what you do, you will find it quite tedious to satisfy each tutor with their demands and of course keep everything in balance. When you work with a few, though, everything changes as you are able to help your tutors out in every aspect they need help in.

7.    It requires extensive consideration

Instead of easily meeting your client’s needs, you’ll have to focus on ensuring your tutors’ welfare is met with every aspect to consider. You may even spend more time to take management lessons and this can deviate from your original goal with so much to consider.

8.   Your Tutors will develop too narrowly

When you’ve got a lot of tutors under your wing, you’d naturally put them in specific subject areas. This can be a negative approach in the sense that your tutors would be specialized in those areas. Although, it’s a good thing to narrow down your tutor focus, but, sometimes, versatility has its advantages over a concentrated subject area.

9.   Expenses are exponentially increased

Salary demand not only increases after each financial period, but also the expenses that will incur. This can put you in a tight spot if you can’t handle the amount of tutors.

10.                      Focus on Relationships and not just Workforce

To top it all off, having few tutors will allow you to establish strong interpersonal relationships, thus enhancing the work flow and the overall work atmosphere that your tutoring company deserves.

From the highs and lows of tutoring, always keep in mind that although the more the merrier, keeping things sweet and simple through a few tutors can make your tutoring business more than what it is to what it could very well be. The bottom line is that you should always place a huge focus on quality rather than quantity, even when it comes to hiring tutors for your learning organization.

What are your suggestions for hiring tutors?

 

Guest Blog Posting: How to Support a Student with Unique Learning Needs

How to Support a Student with Unique Learning Needs
By Alexandra Berube, bostontutoringservices.com

Teaching my second year of Kindergarten, one of my students came in with a rare condition: Agenesis of the Corpus Callosum. This is a complete or partial absence of the corpus callosum, the band connecting the two hemispheres in the brain. It was not known how deeply this would affect his development, but his learning would clearly be shaped entirely by his brain’s ability to share, process, and store information. 

I should explain that I am not a teacher with a Special Education background--I have a Master’s Degree in Early Childhood Education and I am certified in this field; however, I was not trained to teach students with Special Needs beyond how to incorporate modifications into lesson plans and how to read an IEP. I had worked with students with Asperger’s, Sensory Integration Dysfunction, ADD, ADHD, Dyslexia, and Autism, but never had I had complete responsibility for the education of a student with needs such as these. 

This student is now in 3rd grade, and I have had the honor of being able to watch him grow, tutoring him on and off ever since he graduated from my classroom. Tutors are often assigned students to work with, not knowing what to expect, and they are being given the opportunity to test the limits of their creativity and their patience. It is truly an opportunity, a gift, to have this chance to bring out what this child has to offer. 

Over the years I have watched this student learn everything backwards. By that I mean, in order to hear a rhyme, he had to be able to read the word first: Do cat and hat rhyme? They both visually end in ‘-at,’ so yes. But he couldn’t hear the rhyme. 

He can do multi-digit addition and subtraction, with carrying and borrowing. But he has to count on his fingers, even to subtract 3 from 3. Theoretically, he can’t do math facts in his head at all. Each year, we have retaught him how to add and subtract, and he has several strategies that work for him--he physically ‘catches’ the small number and counts up to the big number to subtract, and ‘catches’ the big number and adds the small number from there for addition. It’s tactile, and that’s how his brain allows him to add and subtract. But it does seem illogical to watch a student add 2 plus 3 on his fingers and then see him add 23,908 to 13,208 with carrying, with ease.  

This is not how children are supposed to learn, according to common belief. You are supposed to teach children in a certain order, because that’s how their brain develops. But what if their brain needs to develop a different way? What if their brain makes connections in a completely new and circuitous way, that leaves you, the tutor, baffled time and time again? What if that’s okay?

Tutoring a student who learns differently, for any reason, means shedding your beliefs of what is the right order to teach content. It means not drilling in one concept over and over until they get it, because you think they can’t move onto the next concept until they get this one. 

All students learn in leaps and bounds, which may mean skipping over one concept, moving onto the next one, and weaving back around, ‘absorbing’ that ‘previous’ concept into their learning schema long after it logically makes sense for them to do so. 

Every student deserves the chance to learn at their own pace, and it takes understanding on the part of the tutor that this may be the right way for them. 

About Alexandra Berube
Alexandra is the Managing Director of Boston Tutoring Services, a tutoring company that offers one-to-one in-home tutoring in Massachusetts. She is also a former Kindergarten teacher who also tutors students in grades K-8, in all subject areas, including test preparation.

Guest Blog Posting: A Parent's Role in Tutoring

A Parent’s Role in Tutoring
By Alexandra Berube, bostontutoringservices.com 

When I tutor students, parents’ involvement ranges from sitting in on the session and being completely a part of the instruction, to complete absence. What’s the best amount of parent involvement? 

In my experience, when working with very young students, having the parent present for part of each session, so that I can model for the parent how I instruct the students, can be a great learning experience for all involved. The parent sees how I approach the material, the student sees that the parent cares and is interested in what they are doing, and the tutor can see how the parent and child interact in learning. The last point can be the most telling--do the parent and child enjoy the task, or are they at odds? Are the parent’s expectations realistic? Does the child brighten when sharing instruction with the parent, or do they shut down? 

Knowing how students and their parents interact in learning when I’m not present makes a huge difference in my instruction style--if the parent is very demanding, I will go out of my way (even more than usual) to work on confidence-boosting. If the parent expects the child to be way beyond their current abilities, I can moderate the parent expectations and make everyone feel more comfortable with the student’s pace. 

I’ve also dealt with parents who are so hands-off that their feeling seems to be, “not my problem.” They feel like they are paying a tutor to do the work, and that’s where their responsibility ends. I understand when parents have busy lives, and clearly as the tutor, it is my role to instruct. But without some parent involvement, the student has far less incentive to try to improve, try to push themselves, or even try to behave. 

The most I can do in these situations is encourage the parents with very specific ways they can get involved. Can they use flashcards for vocabulary instruction during breakfast? Can reading for 15 minutes be a prerequisite for TV or internet--with the parent present and engaged, either reading at the same time, or discussing the reading material along the way?

Learning has to be a part of daily life, and the tutor cannot instill this in an hour a week. Even if the parent doesn’t know the material the tutor is instructing (Calculus, for example), the parent needs to demonstrate that they value the child’s learning and growth, and tutoring is not just for a grade.

About Alexandra Berube
Alexandra is the Managing Director of Boston Tutoring Services, a tutoring company that offers one-to-one in-home tutoring in Massachusetts. She is also a former Kindergarten teacher who also tutors students in grades K-8, in all subject areas, including test preparation. 

Guest Blog Posting: Giving Writing Purpose: 3 Ways to Get Beginners Excited About Writing

Giving Writing Purpose: 3 Ways to Get Beginners Excited About Writing
By Alexandra Berube, bostontutoringservices.com

After teaching Pre-K, Kindergarten, and First Grade, I’ve had the opportunity to watch writers from the very first solitary ‘m’ (“Look, I wrote a story about my mom!”), to chapter books about dinosaurs and princesses. The key moments are those times when children have the opportunity to make meaning of writing, to take writing out of a task or a worksheet and put it into the world. 

Comic Strips
When children are beginning to understand that letters carry meaning, they will use one or two letters to convey an idea--usually the first letter and/or the last. It is very tiring for children to try to write long ideas if this is their current skill capacity. 

Children love to draw, whether it’s representational (“That’s a tree with a rainbow”), or symbolic/action-based (“That’s how I run around and that’s where I jump from...”). If you give them a comic book template (blank squares side by side, large enough that they can draw in each one), they can ‘write’ out their story. 

Once they’ve drawn in each square, they can narrate what’s happening. Depending on their ability, you can either write for them, sounding it out as you go (modeling); you can help them sound out key words and then write the other words yourself; or you can help them sound out all the words to their best ability of invented spelling. 

This builds meaning into the process of writing, because it serves the purpose of narrating their story. Young children often forget what they are trying to write about as they go, because they are so focused on the letters. This gives them the chance to first put down their story in pictures, and then write the best they can without losing their idea. 

Labeling the Room
Children love to make their written work visible, out there in the world for all to see. With just a pad of sticky notes, have them label everything they can. Again, their abilities will vary--some will be able to just write the beginning sound of t for table; some can write beginning and ending sounds; some can add in medial vowels. It’s a great assessment tool of how much they can do. They can run around the house and label everything they can see. It gets them up and moving, interacting with their world, and showing the purpose of writing--to inform, or share meaning.  

Scavenger Hunts
First, they have to hide something somewhere--this gets them up and moving and is just fun. There are a few ways to do this. For a simple treasure hunt, they would write a clue and you would use the clue to find the item. This can just be a letter, a word, or a sentence, depending on the student’s level. 

The next step up is having them write a clue to one spot, and then write another clue from there to the item. It’s going to depend on the abilities of the student--a Kindergartener should only do one or two steps, but a 2nd or 3rd grader could do much more elaborate scavenger hunts. 
For older students, this is a great opportunity to introduce rhyme and poems--for each clue, they need to write a simple rhyme. You can take this up through every grade level. 

If there is a parent who can join in, you can have the student write out the clues, help them place them in each location, and have the parent follow the clues. This is a lot of fun for young kids, and again gives them purpose for writing. 

About Alexandra Berube
Alexandra is the Managing Director of Boston Tutoring Services, a tutoring company that offers one-to-one in-home tutoring in Massachusetts. She is also a former Kindergarten teacher who also tutors students in grades K-8, in all subject areas, including test preparation.

Message from Alise--"Read for the Record Day"

Happy Thursday, Tutoring Family!

One of my colleagues forwarded me information about today, October 4th.

It is actually "Read for the Record Day" so please make sure that you go and read one of the free books available at the website below.

Check out the information from Pearson Education's President--Mark Nieker!

______________________________________________


Don’t forget…Today is Read for the Record Day!    

Read Ladybug Girl and the Bug Squad to a Child

We Give Books Helps Children Read - Give and Share Books by Supporting Jumpstart’s Read for the Record

Just a reminder.  We hope you are planning to Read for the Record wherever you are today.  Even if you haven’t signed up for your local event, We Give Books’ newly redesigned website makes it even easier to read, while you give and share children’s books online.

Anyone with access to the Internet can visit the site - www.wegivebooks.org/readfortherecord to read one of the free books available in our digital library; for each book read online, We Give Books donates a print book to a leading literacy group.

By “joining the Bug Squad,” readers unlock a collection of children’s books for iPads and other mobile devices – including Ladybug Girl and the Bug Squad by David Soman and Jacky Davis, this year’s official Read for the Record Campaign book.

We Give Books’ digital library is provided by Penguin in an effort to spread the word about the important role of reading in shaping a lifetime of learning. Since We Give Books launched in 2010, the Pearson Foundation and Penguin have donated more than a million books, with a goal of donating a million more by the end of this school year.

Have fun today!
Mark Nieker, President
Pearson Foundation

Message from Alise--October 2012 Update

Happy Monday, Readers!

It's already October and the weather is beginning to change here in Texas. I look forward to seeing the colorful leaves as Autumn is my favorite time of the year.

I want to apologize for not being about to write in September 2012 as it has been a hectic month with the school year beginning, along with the new tutoring season. 

Please know that I will be making regular posts this month and we may have one or two guest bloggers as well. If you are interested in being a guest on our blog, please email me at drhollandj@gmail.com and we can discuss the possibility.

How are your tutoring sessions going thus far? What is your game plan for the spring tutoring season?

Sound off and let us know!

As always, have a blessed week!

Many Blessings,

Alise