You’re tutoring online and your business is growing; you’re using social media and thinking about an online teacher images website – after all if you’re working online, you need to be found.
One essential ingredient for both of these things – a website and social media – is great online teacher images.
And for this you need three things:
Online teacher images that encapsulate what you do, how you do it, and what else you do when you’re not working.
I call it the Mars Bar Approach
And I like to think of it as a Mars Bar Approach to branding – I’m probably showing my age there. For a long time their strapline was A Mars a day helps you work rest and play and it’s that work, rest and play that we’re interested in portraying in our social media images of us and on our website too.
We need photos of us at work, at rest and at play.
Why do we have to show all these different sides of us-Isn’t it enough to just sit down at a desk, open a laptop and get some snaps? Well, no, not really!
It’s important that that potential students /parents see us as rounded people, people they can connect to and identify with – all kind of subconsciously.
Of course no one thinks, ‘Oh, that Maths teacher runs marathons at the weekend, I must use them …” but they will think that you’re a rounded, interesting person and that ‘s the kind of tutor they’re looking for.
How then do you get these online teacher images?
You have 2 routes open to you here: the professional photographer route and the DIY route
Let’s look at the professional image route:
I’m lucky in so many ways and one of those is that my sister Gerri, is a photographer.
Lucky because it means not only do I have really great family photos, but getting brand photos has been easy too. Photos of me sitting at my desk, me on my laptop, me tutoring online.
It means I have a whole raft of images I can use easily for my website, for my Instagram posts, Facebook posts, Pinterest pins…you get the idea.
Why do I need photos of myself ?
We’ve talked a lot about making connections with people online and how it takes longer to build that connection than it does offline
To help that process along, to speed that process up you should be seen online in many different guises (And that’s why my online tutor directory focusses on tutors being seen)
Plan out the different categories of photos before you meet up with a photographer (or DIY on a phone with a good camera in the meantime)
Work Photos of your laptop, closeup of your teaching tools – books, webcam, slides, microphone…
Rest: you with your family, your children, eating dinner, doing the garden, walking the dog …
Play: out for a run, doing some yoga, painting, reading a book – whatever it is you do at the weekend
All these images you can then use easily for your posts – a more casual post for the weekend , a tools one for during the week showing you at work, behind the scenes posts – all of them with great looking professional images .
In the world of online tutoring and in particular Star Student tutors, Verity Bell’s great looking images on her website have made a big difference to how she’s perceived too :
“I have had comments saying that my website seemed very professional and I can say with confidence that having good photos (high quality stock ones as well) gives me the confidence to sell a ‘premium product’ and charge what I feel a 1:1 lesson is worth” Verity says
And languages teacher Rachel Hands Portman too on her website Languagesrachel.com
Chemistry tutor Margaret Mary McFadden’s great direct-looking photos inspire confidence over at her site here
and English teacher Coriden Francis’s great photos on her site here as well as William Liverman’s assured, professional looking photo for his upcoming website here ‘Finish your DIssertation’
Phew! So many great looking tutor sites (for more have a look at Star Student)
If you need further proof of the difference great looking photos can make, have a look at the website of Claire Pelletreau who runs a Facebook ads course
This was her website years ago when I first started reading her blog posts. The image is of Claire but she’s looking away from the camera and really it says very little about her and very little about what she does
BEFORE
AFTER
Clare went the full nine yards with her new images and went to a really slick agency in the US for these images – this is a whole different level of professionalism, a company called Public Persona does this – we can dream!
Immediately you know what she’s about – the copy really helps here too – she’s looking directly at the camera conveying that FB ads are hard (which they most definitely are !) that there’s a lot of numbers / data involved (which there most definitely is ) and that there are two skills involved – art + science. Oh and that the outcome is making money.
Above all tho’ :
- We see her as fun
- we see her as professional
- above all, we see what she does
The difference is huge and has had a big impact on her business.
If then you want to:
🚀 charge professional prices
🔍 be seen as an expert ?
🔗 people to connect with you ?
you have to pay for that – a photo of you on holiday 5 year ago isn’t going to cut it
Where then can you get affordable help ?
Photographers are expensive – but here are two ways you can maybe get help with this
- Reach out to a photography student who needs practice
- Post in a local Facebook group for help there may well be someone looking to build their r business who would be happy to help in exchange for a great testimonial and their being able to use the photos for their own promotions – win, win !
Don’t see it as an unnecessary expense but instead as a vital tool in your quest to have a thriving online tutoring business.
The How to Tutor Online Course looks at this and everything else you need to run a profitable online business in a lot more detail
To watch the FREE Masterclass showing you all that’s possible CLICK HERE
