Get Savvy with Social Media

Kirsten 0:00

you're listening to the creative teacher podcast, a show for busy teachers looking for ways to engage, inspire and make an impact in their teacher businesses. I'm Kiersten, a teacher business owner who is all about simple and actionable tips, strategies and resources that result in wins, big or small. If you're looking for that extra spark of creativity, you've come to the right place. Let's dive in together.

Welcome to another episode of the creative teacher podcast. This is another remix episode from a couple years ago that I think is super relevant. And it's all about my best social media tips and tricks for marketing your resources outside of TPT. So I hope you enjoy this short and sweet episode.

Today we're going to be talking about Instagram, Facebook and Tik Tok. These platforms are absolutely great ways to market your resources. And today we're focusing on tips and strategies to create and design content for your accounts so that it matches your brand. Here's one thing to know before we start, the last thing you want to do is have a bunch of posts that don't really fit with your business brand, personality and values. Everything you do on social media must be purposeful and related to your brand.

The main purpose of social media is to connect first, and then sell relationships over sales are so important. It's social media, you're getting social can making connections with not only potential customers, but other people in your niche other teachers or TPT sellers just like you. It's okay to post occasional sales or feature some of your products. But it should not be the main focus of every single post. That's not marketing is that it's more of selling. So when you're marketing, you are building connections and getting to know your audience. So that's something to remember as you are working on your social media.

The first thing I want you to think of is how often and where you want to post. So here are my tips on this. I don't recommend starting off the bat with all three. But gradually, you can add them on start with one, add them on or just hyper focus on one. Think about where your audience is, where do they normally hang out? Mine are mostly on Instagram. So I mainly focus on that. But I also occasionally repost content on my Facebook page. But it's not really a big priority of mine.

Other questions to ask yourself is do you want to post on your platform every day, or every other day or every week? whatever frequency you choose, it needs to be consistent, a theme of the month be consistent in what you provide in your content. Right now, during the school year, I post four times a week, but in the summer I posted six times a week. So it's just whatever you have time for right now for me, it's four times a week.

The next thing you would want to think about is getting some templates going for feeds another theme here some templates have at least three to four templates designed for you either by you even through Canva you can always hire someone to design them for you, just so that you can plug and switch them out. Make sure your templates fit with your visual elements in your brand and make sure they also include a watermark of your brand name or your handle name so that if somebody decides to repost it or screenshot it and add it to their feed whatever, they you can get the proper credit for that. Here are some template ideas, you could do one for inspiring quotes, a template for testimonials, if you have a lot of resources or a course that you have been advertising to others, you can have a template for a new blog post or a podcast, you can have a template for a feature product from your store. Or you can just have a template for just sharing information. So those are just a few ideas.

The rest of your feed can just be photos of yourself photos of your classroom, photos of your TPT products, or just whatever other photos just mix it up. Depending on what type of social media account you have, you may have more templates than photographs and vice versa. So I'm thinking more of those clip artists or font. Those fancy calligraphy font people, you might have more of your not actual photos but more templates that showcase your handwriting and showcase your clipart. But I think the typical TPT social media account should have a nice balance of templates in real photos. And then if you're mainly selling stickers, or T shirts, maybe you might have more photos than templates just on the nature of your business.

I have got certain themes each day that I post. So like for example, Saturday is my quote or fun connection day where it have like some kind of meme or quote. And Saturdays are when I get a ton of reach and engagement from those templates or photos depending on which one it is that week.

Alright, so after you come up with a plan of how often you're going to post on social media, where you're going to post on social media and the type of templates you're going to get. You want to make sure you plan and schedule your content, you can plan just the photos or templates you'll be using. Or if you want to go further you can write out the captions and have those hashtags ready. I do recommend planning out at least a week in advanced, so you're not scrambling for a photo each day, you'll have a plan and it's purposeful. You can also choose to schedule your content using tools such as the Facebook business where you can schedule posts in advance on Instagram and Facebook. With that, I plan my social media content two weeks in advance and create or design the actual photos that will be used. So I'll create the templates or decide on which photos I'm gonna use for those two weeks. But I'm not reading out the actual captions until the day of or week before.

So that's just what works for me right now. Here are a few tips I have for some very common platforms that a lot of teacher may be on. So I'm going to be talking about Instagram, Facebook, and tick tock Instagram,

in lieu of photos, making reels. And adding that to your feed is a really great way to add your unique personality and make fun and connecting posts for your audience. I think rails are really fun to do.

Another thing is utilizing your stories, sharing random parts of your life to your audience and funny memes that you see, that wouldn't necessarily look nice on your feet. So all the pictures that don't really match your brand or the funny memes that you have that don't really match your feed. You can always put it in your story so that they can see it they're adding questions or polls to engage your audience to get them to respond is another really great way. Stories is where I usually share random things about my life. Like though there is a time my toddler spilled Chex Mix on the carpet. And so that was a fun one just like put it out there. Yep, my toddler just spilled Chex Mix and I think I said something like but the right chips are Don't worry guys, the the right chips are already gone. So it's not a loss. So just something fun like that.

ou went to high school in the: 2000

Okay, so here are some tips on Facebook. This one is kind of more on Facebook groups. Facebook groups are where it's at. If you're not there, you need to get in there. If you're not too keen on Starting your own Facebook group, you're in luck, well you can do is find places where your ideal teacher customer is in. So if you cater to mostly upper elementary math, then I would search and join Facebook groups that they would be in. So if you can just type in third grade math, fourth grade, about fifth grade math, something related to math, find those groups that you would probably see your ideal teacher customer. And then when questions arise, you can give out those free tips and information and advice. So you can always get in there, interact with them and answer questions. And then depending on if, whether or not self promotion is allowed to refer them to a product that you have that would be relevant to them. But it is important to read the terms and rules for each group before you do this so you don't get kicked out. So that's just one thing to notice. Like when you're interacting with the groups make sure you're allowed to do so.

Alright, my last tip for you is on tick tock. If you brave the world of tick tock, you might get a lot of great responses and traction depending on how often you're there. My best tip for tick tock is to make it light and fun. Find fun and trendy tick tock dances or sounds and make it relevant to your business or your teacher life. You can easily repost it on Instagram reels, which is what I do already.

All right, here's my action tip. Think about all those marketing platforms that you use in your business and rank them according to importance. Decide on which platforms are essential at moving the needle in your business in which ones can be added with extra time or even which ones can be taken out. Then create and design consistent content through batching. My favorite method if that works for you, of course, if I were to personally rank my marketing platforms in order of importance, and thinking about what I want to drive the needle in my business for my top one would be email marketing. My second important would be blog. Third would be Instagram. So the rest I will still create content for I'll still create content for Tik Tok but it kind of already is you know through it's my driving force and since sugar I'm so that's the really the reason why I'm there is because I'm creating content on Tik Tok so that I can post it on my Instagram. So in a way, it still does kind of connect. But I'm not going to be spending a bunch of time creating a lot of TiC tock videos, that's not my main focused, I'm not going to spend too much time fussing over the less important parts in my business, I'm going to have a certain you know, certain set number of templates and times a post.

But my main focus is really my top two, email marketing and blog. This could change as my business grows. But and so maybe one day I'll decide clubhouse is really important. It's it's definitely not. But for now, this is what works for me. If you heard one of my earlier blog episodes, I talked about Instagram shopping, and the t shirt stuff that I had. And that was just way too much. So I took it out it wasn't moving the needle in my business. It was just another shiny object that I was thinking that could be great for my Instagram shopping. But in the long run, I'm doing what best moves the needle in my business. And that would be the platforms that I mentioned here for you.

Alright, that's the end of this episode. I'm so glad that you tuned in. I cannot wait to hear from you. So, with that being said, I hope you have an amazing day.

Thanks for tuning in to the creative teacher podcast. If you enjoyed listening to today's episode, feel free to subscribe and leave a review. I'd love to hear your feedback. You can also find me on Instagram at the southern teach. I cannot wait for you to join me in the next episode for more tips and inspiration. Have an amazing day.

Share Episode

Shownotes

Transcripts

Follow

Links

Chapters

Video

More from YouTube