Five Ways to Brand and Market Yourself on OutSchool

Hello my fellow unicorn teachers! I’m back with part three of my OutSchool blog posts! I want to give you some tips to set you up for success on OutSchool. Though I haven’t been on their platform long, I’m grateful for the sequence of experiences I’ve had, because now I can apply what I’ve learned with my Teachers Pay Teachers and Etsy shops, this blog, and teaching for VIPKID to my OutSchool “business”! The classes I’ve taught so far have all filled so I’m thinking I have a knack for this. I’m excited to share it with you! 

That is an important mindset to have, looking at OutSchool as your “business”. OutSchool is providing you a platform and potential clients, or students, and you are running your business. The awesome part of this is that you have a lot more control and options over how you can brand and market yourself and your classes. That might sound daunting to some but that’s okay, because I’m happy to help get you started in the right direction! Here are my tips for a great start on OutSchool! 

Personalize your class preview photos. 

Make your class preview photos look like your brand or style, and keep it consistent across all your classes! When a parent that loved a class their child took with you is scrolling, and they realize they see Teacher Lauren’s face or rainbow colors pop out at them, they will recognize it as YOUR class and want to take it! A lot of teachers use stock photos to start out, which is totally fine when you’re just trying to get up and running. But once you’re comfortable with the platform and your classes, add some personality to your class photos! I use Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator for everything, but a lot of teachers I know love to use Canva because it’s very easy to learn. 

Envision your ideal student avatar and plan groups of classes to be for them. 

If you have a fourth grade fractions class, a preschool story time class, a high school novel study, and a middle school writing class, you’re going to have difficulty getting students to come back to you. Start with a specific age or topic and design several classes for that genre of students, so if they love taking class with you, they can come back for more! Bonus points if you make some classes that are different every time they take them, so it’s less lesson planning for you and more opportunities to come back to you for them! 

Once you’ve made a few different classes for one type of student, if you want to branch out, you can totally do that! I don’t want to discourage you from doing all the things you want to do. But you will see more success if you think about creating multiple classes for your ideal student, rather than just a one time, single class. 

Include a printable of some kind with your name on it for your classes. 

This might be because I’m already very printable-happy, being a Teachers Pay Teachers creator and seller, but I did this for my first class and they loved it! It’s a great way to give them additional practice after class or a study guide to help them remember what they learned in class. It’s also a great idea to make your own printables and make sure your name is somewhere on the pages, so they remember who they took that awesome class with! 

Leave a message after classes thanking all the students for coming and telling them about other classes they may be interested in. 

I love that there’s a classroom “portal” where you can leave messages for students before and after class! This is such a great way to introduce yourself before class and show your appreciation that they joined you afterwards! It’s also a great way to remind them of your other classes that those students would love, and that you would be so happy to see them again! 

Title your classes with keywords that parents would look for. 

Think about what a parent would type in if they were looking for a specific class. Mom might look for “preschool alphabet”, “fractions”, “drawing”, or “socialization class”. They won’t think to look up “Teacher Didgerydoo’s Wacky Math Adventure” or “Let’s Play Flippity Jibbit!”. They also won’t have a clue what those classes are about! This is fine to use in your class description somewhere, but your class won’t get found. I would hate for anyone to feel like no one wants to take their class, when they just couldn’t find it! So think about what your class actually is and use the boring words in the title. 

And there you have it! I hope these helped you! I would love to know how you implemented them and how it worked for you! Leave me a comment or message me on Instagram and let me know! If you have more tips, I would love to hear them too! Thanks for stopping by again! 

If you haven’t taken the plunge and tried OutSchool yet, take my referral code and apply! Send me an email or message me on Instagram! I’ll be happy to help you and make a new teacher friend!