If you are an educator with passion, that
is great, but you can take further steps to be obsessed with your profession and
make some extra bucks as your financial development. An Obsessive Professional Reorder (OPR), with respect to teachers, takes your career beyond classroom boundaries reaching
out to the rest of the world online/offline; Reordering your career out of the norm is a creative way of thinking outside your classroom schedule.
Let us analyze this scenario, two art
teachers who love to paint. They establish their selves as art teachers in two
schools.
·
Art teacher A, who loves teaching but
avoids social media, or
·
Art teacher B, who teaches other people
how to paint on YouTube and display finished paintings on Facebook with 50,000 followers
combined.
They are both experts, but Art teacher B
has established expertise and authority
beyond the local school boundaries; with external audience, and provides value
to others by demonstrating the knowledge of art on social media.
Educators go into teaching for different
reasons, but for whatsoever your intentions are, becoming a schoolteacher,
there might be an undertone of financial gain. This is why you need to prove to
your employer you are worth a pay upgrade and a proof to the academic community
that you are not just a schoolteacher scoring sheets, recording grades, or
talking from 8am - 2pm to kids, teens, adolescents and adults who pays you to
instruct them.
As far as the Internet goes in terms of moneymaking
you need to brand yourself real-time, get a platform and network with
visionaries; social media offers you all these on a platter of gold, at
freemium status.
Your brand is your profession and
specialty, already established you as a schoolteacher. Period. Nevertheless, there
are still subject matters you have the wow effect and most success, with your
students; these areas are launch pad for your brand on social media. Your brand
is not restricted to academics, I know of educators who are activists and fight
for social causes not because of the money, yet, they now have natural access
to sponsorship from companies that promotes their visions.
The platform is where other educators
gather to share their expertise with one another. There are several of them
online ZeSchool, EDUonGo, Mobiliya Facebook, Chalk.com, Twitter, teach.org, Edmodo,
Edutopia, British council connecting classrooms, Skype in the classroom and the
financial and professional platform Edujetage etc, even your local school
district groups for private and public schools are platforms and springboard to
expose your brand. However, platforms for educators are springing up everywhere
on the Internet and you need to be on them to establish you expertise by making your presence standout.
Your network includes, but not restricted to
firms (companies, governmental and non-governmental organizations) that have a
community and social responsibility CSR portfolio for educational activities
can become partners with you on establishing your expertise as a schoolteacher.
When you have major projects of impact that aligns with their vision and
promote their products and services, you become a candidate for their
consideration. Remember the more places online and offline you establish you
expertise, invariably gives you access to fellowship and followers.
Before we move
on, it will be great to establish the universal law that money does not come to
those who go after money, for no good reason money becomes scared of them; but if
you aim for the good and improvement of humanity, then for an unfathomable
reason money comes as a by-product. Therefore, as you plan to take your career
as an educator into social media, think first and hard of the millions of
people you will fulfill their dreams, associating with your vision; make sure
you actually make their dreams come to reality. At the long run, you will
discover that your OPR is helping others, and then finances become a natural
byproduct.
Now we can delve
into the seven (7) nitty-gritty tweaks of earning income on social media as an
educator:
1. Getting sponsors
Getting sponsors that pay you in order to associate
with you in order to make their brand visible to your audience, this has gained
traction especially with entertainment bloggers. Organising a live pod-casts that
can be funded by sponsor, similar to what goes on television programs.
2. Flag adverts
Flagging
an advert on you social sites has quadruple the income of popular blogs like
Nairaland, which now monetizing their social media presence. You Tubers
like is
amongst millionaires with direct income from his YouTube account.
Sponsorships differ from Adverts in that
there is a long-term contract between you and your sponsors, while advert is temporary.
3. Selling stuffs
Now you have a considerable amount of
followers online, which you can convert to customers that buy your textbooks, apps,
DIY videos etc.
Social media can be a great place to sell
your services like after school programs or summers coaching camps. It is
easier to get book publishers to print your new book because you already have a
live audience even as a rookie author.
4. Affiliate with markets
Affiliate your social presence with product
(school database software, books, educational toys etc) or service providers,
and you earn commission from these companies when anyone buys their products
through your affiliate link.
Most social media channels provide affiliate
links capabilities within a post, and any follower can click on the link and
make a purchase via the link, giving your poster a percentage of that sale.
5. Promote services
If you are a service-based educator then you
are sure to be noticed on social media especially on mobile marketing channels.
From upcoming summer camps and remedial
coaching services or testimonials that you can share on Instagram to parents
who are always engaged on Facebook; this can give you a lot of opportunity to
promote your services.
6. Boost your handy work
If you are an art, music or even Montessori
schoolteacher, social media can be an amazing tool to make your expertise visible.
As far as you are creative enough to present your subject area in visual forms,
then nothing can stop you from reaching the right audience; with DIY photos and
videos are your selling points.
7. Knowledge based
social media
You join the several hundred thousand teachers and students on Edmodo,
providing current solution to everyday classroom challenges or host a Skype in
the classroom session or Teach.org to share your creativity; in no time, you
will be called up in reality to host a seminar, podcast, webinar or workshop
somewhere around the world.
Why Social Media Works
Schoolteachers who take time to create social media contents and present it
appropriately in time. Getting to know what your followers yearn for will pay
off with time, when you are consistent.
Two main reasons why sharing your
expertise on social media is worth it as you take your academic expertise
beyond the classroom are:
1. Social Media Expands
Your Reach by 1,000x
If you have 150 or 500 people visiting
your social line daily from:
·
Edmodo has 450 active users
·
Twitter has over 135 million active users
·
Youtube sees over 1 billion active users each
month
Even if only 0.1% of the people on those
channels are interested in what you’re doing, you've still amplified your reach by over 1,000 times by
using social media to spread your message and share your passion.
2. Social Media establishes
academic expertise as a teacher
Social media finds life in content
especially visual contents, even if it is a 10 seconds video of solving a math
problem or designing a classroom decor, by being consistent, you are already
establishing your educational proficiency.
Finally, we have many schoolteachers who
use the Internet to promote the expertise haphazardly; the best way is to focus
on putting these seven channels together to give you a worthwhile profit and
attentive audience online.
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