Does posting in the community make an impact on my success?

Some teachers and tutors like to post and interact in italki’s community, others do not. But could a teacher’s post in the community impact success on italki? What content would get a teacher noticed the most? When and how should you post? Below we detail the data and impact of creating and posting content on italki’s community.

What is ‘Impact’ and how does italki measure it?

The first question teachers and tutors should ask themselves when thinking about “Does posting in the community make an impact on my success?” is what do we mean by impact and how can we measure it. For italki, we consider the impact on teachers’ success to come down to two key factors when discussing posting in the community, Teacher Visibility, and Lesson Requests. Teacher Visibility is how many users/students are looking at a teacher’s profile, while Lesson Requests is how many of those students are asking for a lesson. 

So, how does italki measure the impact? italki looked at different teachers and tutors, first looking at their past 4-week performance in the number of profile views and lesson requests. Then those teachers posted content in the community, and italki observed their performance for 2 weeks after.

What Impact did posting in the community have?

The short answer to this question is teachers and tutors who posted in the community on average had a 250%+ increase in Lesson Requests, and a 400%+ increase in visibility in the first week after posting, and this trend continued into the second week. This means a teacher averaging 10 lesson requests a week could expect up to 25 lessons requests from properly posting in the community.

Keep in mind that these numbers do change depending on the language a teacher or tutor teaches. Not to pick on our Yoruba teachers, but there are a lot more English Language students than Yoruba. It doesn’t mean Yoruba shouldn’t post, but they are going to see less effect for their efforts.

What content should I post?

Some teachers and tutors will say, “I post in the community all the time and I don’t see an increase in lesson requests like that!” The key is teachers and tutors have to post content that students and users enjoy. This isn’t necessarily straightforward. Content needs to be fun and engaging, while also having academic merit and being unique and personable. Check out our webinar on social media marketing, a lot of the same ideas apply to community content. 

The community has several options for different types of content: Posts, Exercises, Polls, Quizzes, and Questions. The data shows that all forms of posting have an impact on success. Which should a teacher or tutor choose? Well, all of them, or at least the one that they are comfortable using, and let them post the kind of content we talked about above, are fun, engaging, academic, unique, and personable.

So, should teachers and tutors all go flooding the community with hundreds and thousands of posts a week? No, of course not. But should we look to boost our presence in the community and make it a part of our content strategy for reaching potential students? Yes, we should. 

The key is to make sure your content reflects who you are and what you offer on italki. It is a chance to show a wider audience your teaching skill and personality. It is not as some may say “free teaching or free correcting” but an investment by teachers and tutors in marketing themselves to italki students and users. What italki knows is that teachers who do it right will see a great return on their investment.