In a crowded space where our consumers have a lot of options, a brand community can be your winning advantage that helps you create a loyal audience of classroom teachers and families who love and support your brand. In our niche, simply having great products or services is no longer enough to make a large profit. The best way for YOU to stand out among the crowd is to offer something most don’t… a sense of community and connection. But how do you build a brand community around your education business?
In general, most of us have an intrinsic need to feel seen, appreciated, and connected. Those same desires also come into play with our buying decisions. We’re more likely to support brands that we feel good about and brands that make us feel valued. Building a brand community around your TPT store or tutoring center can help with this!
Here are 4 ways to boost loyalty through a brand community that will not only drive sales, but also increase longevity.
Create Content That Resonates
The foundation of any strong brand community is content that resonates with your audience’s interests and needs. Allowing and encouraging your audience to be a part of what drives your brand ultimately gives them a vested interest in what you’re creating and promotes a sense of belonging to something bigger than themselves. This sense of community will take your brand further than you could doing it alone.
Don’t make assumptions about what your audience wants… ask for their input directly. Invite replies in email newsletters, encourage comments on social media posts, and have open discussions within dedicated community spaces like Facebook groups. Polls, quizzes, and exit surveys after purchases provide invaluable feedback directly from your customers.
Be sure to take action based on the responses and let their voices shape the direction of your content creation.
You can also use search data to determine what your audience prefers.
Review analytics from your website, email marketing, and social channels to identify top-performing topics and content types. For example, Google Search Console can reveal the exact phrases your audience uses when searching for solutions you offer.
You can perform an Incognito Google search on one of your topics and dig into the “People Also Ask” results to uncover related topics to explore.
With all of that information in mind, you’ll be able to create impactful content as a foundation for your brand’s community.
Be a Thought Leader and Helpful Guide
Creating content that resonates with your audience is only the first step toward building a community. Anyone can create content, but it’s the quality and uniqueness of your content that matters.
If a topic has already been covered extensively by others, find a new angle, or expand on it with fresh examples and perspectives drawn from your own experience and expertise.
If your data reveals converting fractions to decimals as a common pain point, how will YOU approach it in a unique way? How will your resource stand out from what’s already available on TPT? What unique approach do you take when teaching this unit to your students? Do you have a different format that works best? Different hands-on activities or models?
Then after you’ve developed your product and it’s time to promote it on your blog, how will your post stand out in search results? If there are already 10 posts on the first page about converting fractions, how will YOU approach it in a more unique and in-depth way?
You can also take a broad topic and narrow it down to get more specific.
If you want to create a resource about improving reading comprehension, you’ll likely find many blog posts, books, and courses already written on this popular topic. To make your content stand out, you could focus specifically on reading comprehension strategies for English Language Learners drawing from your success teaching this demographic. The teachers in your audience will appreciate you bringing a new, hyper-specialized angle based on your background because it makes your material unique and demonstrates your authority in your niche.
Your audience doesn’t want basic, surface-level content they can find anywhere else. They’re looking at you to produce content with substance across a variety of platforms. Further build your authority by hosting webinars, appearing as an expert guest on podcasts, or speaking at summits. These types of knowledge-sharing activities reinforce your position as a connected industry leader worth following.
Nurture Interaction
Brands that find a way to nurture interaction also win when it comes to community. The key here is to create opportunities for your audience to interact with you and with each other.
How will your brand serve as a hub?
One of the biggest mistakes I see with brands is having only one-way communication.
How do you fix that?
When you ask for input, comments, or feedback… make sure your audience knows you see them to encourage additional participation in the future! Like their comments, reply to meaningful comments, add their comments to your blog posts with attribution, re-share their social posts as appropriate if they’ve tagged you in a product share, etc. If you ask for input and then repeatedly ignore it, your audience will stop participating.
Also, work to encourage interaction within your community. Create opportunities for your customers, readers, and clients to connect with each other as well.
Your brand will grow if you position it as a connecting hub that brings like-minded educators and families together in a mutually supportive environment.
Several different social media platforms provide valuable touchpoints for interacting with and building your brand community. Here are a few platform-specific tips.
Creating a dedicated Facebook group provides a virtual home base for your audience to connect. As the group host and admin, you’ll drive conversation starters and facilitate discussions while also leaving room for members to engage with each other as well.
If you aren’t sure where to start, offer a mix of fun topics along with threads for seeking/providing advice, sharing success stories, and even crowdsourcing ideas for your future content and offerings. This might look like:
- A “Share Your Classroom/Student Wins” thread where teachers can celebrate students’ achievements, breakthroughs, or funny moments from the week. This will build camaraderie in your community.
- An “Ask a Teacher” thread for posting questions and getting advice from peers on anything from lesson planning to classroom management strategies. This takes some of the burden off you to answer every question and allows your community members to share their expertise and feel needed. Then you can show up in the comments to like your favorite answers or reply to expand on them.
- A “Plan With Me” photo share where members share pictures of their teacher planners, classroom setups, bulletin boards, etc. for inspiration.
- Polls and idea threads like “What math concepts should I create resources for next?” to directly involve your community in your future content development.
- Sharing sneak peeks of resources you’re working on and asking for feedback before finalizing them. Maybe even consider inviting some of your members to be part of a beta testing group.
- Fun threads like “Read Across America Day Costume Contest” with prizes for the best literary-inspired outfits.
Instagram is an especially powerful tool, allowing you to connect through feeds, Reels, and Stories. Just like your Facebook group, Instagram shouldn’t be a billboard where you’re posting one-way content. Actively respond to comments, join in on conversations started by your followers, and reply authentically to messages whenever possible. As your platform grows, consider hiring an Engagement VA to help with replies. At a minimum, liking comments signals you’re reading and valuing their engagement.
TikTok
TikTok has a very engaged teacher community where teachers share creative lesson ideas, classroom hacks, and behind-the-scenes looks at their daily experiences through short videos. Responding to comments, stitching others’ videos, and doing duets help spark interactive connections.
Twitter is a unique educational space that isn’t right for all brands, but can be a great platform for educational discussions. It can facilitate back-and-forth discussions through hashtags, quotes, threads, and participating in chat events around certain education topics or times like #EdChatSaturday.
While Pinterest isn’t a social media platform, it can provide opportunities for building community. You can host a collaborative board for your brand where your audience contributes photos of resources in action
No matter which platform(s) you use, dedicate time to showing up consistently on the channels where your particular audience is most active. Then guide those interactions into two-way conversations to create relationship-building touchpoints that deepen the sense of community around your educational brand.
Brand Ambassadors
You may also consider implementing a brand ambassador or affiliate program to reward interactions and shares. This can be especially helpful with tricky social media algorithms because having additional people contributing content increases your brand reach.
For example, you can select a group of ambassadors for a set amount of time (I recommend 3-6 months when you’re first starting). Let’s say you start with 5 ambassadors your first time. Their jobs might include:
- Posting a picture and tagging your brand every Monday (each ambassador has a different day) on Facebook, Instagram, etc. This picture can include a short blurb about their experience with your product or a link to one of your helpful blog posts with their favorite takeaway.
- Commenting on at least 3 posts in your Facebook group each week.
- Asking 1 question in your Facebook group each month to encourage consistent community discussion (assign a different ambassador for each week).
You can reward your affiliates with a pre-determined system that might include free products, gift cards, or first access to upcoming launches. If you have your own website, you can also provide affiliate links to share a small commission for each sale they generate.
Organize Events or Professional Development
Finally, organizing events or professional development is another great way to build a brand community around your brand. Events provide a space for you to facilitate hands-on demonstrations where attendees can experience your methods or resources. These can be done online or in person, but they can be especially impactful for local tutors looking to fill their rosters.
Teacher Events
If you’re hosting a workshop for elementary teachers on using multi-sensory techniques to teach phonics, you could:
First, model a full multisensory phonics lesson yourself where teachers actively participate – using techniques like tapping out sounds, forming letters with wiki sticks, tracing in salt trays, etc. This lets them experience the lessons just as their students would.
Then, have teachers break into small groups based on grade level. Provide different decodable reader books and supplies like magnetic letters appropriate for each group. Lead them through preparing and practicing a multi-sensory phonics lesson targeted for their specific grade using the resources you provided.
After teaching their mini-lessons to each other, have the groups come back together for a breakout discussion. Encourage them to share perspectives on what worked well, what was challenging to implement, different ways they might modify an activity based on their classroom makeups, and any other successes or struggles they foresee when using these techniques with their students.
An event like this combines the hands-on modeling and application of your resources, while also providing plenty of interaction, collaboration, and peer sharing of experiences and solutions. The attending teachers will leave with new strategies, a supportive network of others facing similar challenges, and YOU as their expert guide.
Afterward, they can connect with you online to explore your other products and services. You could also offer a discount on bulk licensing or school licensing of your resources.
Tutor Events
As a tutor, you could run a similar event for parents. Invite parents to your tutoring center during popular enrollment times (like after parent/teacher conferences or spring testing). Focus on one essential skill and build a workshop around that topic. Provide actionable tips families can implement at home, but also include a plug for your related services. You could also offer a super limited-time special for booking with you after the workshop.
Online Events
If in-person events don’t mesh well with your brand, you can take your events virtual through webinars, virtual conferences, or even daily live chat sessions within a dedicated community group or membership site.
A few of my clients host online professional development workshops each year. They build a series of timely emails around a hot topic and drip out content (blog posts, PDFs, videos) over several weeks with related posts in their Facebook groups for related conversations. The goal is to educate and advertise related products and services.
No matter how you host your events, remember the basis for creating a community is facilitating real-time interaction and engagement beyond just passive content consumption.
Start Building Your Brand Community
If you’re new to building your brand community, pick one small place to start. Maybe that’s trying one social media channel, opening a Facebook group if you already have a following, launching an ambassador program, or planning your first event.
With time, your business will reap the benefits of having such an engaged community. You’ll see:
- Increased loyalty and customer retention because members feel invested in your brand
- Higher sales and revenue from devoted followers excited to purchase your latest products and services.
- Valuable feedback and insights directly from your target audience to guide your content and product development.
- Cost-effective word-of-mouth marketing as passionate members organically promote your brand.
- A supportive environment for continual learning and growth alongside your community.
- Differentiation from competitors who don’t provide the same sense of connection and belonging.
The strategies outlined here… creating content guided by your audience’s needs, positioning yourself as a credible thought leader, nurturing consistent interaction, and facilitating inclusive events and spaces… provide a clear roadmap for transforming your educational brand’s followers into a thriving community.
While it requires dedicated effort, the rewards of cultivating an authentic community can far outweigh the time investment. An engaged group of loyal supporters can take your brand to the next level. Remember, in our crowded educational market, this human connection can be what separates YOU from the competition.
If you need help brainstorming your next business steps, book a strategy session here. This is for you if you’ve ever wished you could have a one-on-one session with someone who has been there and done that. Whether you need help driving more conversions or are struggling with a tricky tech issue, let’s jump on a teacherpreneur strategy session and figure it out together!
