It’s a trick question! You can’t… or at least I haven’t had much luck doing that. Leave a comment if you disagree.

(AI generated transcript):

Hello, Patrick Sherriff here with the Staffroom podcast on behalf of the, what the heck is it called?

freetalktefl.substack.com Anyway, today I wanted to talk about something that I think many people obsess over and get it wrong, and that's how to use social media to get more students.

I should say I'm no expert in this.

These are purely my personal opinions.

You do you.

But, you know, all I can speak to is what I've witnessed and what I understand.

It is entirely possible that I'm an old fogey and don't get the full picture.

I readily held my111111211200 hands up to that.

And this is just what works or doesn't work for me.

So, what I'm saying is social media is not a great way to generate new leads for students, in my experience.

I'm not against using a little bit of social media to get your name out there, but don't spend much time on it really.

When I think about all the social media that we've done and how much it's actually generated in new customers, I think in 16 years maybe, maybe three customers have come in 16 years.

Now you could say it's because I don't focus on social media, therefore I'm not getting the results.

Maybe.

But, you know, when Twitter was new, I went big into that, and then Facebook, and we even have an Instagram account for our business.

And this is how we use it, though, and it's how I use all internet-related stuff.

I see it as a business card that's there when somebody really wants to contact you.

They can find you and a way to contact you.

And in that sense, that's why, well, for a long time I had a Twitter presence, but I've got rid of that because, I mean, who wants to be around there?

But we still are on Facebook and Instagram.

And what happens is I think we only ever post on Instagram.

And only when we're doing special occasions like Halloween parties and we've got lots of cute pictures of kids, or Christmas parties, what else, Easter egg hunts, or any time we do something a little bit out of the ordinary that seems photogenic, photoworthy, then we'll post something.

By the way, we clear it with the kids.

We've got lots of kids in the school.

That's one of the things that they sign up.

When kids join our school, we give them a policy statement.

That sounds very grand.

One page with just various rules, and we ask them, is it okay if we use your children occasionally to appear on Instagram shots?

Invariably, parents say, yeah, fine, but I think you should ask.

Yeah, so my thinking here is just that it presents a nice

atmosphere for our students and I think some of our parents want to want to send want to show their grandparents oh look here's your grandkid learning English see you all see what fun they're having thanks grandpa grandma for paying for the for the fees so in that sense it's useful but it really doesn't generate large numbers of people I think it's just a general background thing and therefore it's not really that important

What is important is spending your time on making good lessons.

So I'd rather spend time doing that than messing around with getting perfect looking things on Instagram.

So it really doesn't take much time.

If you want to do stuff on the internet I would suggest, as I have done in a previous post on the Bulletin, I forget which number but a couple of back issues, and that is

Do a newsletter that goes out to all your students and parents of your students.

That's where you can post pictures and stuff.

And then the parents can have something that they can post to their friends or send to trusted people.

I think you have to do it that way.

You have to think about the privacy of the children but also

It's just not worth it.

I mean, from a business point of view, you know, just trying to put out loads of pictures and content and trying to keep up with it all.

No.

Be a good teacher and just do your internet stuff as an afterthought.

I think is a wiser move.

Now that's speaking as somebody who runs a bricks-and-mortar eikaiwa school.

You know, what I'm saying may be completely different if you're completely engaged in the idea of an online school and only online, then ignore what I've just been saying.

But my point is don't waste your time on social media if it's just another thing that you have to do.

If it's just another thing that you have to do, make it as simple and easy to do.

Don't spend ages on it.

I mean automatically we have it when you send a picture to Instagram it automatically goes to the school's Facebook feed so I don't have to mess with either.

and just check in now and again and make sure it's okay but you know so it doesn't it's no more of a time suck than an hour or two every other week

Any more than that, I think you're wasting your time.

Spend that time designing better lessons.

Ultimately, making a great product, if I can call teaching English a product, making a great product will make all the difference.

The rest of it is just a time suck.

That's what I think.

I may be wrong.

I may be a dinosaur.

If you think my views are completely outdated, man,

And if you can prove to me that actually social media has generated so much.

Well, I'm only interested if it's actually generated more customers.

If it's just improving your image.

Hmm, okay.

Is that really worth it?

You know, time is a limited resource and don't waste it on things that have no return.

Okay, that's my happy news.

But anyway, you know, that's just what I think.

I may be wrong.

Tell me in the comments if I am.

I'd love it if you could prove me wrong.

It would be great if I could figure out how to use these things.

But, you know, that's the thing with social media.

It's there, and because it's there, we assume, oh, we must be able to harness it to generate more business.

Well, no.

Just because it exists doesn't mean that it's very good.

That's my take.

Maybe you've got another take.

OK.

That's it.

OK.

As you know, the usual drill, if you're interested in anything I have to say here,

It's every Friday lunchtime, 12 o'clock noon, high noon in Abiko, and I release a newsletter with more thought-out content every Wednesday at noon, and 9am on Monday morning, bright and early, is a free lesson that you can use in your own teaching.

I hope all of this is of some use to you, and if it is, give us a like, leave a comment, I'd love to hear from you, and tell me what you think.

OK, have a good week, I will talk to you next week.

Thank you very much, bye!

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit freetalktefl.substack.com