Rebecca Delgado is the founder and lead teacher of the Waldorful Days organization on Outschool. Waldorful Days teaches around 90 young learners each week through daily classes taught by Rebecca and 3 other educators in her organization. But that wasn’t always the case – there was a time when Rebecca was a brand new educator trying to find learners for her first classes.
So how did she go from teaching just a couple learners to managing a thriving organization? She chalks it up to unique listings, high-value classes, and intentional social media marketing strategies.
Finding her niche
Rebecca joined Outschool thinking she would maybe teach some English classes (she was already teaching English online elsewhere) or perhaps a cooking class. While she had a Diploma in Higher Education in Steiner Waldorf Education, she wasn’t sure yet where her passions would lead her in her career.
She created a few phonics and cooking classes that had modest enrollments, and then Rebecca discovered Outschool’s parent topic requests. She noticed a request for a Waldorf circle class, and realized that perhaps her Waldorf experience could be the perfect thing to help her stand out in the busy online learning marketplace. After creating a few Waldorf class listings, she discovered that she was filling a need for families around the world.
“Between September and November [2020], I ended up going from one class to six classes a day, and every class was full with 12 kids. And then it just took off from there, just doing these [Waldorf] classes. And I was like, ‘Wow, I didn’t really think I wanted to be a teacher, but I’ve become one unexpectedly.’ Then I started to think about what else I could do.”
Marketing her growing business
Rebecca believes that she was able to gain an initial following of loyal families by offering excellent instruction in a warm, welcoming virtual environment. While this sparked enough growth for her to transition her solo business into an organization on Outschool, online marketing has played a significant role in attracting new learners and keeping enrollments high. During our interview, she dove into her strategies for using three social media channels plus her own website to build her business.
The Waldorful Days website
Many educators and organizations choose to create their own business websites outside of the Outschool platform. So why have a website when you already have a profile on Outschool? Rebecca says it has to do with being visible to prospective families and learners.
“Outschool is amazing, but there’s a lot of educators there. So I felt like if I was representing myself, it doesn’t look quite so diluted in a very big market.”
When Rebecca advertises on social media, she links to the Waldorful Days website where families can view the classes she offers and then click through to Outschool to enroll and participate in the class. This method also helps her track where her new learners find her on the web, since she can view those analytics from the back-end of her website.
PSA: You don’t need to be a tech wizard to create a website. If you’re interested in exploring this option for your teaching business, check out platforms like Squarespace and Wix that have easy-to-use templates designed to help anyone build a business website.
When speaking about advertising on Facebook, Rebecca says “I find it’s really good to be able to get to know your audience a bit better because there’s so much speaking on there.” She has a Facebook business page and participates in several Facebook groups, either for Waldorf families or general online learning/Outschool families. “Depending on the group, I usually post once a week,” says Rebecca when asked about how often she engages with each group.
So what does she post? Promotions for ongoing or new classes that link to either her website or YouTube channel. When asked about whether she pays for ads on Facebook, Rebecca says, “I don’t do it unless I have a particular goal, like I want more learners for a certain class.” She also shared one piece of advice that’s helped her find success with paid campaigns on Facebook:
“Before you boost a post, you get your friends and family to engage with it. Contact the people that you know who care about you and that you care about, and say, ‘I’m going to post this on my business page. Can you please like it,make a comment, share, or do all three?’ So then when you go to boost it, the algorithms of Facebook (which no one, I think, really, truly understands) like that.”
When running a campaign like the one described above, Rebecca’s number of monthly website visitors quadrupled, going from around 200 visitors/month to around 800 visitors/month. Her organization’s Facebook page “likes” increased by about 200% as well, and her Instagram followers went up by around 150%. While she couldn’t track exactly which learners actually enrolled in a class because of that advertisement, she did see a significant increase in new enrollments for the class she was promoting after boosting the post. She believes she ended up with about 15 new learners from the campaign.
YouTube
While she’s only just recently begun growing the Waldorful Days YouTube channel, Rebecca has already found that it’s been an incredibly effective tool for connecting with new families and learners. Her videos are small samples of her most popular classes, giving viewers a taste of what a Waldorful Days class is like before they pay to enroll.
“I posted a circle time video last week that was in line with a festival that’s celebrated in the world of kinder. In 2 days, I had 200 views, which is just really rapid. And my followers went up by about 80% in a day.”
Rebecca notes that her YouTube channel and Facebook page work together to promote her classes. She can observe that after a spike in engagement with a new YouTube video posted on Facebook, she’ll see a boost in enrollments shortly after.
Rebecca shared that, “I find Instagram is really good to show the visual side of what I do. Nearly everything is art-based in my classes, so it’s a really great place to show that.” While there are fewer opportunities for discussion or description of your classes, this platform can help you make a quick impression on prospective families with nice graphics that reflect the feeling of your courses. You can check out Rebecca’s Instagram profile here.
Quick reminder: While social media can be a great tool for driving families to your Outschool profile, you should not share links to personal social media profiles in your class descriptions or in Outschool classes. See our social media policy for more info.
Beyond social media
Rebecca mentioned that she came to Outschool with experience as an entrepreneur and business owner already in her back pocket. When we asked Rebecca what final tips she would give to a new educator trying to grow their business on Outschool, she had 3 main pieces of advice:
1. Add value to your classes
“I’ve got a Nature Study Circle [class], which is five days a week. We have a theme each week, and we make a 20-page journal, which is like a booklet that goes with the class. And you know, we don’t need to do that. We could just do the class, but I know that it makes the class so much better. And as a parent, I’d be like, ‘Wow, this is awesome.’”
2. Don’t be afraid of failure
“It’s easy to take it personally. Early on… I found it even hard to put something live for the fear of it not working. Whereas now, I just do it. And if it doesn’t work, then oh well, just move on.”
3. Research as much as you can
“See what’s already out there, see what’s working so you can understand why things aren’t working. Be innovative and come up with a fresh way of doing something that’s working.” She adds, “Definitely don’t copy what other people are doing… but see what’s working and turn it into something pretty different and special.”
Want to know even more about Rebecca’s journey? Watch our full interview with her here. Next, head on over to the Educator Hub to share your own tips on growing your teaching business!
