Once students complete your first class, they’ll be hungry to learn more from you. In addition to consistently publishing classes, consider ways you can promote what you’re offering as a teacher and establish your brand on Skillshare and grow your following.
In this article:
Define Your Vision
To help you think about your long-term vision for teaching, consider the following questions:
- How would you describe your creative practice or approach to teaching?
- What topic areas do you specialize in teaching? What can you share about your background or experience that would encourage students to take one of your classes?
- Who is your target audience for your classes? What is your typical student looking for or need to learn to move ahead?
- How do you want students to feel when taking your classes? What are a few words you want your audience to associate with your classes?
Take some time to write 2-3 sentences based on the prompts above. These notes may provide a helpful frame for thinking about future classes and ways to grow your following on Skillshare. Consider how you’ll incorporate these notes into your teacher brand: how you describe your work as a teacher in your bio and elsewhere, in addition to how you market your classes.
Promote Your Channel
Once you have published your first class, you have access to a general referral link. When you market all of your classes at once, it shows students the value of signing up for Skillshare and builds additional credibility for you, positioning you as an active and engaged teacher. This link allows you to showcase a selection of your classes (your top three Skillshare classes based on total minutes watched), instead of just one. Plus, new users who sign up through your referral link receive one month of a Skillshare membership for free, and you earn a referral bonus if they subscribe.
Refer to our article Optimize Teacher Referrals for specific ideas on how to maximize visibility and potential revenue from referrals.
Grow Your Following
Any student on Skillshare can follow you by visiting your teacher profile and clicking the Follow button. Your following is your built-in audience for new classes. Every time you publish a new class, your followers will be notified automatically. Students who join via your referaal link will also automatically follow your profile.
Besides regularly publishing new classes, here are a few other things you can do to grow and sustain an active and engaged following on Skillshare.
Invite Your Students To Follow You
This may seem obvious, but the best way to grow your following is to directly encourage your students to follow you. Let them know that by following you, they can stay up to date on your newest classes, resources, and any contests you run in the future. Keep this mention short and sweet and limit it to the intro or outro of your class to avoid sounding too promotional.
Stay Engaged in the Classroom
Publishing a great class is not the end of the road. Keep students coming back by encouraging them on an ongoing basis. A few ways you can do this are:
- Send a Discussion post to all followers announcing the class and encouraging students to participate. Get inspired on this point below.
- Post your own Project in the Project Gallery – this is a nice way to break the ice and make the space look lively.
- Encourage students who participate in the classroom: respond to their comments in a constructive and positive way, like and comment on their projects, and ask for feedback via reviews.
Engage Beyond the Classroom
As you cultivate your following, there are lots of ways to engage with fellow teachers and students in your discipline.
- Check out the Creative Feed! Give students encouragement on their projects – even ones that take place in other teachers’ classes. Answer questions where you have knowledge. We encourage you to post your own updates, discussions, ideas, and projects here, too.
- Follow fellow teachers and students who are teaching and learning in your discipline. This is a great way to get to know your creative community.
- Post regular Discussions: these also appear in the Creative Feed and you have the option to send them by email, too. Keep the conversation going. Think of it as tending your garden.
Optimize Discussions
While your followers get an automatic notification every time you publish a new class, you can reach out to them with relevant content in between publishing new classes too. You can do this by posting a general discussion to your profile. Similar to posting a discussion to your students in a single class, you can make announcements about upcoming classes or survey your followers about what they would like to learn next. To learn more about using this feature, refer to the section "Using General Discussion with your Followers" in the article Facilitate Discussions.
As we have outlined on our blog, our research shows that posting a discussion to your followers once a month is the sweet spot. Regular engagement with your followers keeps them engaged with your teaching and boosts retention, and may even increase watch time on your classes. But more than that, it gives you a chance to show up in your students’ feeds in a meaningful way.
And if the thought of starting a discussion from scratch makes you a little nervous, take inspiration from fellow teachers who are already sparking conversation:
- Resource Roundups: Krzysztof Kowalski shared a list of his favorite creative resources just for his Skillshare students — and the generosity paid off. His audience loved it, and the post sparked tons of engagement.
- Teacher Shoutouts: Talk about the teachers you love learning from! Barbara Luel and Fatih Mistacoglu met at the Urban Sketchers Symposium in August and shared a bit about their experience (and meeting each other) with their respective audiences. The crossover had their followers buzzing too.
- Class Teasers: Bundle an upcoming class announcement with a quick progress check-in to create momentum, accountability, and excitement for what’s to come. Froyle Davies is rolling out a series of connected classes and built hype by asking students which one they’re on now. This is also the perfect sweetener to your incoming new class in January!
A general discussion from Top Teacher Krzysztof Kowalski, where he shares an incoming new class with his followers.
A general discussion from Top Teacher Rose Nene, where she shares a new class, and the story behind it, with her followers.
Go Further
- Spark Engagement with Skillshare Discussions: What Actually Works: Learn how to deepen engagement with your students.
- Challenge Accepted! Design a Class to Hook Students & Keep Them Coming Back: How challenge classes help you grow your following and how to run one successfully.
- Top Tips for Skillshare Teachers: How to Optimize Your Classes: Learn how to get the most out of your classes with these top tips for Skillshare teachers!