Tutor update for October 2017.

Hi [simplenews-subscriber:user:profile-fullname],

Hard to believe, Hallowe'en is almost here! I picked up 3 new students at the beginning of October so my schedule has become busy again. At the local high school, parent teacher interviews are already next week, and teachers have been handing out term mark updates to students. Everyone wants to retest and resubmit to boost their marks before first term report cards come out, I like seeing all the enthusiasm at the beginning of the year.

Here's what's in this month's update:

1. Update your listing.
2. Renew early.
3. Follow up on replying to e-mails.
4. Get social!

1. Update your listing.

Have you updated your listing recently? Content to consider for your tutor listing in November:

• Make sure your schedule is up to date. As time slots fill up, let people know when you are available.

• As soon as your schedule is full, change your listing to "not accepting."  There's nothing more frustrating for parents that contact tutor after tutor that is no longer available. Remember, if you do hear from someone that you aren't able to help, suggest they take a look at findAtutor.ca!

Remember that updating your a listing places a big “updated” tag in your listing. Even if there is no change to your listing, this lets potential clients know your information is current.

To update your listing, go to findAtutor.ca and click on “Log in” in the menu. If you are on a cel phone, you may have to shrink the screen to get to “Log in” at the bottom of the menu list. If you are having trouble logging in, click on "Request new password", enter your e-mail address, and you will be sent a link to give you direct access to your account.

Once you've logged in, click on the tab labelled “my listings”. Scroll down to the “listing information” box below your listing, and click on the “confirm listing as accurate” button. If you need to make changes, edit your listing by clicking on the “edit listing” link also located in the listing information box.

Change your listing to say "not accepting" by removing the check mark next to "accepting students" and then clicking on "confirm listing as accurate". If you want to remove the "not accepting" tag from your listing, do the same thing, except click to add the check mark next to "accepting students."

While you are there, click on your listing title to see it in a window by itself. You will see a tab above it labelled "who e-mailed." Click on this tab to check out who has e-mailed you in the past. You can check this list any time in case you may have missed noticing a message, or accidently deleted an e-mail you wanted to follow up on.

2. Renew early.

Did you know that listings are reviewed when they are renewed? We made this administrative change when we did our big update last year. So now payment is applied after your listing has been reviewed again. I try to get through all listings once per day, but sometimes it can take a couple of days.

Your listing's expire date is extended by the amount of time you pay for, so you will always receive the full amount of listing time paid for no matter when you renew, so you don't have to wait until the day it expires. We send the first renewal reminder e-mail 1 month ahead of time. You can also renew at any time, worried it may be coming up while you are on vacation? The "listing information" box located below your listing will tell you the expire date, then you can decide if you need to renew now, or you can wait until closer to renewal time.

There's a large number of tutor listings that expire in November, so if you received a renewal reminder, you'll want to renew right away to make sure your listng is reviewed before it expires. When you login to update your listing, you can check when your expire date is to see if your time to renew is coming soon.

We decided to make this administrative change for a few reasons. After the initial review, I rarely ever look at a listing again. I would try to look through all the listings, but it's overwhelming scrolling through hundreds of listings. In time, information will drift, or I catch something that I think "Ooh, that's not right." Now I can catch things that need to be corrected.

Tutors would also frequently e-mail me asking for suggestions on how to make their listing better. I don't mind, and with review-on-renewal now I can do this for every tutor at each renewal.

The last thing is that the welcome e-mail sent to new tutors contains lots of important information. All the information is available somewhere on the website, but who really seeks that out? Also, who keeps the original message to review now and then? It's a great reminder to read through the FAQ, how to recognize and report a scammer and other expectations of using findAtutor.ca.

So remember, renew early when you get your renewal reminder e-mail, and your listing will stay posted without interuption.

3. Follow-up on replying to e-mails.

In the last update I mentioned that it seemed that when tutors replied to e-mails sent via their listing on findAtutor.ca using a cel phone, their replies would come to me instead of the original sender. I had a large number of these in August, so as usual I would notify the tutor to let them know. A couple of tutors did some test messages, and determined that the reply was going through to the intended recipient. That's a relief! I think that it could be using "reply all" sends to both the "reply-to" e-mail in addition to myself. So now when I get one of these message I ignore them. If you reply to an e-mail sent via findAtutor.ca and don't hear back from them in a reasonable time, resend the message using the original senders e-mail address and let me know that you are concerned it didn't go through.

Some people are intentionally including me on e-mails to keep me in the loop. Dozens of e-mails are sent to tutors daily, I would never be able to keep up with all the messages! As outlined in the privacy policy other than the sender's e-mail and the subject line, we don't keep any other info of communication between tutors and their clients. Although I appreciate the thought, unless it's something I need to be made aware of (such as blocking a scammer) I don't need to be included.

4. Get social!

This is where I usually ask you to follow us on Twitter or Facebook, but instead I'm going to suggest you share YOUR tutor listing on social media. Word of mouth is the best form of advertising. I can't tell you how many times I've had friends ask me "are you still tutoring?" Tell your friends, you never know who might be looking for a tutor!

Sharing your listing is easy, click on your listing title so it's in a window by itself, at the very bottom we have Facebook and Twitter share buttons. Click on the "+ Share" box to select from any number of social media/sharing options. Don't forget to write a message to include with the link to your listing. If you @findatutor on Twitter I'll retweet you!

And of course, you can follow us too:

Twitter: @findatutor
Facebook: @findatutor.ca

As always, thanks for listing on findAtutor.ca!
Johanna