The Brainy Ways Teachers Are Building Influence Online

In this post we’ll explore what it means to be influential online as a teacher, or within circles of teachers, and how that can translate into an impressive second income. We’ll also discuss the economic forces surrounding influence within teaching communities and how teachers might use social platforms in different ways for both individual and collective betterment.

Building a personal brand

Teachers are busy. Building an online personality that resonates across a wide audience takes the kind of time and effort that, from my experience with educators who spend their weekends marking papers, seems totally unconducive with the realities of teacher life.

That said, many working teachers have made a success of it. In our Influencer Report, we were able to identify teachers and educators and then analyze the accounts that resonated most among them.

Below you can see the “famous” people who have a lot of influence within teaching communities. They’re labelled as famous due to their enormous followings.

In the US, many of the most influential people within educational circles are working teachers who also work as writers or speakers.

Where they find the time is a total mystery, but clearly a huge amount of effort is needed to build a following as a teacher. The benefits are obvious – influence can equal more power when it comes to speaking out about education policy as well as providing its benefits in the form of brand partnerships and book deals. But there’s potentially a darker side to it, too.

Time and money-poor teachers

We’ve heard a lot recently about the troubles teachers in the US face when it comes to surviving on a tight income. A recent photo essay in The Guardian took readers through a number of stories from teachers having to supplement their incomes with extra work.

Chris Williams from Houston, Texas, said that his $56k salary is topped up by a part time job at Barnes & Noble. He explained:

“If I didn’t work a second job, I would be a risk for not having funds to deal with major financial problems that could occur in anyone’s life, whether that’s a major medical expense, a major car expense, or a family emergency.”

For some teachers, selling resources and working for hours a day on building out their Instagram influence is a key part of their financial survival. As influencer Amy Groesbeck told BuzzFeed:

“I’m a single mom, and it’s because of Teachers Pay Teachers that I’ve been able to buy my own home, buy my own vehicle, fund vacations for my family.”

The resources teachers are able to buy online from other teachers offer some respite from planning lessons and creating lesson plans and presentations and worksheets themselves, but it’s a controversial industry.

One teacher in the UK told us they often had no choice but to dip into their own pockets to buy online resources advertised by other teachers, with one person they knew spending around £100 a month of their own money. She said:

“It angers me. I mean I buy resources all the time because the workload means that it’s easier to do that and have a mentally stable life than spend hours of each week reinventing the wheel. But we’re all in this together. I upload my resources for free. We just don’t have time as teachers to do it all on our own properly which is sad.”

The problem is, when shopping for online resources to use in your class, there’s no guarantee of the quality and you don’t truly know what you’re getting until you’ve already spent the money.

While the life of an influencer can often seem glamorous and trivial, it’s clear that teachers with influence are working tooth and nail to earn the money they do, and the people they’re making their money from are likely facing similar struggles. It’s all a bit messy underneath the neatly organized surface.

Teachers’ voices packing a punch

We’ve strayed a little from the subject at hand, but it’s important to see online influence alongside the economic and political forces at work. It’s something we’ll continue here.

Above we showed a list of the “famous” accounts that influenced teachers in the US. There’s an interesting difference when we compare that to “famous” accounts influencing teachers in the UK.