The best way to get the most out of your TeachStreet Team experience is to work together to improve your Team across the board. In many cases, this can mean serving as a mentor or constructive critic for each other. Perhaps some of your Teammates are a little savvier when it comes to creating online profiles or blogging, others might find their strengths include proofreading or lending a creative eye, while others might be social networking gurus. Teachers with more experience in certain areas provide expertise and knowledge to others who might be seeking advice. These mentoring partnerships within a Team benefit the entire group because as your Team members’ profiles get better and their classes are well attended and informative, it raises the bar for the entire team and increases your success altogether. You can set up a mentoring program among your Team by:

1. Determine what areas of expertise would be useful for your Team
   This can include things like choosing class images, the class listing process, communication or tagging your classes.
2. Seek volunteers to be mentors in those areas
   Organize a list of who is great at what, and share that information.
3. Members can get in touch with one another
   Having the ability to ask a simple question or seek some coaching one-on-one in areas they’re having issues with. Mentors might also politely reach out to give suggestions to fellow members on how to make the most of their TeachStreet profiles.

TeachStreet experts are such a wealth of information, and mentoring is not only a wonderful way of improving the quality of your Teammates profiles, but also a great way to get to know one another. The better each of your Teammates is individually, the more your Team will benefit as a whole.

Press releases are a tried and true method of getting the word out about what you’re doing, and best of all, they’re basically free. A press release is a statement prepared for distribution to the media. Basically, you want to create a mini news story that demonstrates the newsworthiness of an event or group to editors and journalists. Remember these few really important points below when creating a press release.

Before you Write:

• Choose your publications wisely
  Brainstorm all the places – weekly newspapers, blogs, local magazines, etc. that people in your target demographic visit. Narrow the list down to the six or eight that you think get the broadest visibility for your event. Think about who you want to attract to the event and where they get their local news.
• Identify Contacts
  Many blogs,  weekly papers, magazines, or news websites have information somewhere on who to send your press release to – check “Contact Us” or “Press” links. You probably want to find the lead arts and entertainment journalist for the publication with information on crafting news. Sending your press release to the right person at an organization will save you lots of headaches. Never spam a contact – no one likes an inbox crammed full of duplicate information.

Writing your Release:

• Follow the standard formatting of a press release
  Google “sample press releases” for formatting. Blog editors and journalists receive dozens of press releases each day, so they have set standards and expectations that you must conform to have your release read, let alone published. Make it easy for them to print your story.
• Write like a professional
  What makes your story different and special? People in this field are looking for a story that will satisfy editors and readers, not just give your event press. Write in the third person! Start thinking about the event like a reporter.
• The lead paragraph must include the who, what, when, where and why
  When promoting a specific event, include dates, locations and other relevant details on your materials, including whether or not there’s an entry fee, and other important information, such as whether or not people should RSVP.
• Include one amazing image
  The press release itself should adhere to standard formatting guidelines. Including an outstanding photo or image will really help the piece stand out. Determine what the newspaper/magazine/blog’s requirements are for image size and resolution, and send an appropriate image.
• Include a quote or statistic if possible to ground your piece, and relevant links
  Remember to write about your event as a real happening: Give informaiton on why is this newsworthy, as opposed to simply being an advertisement. Place your event in context – if it’s happening in late April, is it Earth day related? If it’s a late summer event, can it be tied to “Back to School”?
• Be sure to carefully proofread
  Give your press release to people you know who are harsh critics and good writers. Don’t send out something with obvious typos or spelling errors.

Follow Up:
At your event, try to ask attendees how they heard about it. If you think you might want to do another event in the future, be sure to capture strong, clear photographs with a wrap-up report to blogs, papers or other places the press release was published, summarizing the success of the project, and giving dates of future similar events you may be planning.

While a press release may seem like a bit of work, they really are a powerful marketing tool. Only word of mouth compares to how successfully a press release can make your event well attended and noticed. Once you get the knack of writing a professional, interesting press release, you’ll love seeing the results it can yield.

No two Teams are alike, and so it’s important to communicate with your Team to figure out what works best for you all as a group, in terms of logistics. With that in mind, we thought it’d be helpful to give you some ideas and suggestions on what we’ve seen work well for Teams. Think of the points below as a loose framework when organizing your Team, and be sure to make adjustments as needed to keep things rolling. Still working on gathering other experts to form a Team? Here’s a post on great ways to find people to work with on a TeachStreet Team.

1. Establish a routine for meeting with your Team
   This can be a weekly check-in through an online forum like Google Groups, a Facebook group or a Meet-up Group or you can plan to meet monthly in person. Keep it up and don’t be afraid to communicate – don’t leave your Team hanging!
2. Set expectations for your Team
   Everyone should understand that being part of a TeachStreet Team means being involved to some degree. Establish at the beginning what your TeamMate’s availability of time is and plan your goals accordingly.
3. Get to know your TeamMates’ talents
   Some Teams make a spreadsheet or list of the areas members have experience in – this could include blogging, sending press releases, networking, group organization, making people feel welcome. If you jot down what people acknowledge they’re good at, it will make delegating tasks among the Team easier.
4. Setting Goals for your TeachStreet Team
   Having a specific, achievable goal in common will help your Team focus and work together, which will ultimately help your Team become strong and more capable of accomplishing future goals.
5. Share the work load with your TeamMates
   If you find yourself feeling like you’re doing more than your share of the work, refer to the list of different talents people on your Team have (see number 3!) and consider what tasks you can delegate. You’ll have more success asking people to do specific tasks rather than ongoing, open-ended projects – for example, ask your TeamMate to email 3 local blogs about your event, rather than just saying “Contact the press online”. Assigning do-able pieces of work will make it easier for your TeamMates to help, and produce better results for your Team.
6. Encourage participation in your TeachStreet Team
   Be sure that new members to your Team understand that your Team is active and that activity will be required of them upon joining. Take advantage of fresh energy when you have a new member, and get them involved in what your Team is doing right away.
7. Split or shrink Teams to encourage activity
   If you feel your Team is getting too big and not everyone is communicating or participating, determine as a group whether your best bet is to split the Team into two or three smaller, more active Teams or to check in with members to see why they’re not participating at this time. Sometimes members don’t participate actively because they’re unsure of what they should do.

The biggest overall points that we can emphasize enough are to communicate with your Team, have specific goals and delegate tasks among all your TeamMates. If your Team is doing these three things, we know you’ll accomplish so much more than any one expert could ever achieve alone. We’re excited to see what you do!

Joining together with other Teachers can be a great way to increase your visibility and achieve goals. Teachers on TeachStreet can form a Team to hold organize unique learning events, share information and help promote one another. Sometimes it’s important to step back and make sure that all the effort your Team is exerting is achieving your Team Goals

Here are some steps your Team can take to accomplish common Team Goals.

If your Team aims to increase class attendance:

• Mentor one another on successful practices
• Organize critiques among Team members
  • Help maximize class listings
  • Give notes to improve TeachStreet profiles
• Drive traffic to your TeachStreet profile:
  • Joint advertising on popular websites or blogs
  • Blogging about your talented TeachStreet Teammates and their classes
  • Exchange links and information on your blogs with other TeachStreet Teams
• Use your Team name as a tag on relevant photos on Flickr or other sites
• Send professional quality press releases about your Team events to relevant online publications

If your Team is also a social outlet, and you enjoy meeting interesting Teachers around the world:

• Get to know Team members by taking some time each week to really check out your Teammates’ profiles and blogs
• Do a business card swap with Teammates so you have their cards to give to interested friends
• Share tips and advice with your Teammates
• Help each other out! Being someone your Teammates can talk to about TeachStreet, classes and teaching is important

If your Team’s goal is to help other Teachers or students:

• Communicate well among your Team so everyone is familiar with the goal
• Be public about your goal
  • Blog about how your Team is making a difference
  • TeachStreet profile to give a tiny bit of information about your Team
  • Come up with an FAQ about your Team’s mission, perhaps on a Team blog
• Be sure to follow through
• Let others know your Team’s accomplishments to date

If your Team wants to grow and attract many members:

• Follow some of these ideas for finding new Team members
• Consider forming a small membership committee within your Team to distribute the work of acclimating new members
• Create some guidelines for the Team to prevent potential issues among the Team
• Communication! Determine the best ways to communicate effectively and how often you’ll want to all touch base

There are many ways to measure success. If you define success as meeting or achieving your goals, then it looks like your TeachStreet Team should be sure it has clear goals! Each TeachStreet Team will be different, since every group of creative people will be as unique as each person in the group. Since each Team is different, it only makes sense that Teams will have any number of different goals.

Just about everyone who joins a Team does so to ultimately to improve their TeachStreet experience — perhaps by attracting more students, improving their classes, promoting their skills, networking or simply meeting people to share common interests. These are all excellent reasons to join a Team and really great overall goals for Teams to have.

Let’s consider some specific goals a TeachStreet Team might set. Your Team might strive to have a really useful, well-read blog, which would inform potential students about your skill and its value. A Team might decide upon a mission to educate people about your specific topic. Perhaps the Team decides that they’d like to participate in local events as a group, maybe tabling at Farmers Markets to reach a wider group of potential students offline.

It’s important that all Teams clearly spell out their goals and that all Team members are not only aware of the goals, but can participate in helping the Team actively achieve them. Having a mission statement is great, but it’s also important to determine how you will achieve it and what that means on a weekly or monthly basis. For example, if your TeachStreet Team’s goal is to support one another, perhaps you should meet up to chat once a month to see how you’re doing, brainstorm marketing ideas and share stories on what’s worked (and what hasn’t). Ultimately, the benefit of joining a Team is that you’re able to accomplish so much more than you would alone, so don’t be afraid to work together and communicate to reach your goals.

So, you’ve gotten a great team of experts together and you’re all excited about your first meeting and working together to promote your skills, classes and TeachStreet as the best place to learn something new. Excellent! Now what?

Before your first meeting, you’ll want to touch upon a few points among your Team to make the most of your time together and so everyone is on the same page.

• What type of meeting will work best for your Team – how formal would you like to be?
• Are one or two members planning on leading the meeting?
• Do you, as a group, want an agenda to follow, or would you rather have a round table discussion and let the ideas flow from there?
• And, of course, where and when will you be meeting? If it’s a public place like a coffee house, etc, should someone call the venue to check if hosting a group is okay?
• Don’t forget to at very least bring a pen and paper, and a camera to document the event!
• Discuss what the best way to communicate as a group between meetings is. Consider options like a Google Group, Meetup Group or Facebook Group to stay organized and in touch.
• Decide when you’d like to meet again, and if what you’d like to have done before your next meeting.
• If you have goals you’d like to accomplish, as a group before you meet again, be sure everyone is clear about what action items they’re responsible before they go.

After your meeting, follow through! Keep in touch with your Team – communication is key for meeting your goals as a Team, staying focused and really making the most of your new network of skilled teachers. Working together to promote your expertise and your class listings on TeachStreet means accomplishing so much more than would be possible to do yourself.

We’ve all heard that two heads are better than one, and with that wisdom in mind, we’re happy to introduce Teams to TeachStreet.

TeachStreet Teams are groups of teachers and experts who can join together to accomplish more than they could on their own. Teams can work together to market their skills and classes, help each other improve their profiles and online presence and provide a support network of advice. So you’re probably thinking “This sounds great! How do I go about finding these Teammates to get started?”

The best way to connect with other experts is here through TeachStreet, of course. One option for finding TeamMates would be to post an open call for interested people in the TeachStreet forums. If you want a more direct approach, you can find other experts in your city or by browsing through classes related to your area of knowledge to find other instructors to partner up with. To find experts you have helpful things in common with, from the TeachStreet homepage, click on the “Learn New Things” button. From there, pick your subject. Don’t forget to look under other related topics, too, to find experts in fields similar to yours!  For example, if you’re a jewelry making expert, you might also want to broaden your search to check out metalsmithing or beading experts, as well.

Once you’ve determined a small pool of experts you’d be interested in working together with, follow some basic guidelines for contacting them about working together.

• Don’t want to overwhelm (or spam) potential TeamMates
  If you don’t hear back from someone you’ve contacted, don’t keep messaging them. Focus on having good contact with perspective TeamMates who are responsive, instead of a few who might not have gotten a chance to get back to you.

• Keep an open mind
  Mention some ideas you have for your Team (look for more Team ideas in future blog posts here!) when initiating contact with other experts, but remember that by staying flexible, you’ll come up with a list of Team goals that you’re all excited about, and it’s more likely you’ll accomplish these goals as a group.

• Avoid the temptation to simply cut and paste your whole message
  It’s easy to spot a form letter that’s been sent to too many people. While using some of the same bits to discuss the basics of why you’d like to get started on a TeachStreet Team makes some sense, be sure to personalize your message. Why are you interested in working with each person you’re contacting, specifically? Putting a little extra thought into your initial contact with an expert will go a long way.

• Ask TeamMates to recruit
  If you have a group working together, ask them if they know anyone else who might be a good fit for the group! Finding friends of friends is a great way to form a core group of TeamMates to work together to promote your skills.

• Suggest a few times and places the group might meet up
  If a Team of experts in one location, meet ups are great to discuss what your objectives are as a group. Putting faces to names will also help you get to know one another, and make working together easier.

• Respect people’s decision to say “No, thanks”
  While you might be super excited about forming a TeachStreet Team (which is great!), it might not be the right time for everyone. If an expert you’ve reached out to declines your invitation to form a Team, thank them for their time and consideration, and move on.

• Use common sense
  As with any interaction you might have with other folks on the Internet, if something feels a little off, go with your instinct. Some people you’ll click with immediately, but sometimes you might run into someone you don’t quite mesh with. That’s okay! Just keep in mind that every profile here belongs to a real person.

We’ll have more helpful posts to guide you along your Team making process, so please do check back to the TeachStreet blog for more ideas and tips on forming a successful Team. If you have other thoughts, feedback or ideas on getting started with a TeachStreet Team, please let us know!

Here at TeachStreet, there’s a mild obsession with bunnies.  Okay, maybe not so much at TeachStreet and mostly in my head.  But regardless, bunnies.  And to my great excitement this morning, one of our developer geniuses, Scott, brought in a loaf of bunny bread baked by his wife Jane!  The delicious smell alone drew a crowd, but the intense cuteness of the food product made it even more lovable!

Which got me thinking…I should really learn how to bake!  Then I could open a bunny bakery to sell joy and rainbows.  There are some great resources on TeachStreet for baking (from basics, to bread, to pastries and truffles – mmmm) – check out baking classes in Seattle or baking classes in Portland.

Well, gotta go.  Harold is getting close to my new friend with a bread knife and a jar of peanut butter.  If anyone has good baking tips or stories, park those in the comments section, we would love to hear!

[Left to Right (hehe): Barack Obama, John McCain]

Despite the many exciting television offerings this fall, right now Americans are watching people talk at podiums.  No special effects, no gratuitous sex, and the soundtracks are pretty lame.  But these non-airbrushed older folks are somehow keeping us captivated with just their words.  And that is AWESOME.

When Barack Obama and John McCain speak, people listen.  And isn’t that half the battle, or more, in politics?  And in the business world, heck, even in parenting.  Effective communication is a vehicle for your message.  And according to one of our TeachStreet teachers, Rod Mattson, public speaking can be taught.  It is all about understanding your audience and their perceptions.

If I know anything about this blog’s audience, it’s that we like learning new things and sharing our experiences with others.  So check out these public speaking classes in Portland, and public speaking resources in Seattle.

Who knows?  Maybe one day I’ll forgo a Gossip Girl premiere to watch you up at that podium on TV too!  Remember to thank the little people (and websites)!

$4.50 a gallon? HELL NO! These days, paying for gas can cause a sharp and intense pain in the wallet vicinity. So why not switch to the kind of burn that guarantees some sexy legs instead? Many residents are taking on Seattle’s seven hills this summer with helmets on. It’s always been popular, but bicycling has become even more of a viable transportation option for commuters.

Washington’s expansive bike lanes and relatively friendly motorists make cycling to work both safe and easy. It’s trendy, too! A recent bicycling article in the fashion-forward daily The Seattle Times identified bike shops prospering despite the lousy state of the economy (look, dubya, I typed it), as people are buying shiny new bikes, used bikes with lots of “character,” or pulling the dusty old bikes out of storage for repair and upgrades (like bells and bicycle baskets – yes, you need some of these!).

Here at TeachStreet world headquarters, we have some dedicated and not so dedicated bicycle commuters, but in the beautiful weather of late, all of us long for weekend rides on the islands or mountain bike excursions in the picturesque sound region.

For commuters, the ride home can really make you wish that you already had those Lance Armstrong-esque thighs, but any bike commuter will assure you that being outside and active in the fresh morning and the peaceful dusk provides for quality time to reflect, enjoy the city, and get a bit of that groovy “OH YEAH” endorphin high that comes from honest exercise.

If you’re interested in getting started with bike commuting or expanding your bicycle knowledge and experiences, the TeachStreet blog is, as usual, the singular most informative resource for you on these subjects! For FREE bicycle maps, 24/7 bike storage downtown, and well priced bike repair, check out Bikestation Seattle in Pioneer Square.

Bikestation is a non-profit storefront sponsored by the Bicycle Alliance of Washington to promote ” travel trips that improve air quality, reduce traffic and parking congestion, and enhance the community’s livability.” It’s also super close to what I’ve heard are the best sandwiches in Seattle, and that is enough reason for many of the more “recreational” bike commuters at TeachStreet to go pick up those bike maps.

For those looking to learn bicycle repair and maintenance, check out some of our TeachStreet bicycle resources. There are a number of local Seattle bike repair classes for all levels of repair-(wo)man, which will ensure you have a dependable car-alternative for your commute. If you’re not in Seattle, or just looking for a quick DIY fix, try the BicycleTutor for handy videos and articles for repairing every part of your bike.

Safety is also important, especially when riding at night, so be sure to incorporate some of these safety features into your commute, as our strapping male model demonstrates:

Jay, a bike safety enthusiast.

So, dear friend, this beautiful summer, go on a gas diet, and feel the freedom and self-sufficency of the very open road. You’ll be saving money, saving baby seals, and improving your health. Really, you can do it! And, one of the best things about Seattle is that if you wimp out on the hills, city buses have built in bike racks. But remember, pain is weakness leaving the body. And that midday “summer” frappawhatnot was like, 5000 calories. So ride on Seattle, ride on!