The popularity of online courses has been on the rise in recent years. There are a lot of institutions and organisations which offer online courses for both students and professionals alike. In an increasingly competitive market, it is getting harder to get the attention of social media users. This is because course creators often do not maximise the potential of social media channels to the fullest. So, let us have a look at the top 10 tips to promote an online course on social media:
1) Make use of teasers
Teasers can be a great way of promoting your online course. Despite their increasing popularity in recent years, teasers still remain underused. By offering your potential enrolling students a glimpse of your course, you can create a sense of intrigue. This is always a good thing since building any anticipation for your course will help in popularising it in the market. Another thing to keep in mind is that teasers need to be well thought out. They need to provide enough information to createintrigue amongst your audience, whilst at the same time not be too revealing.
2) Engage users via videos
Engaging with your audience via social media is critical for any brand nowadays. Even more so for companies who are offering online services, since this is the space in which they will operate. In order to maximise enrolments and to make sure that a buzz is created in the market, there is a need to engage social media users. A good way of doing this is by creating videos, since videos can help you present various types of content. For example, you could create a video about a potential workplace problem and how the online course would help you in solving it.
3)Create mega blog posts
Blog posts are a good way to let your potential customers know about your services indirectly. For this, you could create a mega blog post around the topic of your online course. This could include the potential pros and cons of the course options available in the market. Towards the end of the post, you could subtlymention the specific course that you are offering and the pros and cons associated with it. This way, you can create brand awareness whilst also giving away useful information.
4)Using affiliates
Making use of affiliates can be another good strategy to promote your online course. Often, there are online pages and groups which talk about various courses, whether they are aimed as students, marketers or entrepreneurs. You could seek to collaborate with such groups and promote your offerings through them. By getting them on board in as an affiliate of your brand, you could offer them a certain fee or reward for promoting your course on your behalf,and in return, you could boost your enrolment numbers rapidly. This is also a good way to increase your visibility factor.
5)Make it fun
A lot of online course creators make the mistake of being very “to-the-point” while promoting their courses. In the world of social media, it is crucial to have a fun element associated with your content in order to make it exciting and appealing to your audience. For this purpose, you could make use of a funny one-liner or a meme which is appropriate to the topic. You will need to know your audience, and tailor your course accordingly. A course aimed at 16-19-year olds will need to be very different to a course tailored for 30+ year olds. Making your course promotions fun and interesting, whilst keeping it relevant to your audience, will help in securing more shares, recommendations and therefore, more enrolments.
6) Create webinars
When it comes to online courses, webinars can be a great promotion channel. Since webinars are easy to create and a number of apps do it for you for free, this is a channel which is very user friendly. A webinar link is easy to share,and anyone could join in at the specified time, making it a great way to promote your course collectively. Furthermore, webinars are perceived to be more professional than the other traditional social media channels such as Instagram, resulting in a better brand image.
7) Cross promotions
Cross promotions can be executed by making sure that you do thorough online research on your course. You could look for other course providers who are promoting similar content and then collaborate with them in order to promote your own material. Cross promotions work well since most such channels are inter-connected and you can exploit the user base of others.
8) Building a community
While it is great to have a customer base for your course, it is an even better strategy to build your own community. This can be done by interacting with your social media followers on a regular basis. You could launch giveaways and quiz contests to build your community. You could also use the go-live features on Instagram and Facebook to provide useful content that isn’t available elsewhere. This will ensure that the brand recall is boosted and at the same time, your services are subscribed to. Building a community is a great way to develop your social media following.
9) Showcase reviews
Online reviews can act as a major influencing factor for users looking to subscribe to your learning modules. By showcasing the best reviews for your courses, you can create a favourable impression in the minds of potential customers. These reviews will also enable you to increaseyour engagement factor as well, since users are likely to react to reviews. Be sure to choose the right reviews to showcase – ones that are impactful as well as realistic when it comes to giving a description of your courses.
10) Special offers
While promoting your online course, you also need to ensure that there is an incentive for your potential users. For this purpose, you could utilise techniques such as offers and discounts. For example, you could offer a 10% discount to first time users of your course, or offer a discount on purchasing access to multiple courses in one go. Incentivising is a great way to build your business and also to retain your existing customers. Such offers often catch the eye of social media users who are just scrolling through their feeds. In some cases, you could also promote these offers by making use of tools such as Facebook Ads, since these will capture the attention of a wide variety of users outside of your community, helping you to continue to grow your potential client base.
Ellie Richards is an online Marketing Manager for Original PhD. She specialises in research, content and article writing on various topics, including Education, Marketing, and Technology.