Now that you've published your course, how do you gain social proof?

[JocelynH]

We’ve talked about social proof before in the community, what it means and why it’s important but how do you get social proof? Below are some questions to ask yourself after you’ve launched your course and are looking to gain social proof.

How do I launch my new course if I don’t have an email list?

• You probably know more people than you think and even a list of ten people is better than nothing. Open a spreadsheet and start to make a list of friends, current and former colleagues, and past clients. If you haven’t launched yet, send a simple email teaser message letting them know it’s coming (hint: plain text is fine).
• Consider building buzz by sharing it with your network a few times on social media. It’s even better when you can offer a bit of a preview of what the course is for.
• Once your course is live, email your list and blast your social network again with an invitation to join using a free or highly discounted coupon code. Give them a deadline to sign up before the coupons expire and remind them one day before the expiration.
• After that, start to research other relevant groups you could join or hashtags you could use on your chosen social channels. When you join those groups or conversations, don’t start promoting your course. Instead, join conversations and be helpful to show you’re an expert. Over time, people will grow to trust you and you can start to let people know where to get more (i.e. your Udemy course).

What’s the best way to use Udemy coupons to get a large number of student enrollments?

• We recommend starting small with a limited number of free coupons with an expiration date set. Free enrollments can be good to start, but we’ve seen instructors have the most success when they also start getting some paid enrollments in their first couple of weeks and months. This is because paid students are more likely to leave ratings and reviews and actually take your course. It’s also because of the Udemy algorithm factors in student engagement.
• Once you get through your first batch of say 400 coupons, you can take a break to focus on getting paid enrollments. You can always continue to offer the opportunity to get a coupon on your own website and on other off-Udemy channels, but we recommend you check periodically that these channels are supplying good qualified traffic of students who are truly interested in your course.

Students are not leaving reviews for my course, what can I do?

• First of all, you want to make sure students are compelled to start watching your course. Educational announcements are a great way to pique their interest and remind them why they purchased and what’s exciting inside.
• Additionally, you’ll want to take a look and make sure your course is offering value in the first 3-5 minutes. A lot of times instructors have long introductions where they spend too much time talking about themselves. It’s best to get students right into the material and offer a “quick win.” A quick win is a short activity that gets students thinking and engaged within the first 7-minutes. If you don’t have one, consider creating a short new lecture. Courses that have “quick wins” are more likely to get early student feedback.
• Consider adding a request for honest feedback in the automated welcome message. You could also add a mini-lecture or short video clip that explains how much you value student feedback.

I made my course free for my launch so that I could start to get more feedback from students at the outset. When’s the best time to switch it to paid?

• Because free students tend to give less and lower ratings and reviews, we recommend limiting the amount of time you let your course be free on Udemy. It will always differ by course, but you’ll want to switch it to a paid course when you start getting some traction. We’ve seen instructors use this strategy and not change it back until they got 3,000+ enrollments, in most cases, that’s too long. Once your course has over 500 enrollments, you’ll want to keep a closer eye on what the student feedback is so that you don’t get stuck with a lower average rating.
• Also keep in mind that if you want to use this strategy, Udemy has limits on it. If you change your course from free to paid more than one time, your promotional announcements will be disabled. Generally, we do not recommend switching back and forth more than once.

For instructors who have published a course before, how do you get social proof?

[Anonymous]

Thank you for this great post!

With my few courses, I sent out just a few free coupons to those I had taught previously on live seminars.

It worked sufficently well for me.

I don't have a lot of students but enough to have decided to carry on making more courses.

But I had a course that I made free for too long, as you said, and would not want to do that again.

Question

Could you speak to the issue of making a course Private for a brief period instead of Free and Public, in order to limit enrollments to those you know are serious about your work.

It seems to me that giving a few free coupons to students you know are serious, and who will give honest feedback that can then be incorporated into a course to improve the course before going public, is a good idea in principle.