Social media sites such as Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn can be wonderful ways to expand your digital footprint and hopefully grow your online business. However, the trap is that if we’re not prudent they can also take a tremendous amount of time. Instead of trying to use them all, choose one or two that seem popular with your student base, for example send out a google form and ask them, they may check Instagram 15 times per day, but only look at Facebook a few times per week - ask how MUCH TIME they spend on them - they may only spend a total of seven minutes on Insta and two hours on FB. This helps makes an informed decision where your time goes to establish your brand. When you do post, remember that you’re representing your fledgling business. You could add some personal pics to be more relatable, but generally, it’s better to share your expertise than your holiday snaps.
Creating blog posts that get traction is also a wonderful way to show people you really are an expert in the field you instruct in. Plus don’t forget other creative ideas of what else you can offer. Are you an expert at creating infographics? Perhaps e-books are a passion of yours? How many podcast interviews have you or could you give - who can you approach to interview you? What about dynamic YouTube or Instagram TV videos? more online resources that are a mix of free and paid content.
How have you expanded? Do you have any tips to share?
Hi @SharonRamel,
I mainly use LinkedIn and Twitter for promoting my blog posts, courses, etc.
I have a blog that gets a few thousand page views every month but what I observed, is that people who visit my blog, rarely click on links for my paid products such as courses and software.
It is like, they all come for the free stuff and never interested in any of my paid products. This is somewhat discouraging...
The way I see it, it is really difficult to sell online. The competition is huge and for people that are just starting out, it is even more difficult. Even in marketplaces like Udemy where someone might say it should be a little bit easier to sell courses, because students come with the intention to buy, again it is way too difficult.
I assume what is needed is hard work and a lot of patience!
Thanks, @SharonRamel, for me I am creating a Udemy funnel to move people beyond awareness into a purchase, then advocates and finally what I call tribal leaders.
I have now created my path and using predominantly YouTube and Facebook to build a social presence of snackable content with a call to destination which is my site.
I offer a free course if they sign up to by email and then they go on a four email nurturing campaign over 10 days with help and guidance along the way and with the final push being back to my site and my £9.99 coupons.
This is starting to provide me with valuable data and sales, plus I can engage and find out what other courses people want.
I recently undertook a survey monkey with my social media supporter base and the findings have really helped me design and formulate my new studio, content and ultimately my next course based on the problems and issue they face.
It is a lot of work to get the digital ecosystem in place but I am sure that with the ease and quality of the Udemy platform I can solve problems, provide value and scale, three key components to being successful online.
Maybe there is a course on this subject xxxx
Julian
Just a bit of an update, the udemy free course Call To Action on the site has now had over 120 people sign up with 61 people joining the udemy course.
It will be interesting over the next 14 days to see if they convert to my udmey group and to the final email of the 5 which is to purchase other courses with a discount code.
Really pleased so far and I hope my other social media is providing a valuable funnel to Udemy.
Keep beleiving. x
Author:
@SharonRamel
