Social media is an incredibly powerful tool that we now have at our disposal. It allows us to share and connect with others like never before, which opens doors to new possibilities.
However, as amazing as it is, some people are still relatively clueless about it. Truth is, it’s complicated! Especially when you try to utilize it for business.
If you are someone who is trying to use social media to sell online courses, or anything else online, then you’re in the right place. There are a lot of tools that you can use across the board to pave your way to success.
In this article, we will be covering 10 great ways how to sell online courses on social media. These are as follows:
- Create a community
- Test out titles
- Use LinkedIn
- Great good promo videos
- Get shoutouts on TikTok and Instagram
- Use Pinterest
- Build engagement via Twitter polls
- Share blog posts
- Build one on one relationships
- Use testimonials
How To Sell Online Courses On Social Media – 10 Tips
Below are 10 great tips that you can use to sell online courses using social media. We will go through each of these points in some detail in the sections below so that you can implement them and quickly start to benefit.
Create a Community to Share Online Courses With
You’re trying to sell your courses to people, so it only makes sense to create a community! Anyone who takes your courses will have similar goals, interests, and even problems, depending on the course.
Creating a community where people can talk about their experiences, lives, loves, and fears, will give your audience a reason to stay.
If you wanted to, you could create two groups within this. The first can be one that is free for everyone to join and be a part of, and the second can be priced.
The price can simply be completing the course they paid for, or it can be something else entirely.
In the second group, you can continuously post all kinds of valuable information there. This could include new information, or even job offers.
Since the people in this group have already proven that they are willing to pay money for your products, they are the perfect group to promote new products to.
They are likely to purchase more of what you have to offer, so you need to take care of them, and give them a reason to stick around.
Creating a Discord server or using Patreon are two viable ways to do this.
Test Out Lots of Different Titles for Your Courses
The title of your online course is a lot more than you may have initially thought! In many cases, just the title alone will make or break your success.
To be successful, you need to come up with a name for your course that catches the attention of potential customers. It should also be self-explanatory.
However, it can’t give everything away, and it can’t just be clickbait. As soon as someone catches wind that you’re going down the road of clickbait, your reputation won’t be what you want it to be.
Your title can’t be a complete sales pitch, but at the same time, it should have some elements. It is a product you’re trying to sell! Be careful when deciding on the tone of your course title.
Depending on who the course is aimed at, you may need to alter your approach to make it more appealing to that specific group.
Come up with lots of potential names for your different online courses. Filter through them and find one that works for what you’re trying to sell, but also what works for that particular audience.
You should re-run social media posts with different titles to see which ones get the most attention. Track everything, and you will quickly have your answer!
You could also use polls to decide which titles are the most effective for each course you’re selling.
Make Use of LinkedIn
LinkedIn is an incredibly useful tool that too many people overlook! Everyone knows about it, but not everyone uses it to its full potential.
There are three primary things to keep in mind when you’re using LinkedIn to promote your online courses:
- Tags are important – did you know that most companies on LinkedIn will reshare or at least like a post that they are tagged in? If you use a tool, mention that company in your post! This is free, quick, and gives you a good chance of getting noticed by big names. Doing this also gives you a good chance of going viral, and can even be applied to both Twitter and Facebook.
- Use hashtags – try adding between three and five related hashtags on your posts to help keep your work relevant. Posts with relevant hashtags are may more likely to perform better than posts with no hashtags, so keep this in mind!
- Leverage all your existing work – if you’re on LinkedIn, you probably already have a decent profile set up. Use this to your advantage, and use your experience whenever you post about a course. This lets your network know about the course, but also shows that you have the experience to back it up.
Create a Good Promo Video
You may have already noticed, but videos perform particularly well on social media. People like to listen and watch things sometimes rather than read them.
Because of this, promotional videos could be the key to success.
You can use a section of your online course to create a part of this promotional video, but be sure not to give too much away.
Get your audience interested in the product, and don’t give them all the answers for free!
Alternatively, you can release a section of your course for free, just to give your audience a taste of it. This is usually a pretty solid way of getting people invested, and sales go well.
Take a look at how
The public gets a taste of what the course is about, and they are much more likely to pay for it. Very few people will spend money on something that they haven’t seen at least a little of.
➡️ How to Sell Tutorial Videos Online
Get Shoutouts on TikTok and Instagram
This can be a difficult day of getting your courses promoted, but it can be well worth it. Usually, you will have to pay for shoutouts, but this number can vary greatly depending on who you’re trying to work with.
This is effectively like an ad, and you need to pay the person for their time and effort.
You should start by creating a list of accounts that you think would work for a shoutout.
That is, their content needs to be something that is somehow linked to yours, and their audience would resonate with your own courses.
In some cases, you could always go for big accounts or even influencers, but expect to pay a lot for their attention. We’re usually talking at least a five-figure payment for a shoutout.
A better bet is to be picky about who you want to work with, so you build a dedicated and like-minded audience.
Use Pinterest to Post About Your Courses
Pinterest is another platform that gets overlooked way too much! This can be such a useful tool for you, even though you may not initially think so.
There are lots of niches that Pinterest works well with, and you might be one!
There are over 400 million active users on Pinterest, and most of them are women between the ages of 20 and 45! Most users are from the US, and they typically have a household income of $50k or more.
Looking at those statistics, it only makes sense to make use of this app if it fits with your niche. If you have courses that are likely to predominantly interest young and middle-aged women, it’s absolutely worth using Pinterest.
Build Engagement via Twitter Polls
Twitter is an important tool to utilize if you’re trying to take social media by storm. Specifically, using Twitter polls to help build an audience and get user engagement up.
People love polls because they’re quick and easy – all you need to do is pick an answer instead of commenting.
We lead busy lives, so why wouldn’t the public love that?
Polls can be anything you like that fits with the brand and course information. As long as you keep polls relatively simple (unless you absolutely cannot), and non-controversial, you’re going to win!
It might take some time, but it’s worth the effort.
Share Lots of Blog Posts that are Linked to Your Courses
Want a great way to maximize your online course’s reach? Blog posts! You can create a single blog post for every course you have, or have a series of blog posts.
They can be short or long, depending on what you actually want to cover in them.
Lots of blog posts that relate to online courses are simply simple overviews of the whole course. It tells the reader what they can expect from a course, but they don’t divulge all those secrets.
On the other hand, you can do a deep-live into the topic and get some great detail in your blog post. Some topics certainly deserve a deep-live, so this is completely up to you!
Either way, it’s crucial that you do your SEO keyword research to be successful. This will tell you which words and phrases need to be included in the piece so that it comes up on peoples’ searches.
Depending on how niche your topic is, you can get organic traffic to your blog, and therefore your course, very quickly.
If you’re working in an already saturated market, getting traffic can be very difficult. Ranking high on Google is a huge task, and it really isn’t easy.
As such, your work needs to be top quality, and all the right keywords need to be used. You should also follow a similar format that the top search results do.
Build One on One Relationships by Reaching Out
This can be another difficult one, because you don’t want to overstep your bounds and seem desperate (even if you might be).
If it seems appropriate, you can contact someone directly if you think they could benefit from your course.
This can be done via DMs, or another appropriate way. Just pick the individual very carefully, and make sure everything lines up.
If you’re successful, you could gain more than just a sale, but your course could be promoted, too!
Use Testimonials
Testimonials can play a key role in a course’s success. Get testimonials that speak to aims and goals to show others that the course does what it’s supposed to.
It has to be worth the money, or no one is going to want to spend any money on it.
If your course is new, and no one has tried it yet, that’s okay! You can either provide the course for free, or give good discounts on it for some people to try.
Just ensure that you track who you do this with, as your testimonials need to be credible.
Include a name and picture of whoever is doing it, and even get their LinkedIn profile, so people can do their own due diligence if they want to.
Which Social Media Strategy is Right for You?
Not every method we’ve talked about will be a good fit for your course. It’s up to you to find out which ones will work for you, and which ones will not.
With that being said, there are some, like testing names, getting testimonials, and getting a good promo video, that will likely apply to all courses.
The same goes for making use of LinkedIn, and creating a community.
Test out the methods and do your research to find out which ones will work for you and your ultimate goal: selling online courses.
Final Thoughts
Hopefully this article has been helpful! To recap, these are the 10 tips we can offer to you to help sell your online courses via social media:
- Create a community
- Test out titles
- Use LinkedIn
- Great good promo videos
- Get shoutouts on TikTok and Instagram
- Use Pinterest
- Build engagement via Twitter polls
- Share blog posts
- Build one on one relationships
- Use testimonials
