How to Sell Online Courses on Social Media

The COVID-19 pandemic has made everyone realize the significance of virtual space, especially those in the educational sector. 

When you choose to sell online courses by sharing your knowledge with people who want to learn from you, you embrace the infinite opportunities as a course creator for yourself and for your prospective students. 

At times, you may have your content ready, but you might struggle with promoting your online course, especially if you don’t have an audience base. 

If you feel this way, you need to know you aren’t alone. 

By landing upon this blog on how to sell online courses on social media, You are in the right space. 

We are going to talk about the most powerful tool – SOCIAL MEDIA to increase your exposure to courses and increase sales. 

Stick through this blog as we learn together how to sell online courses on social media, along with some tips to promote your courses effectively.

How to sell online courses on social media- Proven tips to succeed

Social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, Instagram, etc., have become integral to our daily lives. And yes, it plays a pivot role in getting you more buyers for your online courses, which you had struggled to accomplish through other ways. 

You can leverage social media to teach students and to sell your online courses. It is an effective tool for educators to connect with their target audience and build relationships. 

Here are some proven tips to sell online courses on social media: 

Grow a YouTube audience

If you are brainstorming ways on how to sell online courses on social media, YouTube is one of the mainstream ways to increase your course sales. But how? You have to grow a YouTube audience!

Yes, you need to start a YouTube channel; the number of YouTube users is impressive. If you play your cards right, you can be discovered by a whole new and broad audience actively searching for your online courses.

If you want, make course sales on YouTube:

Provide value and pitch.

Here are some of the best ways to sell online courses on your YouTube channel.

• Vet your online course idea to your audience

Conduct an audience research to ensure your online course idea resonates with your YouTube audience. To do your research, look through video analytics and check out the most popular videos to find out which topics your audience is most interested in.

You can also comb through the comments to dig a little deeper into your audience’s biggest challenges to create online courses around that.

• Optimize your YouTube channel to reflect your expertise

After finding you have an audience for your online course, you need to optimize your channel to reflect your area of expertise. 

Use the ‘about” page to update your knowledge and expertise so that your audience can understand who you are and what solutions you can give to solve their challenges.

• Add links to your lead magnets everywhere

To convert your free YouTube viewers to paying online course buyers, you must include links to your lead magnets. Be it PDFs, eBooks, short courses, or any other small stuff, talk about it in all your videos and add links to it.                   

This also helps educators capture users’ email addresses, stay connected, and nurture them toward your online course.

• Post testimonial videos

Feature testimonials in your YouTube videos. It can be from your beta students or past clients who have bought your online course. It can work wonders to build credibility and trust in your brand.

Use Quora to your advantage

Quora is a Q & A website where people with similar interests seek answers and suggestions. 

Quora allows you to follow both users and topics. So you have got the drill: Follow the topics and users relevant to your niche. 

Focus on writing great answers and aim to get more upvotes because answers are displayed from most popular to least.

Here are some of the tips to use Quora to sell your online courses faster:

• Set up alerts on topics related to your online courses

Follow topics that are related to your online course topic or your area of expertise and set alerts so that you will get notifications in your feed when new questions are being asked.

• Use relevant links to your answers

You can add links to your Quora answers but don’t overuse them. Using irrelevant links results in your profile getting banned from Quora. 

Instead, be genuine with your answers and link whenever it need to be provided. Look for questions where you add links to your lead magnets or to the online course itself.

• Create valid questions for yourself

What do you do next if you don’t find the questions you need? You have to create your own questions and then answer them. It opens up additional opportunities to provide links, which is a great way to engage with your audience.

Do not neglect Pinterest

If you are looking for how to promote an online course on social media, Pinterest is a powerful marketing platform to sell your online course. 

Unlike Facebook or Twitter, where your post can reach your audience feed immediately, Pinlearn advertising needs more effort and takes more time.

Here is how you can use Pinterest to sell your online courses on social media:

• Use “About Me” for some free SEO

“About Me” of Pinterest is a great place to get free SEO benefits. Allow users who view your Pinterest profile a call to action to elaborate on the benefits they will receive after signing up for your online course.

• Use featured boards

You can choose which boards your audience will see first. Make the first boards, followed by your online courses. Lead magnets and related products so that will bring traffic to your online course sales pages.

• Create a mini sales funnel to warm up your leads

Users on Pinterest probably look for free content and won’t be interested in paying for it. You it would be difficult to bring them directly to your course page and expect new students to flood in. Instead, you can use Pinterest to use it as a mini sales funnel to warm up your leads and get them familiar with your course.

• Create awesome Pinterest graphics

The quality of your pins is what determines how many clicks and what level of engagement you will get from Pinterest users. 

Create professional-looking graphics exclusively for Pinterest. You can use it for your Facebook and Instagram posts and pin it on Pinterest, too.

Get shoutouts on Instagram

Instagram is another powerful social network where you can find a relevant audience for your online course. While creating general posts, you can also collaborate with other creators for shoutouts. To get a shoutout, find what accounts your target audience follows. 

Follow these tips to sell online courses on social media effectively:

• Create unique profile

Instagram is a social platform that gives utmost importance to HD images. As your Instagram feed is the first thing your potential audience sees, it is important to make it count.

You must focus on creating an interesting bio to catch your potential audience’s attention. This is like your pitch. It must include the basic details of your course, its benefits and relevant CTAs.

• Engage with your followers

It is significant to post relevant and appealing images on your feed but to build a thriving community around your course; you need to interact and engage with your followers.

Another clever tip is to use Instagram Live to engage with your audience. You can host live Q&A sessions and show behind-the-scenes into your course creation.

• Monitor

As you promote online courses on social media like Instagram, you must monitor your strategy to see the results.

Use Instagram’s inbuilt analytics to give you insights into your account performance; switch to your business account to find the data about the reach of your posts, the impressions you receive, post engagement, and ultimately, the follower count.

Things to remember when selling online courses on social media

Social platforms are a great way to reach out to potential customers. You can leverage social media to promote your course, build a community around it, and sell your courses. 

However, there are a lot of things you need to keep in mind when learning how to sell online courses on social media.

Here are some tips to help you get started:

Avoid spamming

• If you just post links to your online course without any real value, you might drive away potential students.
• You don’t have to post every day; twice or thrice a week consistently would be enough.
• Create high-quality posts rather than posting random content frequently.
• Keep your posts short and make them attention-grabbing.
• Explain through your posts what people will gain from your online course to encourage them to sign up.

Provide beneficial content for your target audience

• Share relevant and helpful information like tutorials, tips, and explainer videos rather than just sharing links.
• Use a combination of images, infographics and videos to show what your course offers. 
• Create sneak peeks through short capsule-form videos to give information about what an elaborate course offers.

Don’t forget to use hashtags

• Hashtags can be great for discovering people who share your interests. 
• Use it to uncover interesting discussions happening across several social media platforms. Make sure you stay involved in such discussions. 

Make building an email list a priority

• Leverage email marketing to reach your target audience.
• Create short and direct emails to sell online courses. 
• Add important information to encourage responses.

Conclusion

Social media has the numbers and essential tools to make your online courses sell faster.

To effectively promote online courses on social media, you must first understand how to make your prospects curious. Focus on building and nurturing a community on social media to increase your course sales. 

Moving on, you will have to pay attention to your interaction with other course creators, your target audience, and brands to reach a broader audience. Do not forget to monitor your results so that you can successfully promote your online courses on social media and eventually make online course sales.