As our members suggested in our 2025 survey, social media is taking over traditional marketing methods and will become the main way of promoting distance learning in the very near future if not already. On the flipside, social media can be time-consuming and hard to get to grips with. Here we will share a few tips and pointers to get the most out of social media for your business.
Choose wisely
It is very easy to start by creating profiles on multiple social media networks, but this can be a mistake that will be hard to come back from. All the social media sites are slightly different in terms of audience and content and as well as having algorithms, they also are used differently by their users. The best way to start is to choose one or two networks that are popular with your target audience. Posting the same content at the same time on each network will not be effective.
Everything from what you post to when you post it and how frequently will be different on each network. The best way to approach it is to experiment with each network seeing what works for each network, what type of content works? When do your posts get most engagement? How often is too often? Once these questions are answered, you can then look to align your social media strategy with your business goals.
Setup page
Make sure your profile page has as much information as possible. Include contact details, images, video and a great one for education is reviews and testimonials. This gives visitors confidence that your courses are worth taking and can improve career prospects going forward.
Give value
Over-promotion is the biggest reason people unfollow brands on social media. So how do I sell my course without promoting it you ask? If you are delivering a course, it’s safe to say you are probably an expert in your field. Therefore you can give people information that they can use. For example, if you offer a course on leadership, then write content around leadership, giving people valuable information that they can put in practice. If this information helps them, improves their career or confidence then when you offer a comprehensive course, then you will at least be on the list of the providers to take the course with.
The nature of social media means giving value is key, but that doesn’t mean you can’t promote, it’s just people are more likely to happy to receive promotions from companies that have previously given them value. Try one promotional post for every 4 or 5 posts offering information and value.
Lead magnets
Lead magnets take this further by offering even more information in return for signing up to an email newsletter or something similar. Lead magnets come in the form of webinars, how to guides and cheat sheets. The key to getting lead magnets right is give enough valuable information that they will want to come back for more, but not giving too much information that they won’t need the paid course at all.
Be Social
It’s called social media for a reason, so using it as a bulletin board or advertising space will not cut it. If you engage and interact with your followers, they are much more likely to engage with you in the future. Social media algorithms work by working out how much engagement you are getting, in the form of likes, comments, shares and other things such as link clicks and video views.
The posts with most engagement will reach much further. It is also a great opportunity to get your community involved with decisions and get feedback on current activity. People feel closer to a business if they feel their opinion counts and this can be a great way to engage your followers whilst learning how to improve your business in the future.
Social Advertising
People share everything via social media and as a result, the social networks have valuable insights. This includes job titles, interests, language and much much more. This information makes it easy for a distance learning company find the ideal audience for any of its courses.
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