To market on social media platforms, you need followers. And these followers take work to get on board. Everything requires time, patience, and effort. Your social media following requires all of these. While we have stressed the aspects of growth, a common question might arise which platform to begin with? Let’s dig deeper into choosing the right platform for your course academy.

The right platform

Based upon your brand’s personality and image you can select either of the following ones or can choose multiple platforms as well.

Facebook

As a social media platform, Facebook has the highest monthly active users, with an astonishing number of 2.6 billion. And that number is your opportunity to grab, engage and convert. If your offering has a broader scope of demographics, Facebook must be your go-to platform. Mind you, Facebook isn’t great for niche marketing. So if you want to grow your social media presence while targeting a specific audience, you are better off choosing our next one on the list.

Traits in your course offering

1. Wider reach
2. Wider demographics can be targeted
3. Posts can be video, textual, image and link-based

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Instagram

Instagram comes within the Facebook ecosystem. Instagram is Facebook’s kid, so there is quite some compatibility and synchronization between these two platforms. Using these two platforms together is highly recommended to work wonders for your online presence.

Instagram is more youth-oriented, with more stress provided on images and short videos. Both post types are for someone with a shorter attention span.

Traits in your course offering

1. Youth-oriented
2. Image and video-based content
3. Simple and to-the-point content
4. Focused on personal development rather than professional development

LinkedIn

LinkedIn defines the statement ‘one size doesn’t fit all.’ LinkedIn as a platform is highly niche-oriented. The audience here is working professionals who have succeeded in their respective fields. They are knowledgeable and smart and weigh the pros and cons of each product they buy. To grow your following on social media to market courses, LinkedIn might be appropriate for selective targeting. LinkedIn is your best bet if your course matches any of the given personalities.

Traits in your course offering:

1. Skill development,
2. Knowledge-oriented
3. Professional development
4. Value addition to resume

YouTube

The best in the business of influencer marketing. YouTube has everyone: bloggers, celebrities, sports personalities, politicians, artists, chefs, influencers, etc. It is the mecca for social media marketing.

While being on YouTube is one thing, knowing the audience is another. With an average age of mid-20s, YouTube is perfect for capturing young audiences. If you wish to grow your following on social media to market courses, YouTube is the best bet to get Gen Z on board. The reach and the ability to engage viewers to binge-watch content make YouTube appropriate to be considered as the platform of choice.

Traits in your course offering

1. Youth based
2. Interesting content, filled with videos
3. Simple and to-the-point content
4. Easy to digest while improving knowledge

Quora

This is one of the most underrated social media platforms. Not only underrated but the capabilities of Quora also have not been realized by many people. If engagement with knowledge is your prime motive, Quora is the holy grail. You cannot go wrong with Quora when you want to add real value to your learners’ knowledge. While Quora has lessened its reach by removing the ability to add links in the bio, you still can make your efforts worthwhile.

Traits in your course offering

1. Wider information scope
2. Engagement focused information
3. More text-based information

When you want to grow your following on social media, selecting the perfect platform is most important. If you choose something that doesn’t match your brand personality all your efforts shall be wasted.

With the platform chosen let’s see some of the posts that can create traction for your social media presence.

Posts that generate traction to grow your following on social media

Before selecting the posts to create, knowing and understanding your audience is the first step. Talk to your existing learners, and know what platforms they use and which posts they get attracted to. Based on these findings, create the perfect blend to grow your following on social media sites.

Competition based posts

Humans are competitive, which makes these posts great for engagement. Getting your audience to like and share such posts can work pretty well to generate traction. Encouraging your followers to add new content using a relevant hashtag can be a great engagement activity.

Some competition post ideas can be

1. Tag the friend that cooks the best Indian food- Add your course link here if you are teaching a topic related to this competition
2. Comment to win- these can work well if you have created a discount coupon on Knorish and want to capture leads.
3. Questionnaire- can be related to your course topic

Polls and surveys

These can be great if you want to take feedback from your learners. Using polls and surveys might take some time but it can be great for your content’s improvement. Polls and surveys act as a way to know what the ideal customer wants, understand their pain points, and what are the things they detest in your relevant content.

Reward the audience who have interacted and provided you with feedback. Give them coupon codes, provide a downloadable, or even give them a mini version of your course.

Infographics

It is the perfect tool for dissipating information using visuals. Infographics have more information than an image. While using an image, inferring the content and context depends upon the viewer’s imagination. Whereas infographics have data and specific textual information.

As a course creator, if you want to grow your following on social media channels, infographics can work out in your favour. They are informative and attractive, which are great traits to have in a post.

Videos

These are hands down the best type of posts that you can use to grow your following on social media. Platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube nowadays use stories where the user can shoot a small video with a length of up to 60 seconds. These work well among younger audiences with a shorter attention span. You click on the post, it plays, you infer information, and that’s it. Wondered why every social media metric is integrating this. Now you have the answer.

Going Live

Going Live can be the perfect opportunity to interact one on one with your audience. To become a part of the social scene, it is very important to go live. Using platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Youtube, you can go Live by embedding the link on Knorish.

With this, engagement and interaction increase as you add a human face to your valuable content. You can even use these live streams as standalone course content.

This activity will grow your following on social media by leaps and bounds.

With posts decided let’s look at appropriate timings to post your content on these social media platforms.

Best time to post across platforms

Setting up social media profiles

To have a great number of followers requires a great profile. If your profile isn’t interesting the viewer won’t come back to take a second look. Therefore some optimizations have to be made to create an attractive and engaging profile.

YouTube

1. Segment videos into playlists
2. Have an attractive name that is in sync with your course offering and brand personality.
3. The profile photo can be your academy’s logo
4. Include keywords in the description box below the video to enable SEO
5. Enable comments and views to look genuine and trustworthy

LinkedIn

1. Use your image as the profile photo
2. Add your employee information

Facebook

1. Set up a business page
2. Add profile and cover image
3. Add contact information
4. Set up location, address to be shared here
5. Description with 155 words to tell the world about your page and the purpose
6. Set up 3 categories to help people find your page
7. Create a username (Pro tip)
8. Add a call to action button below the cover photo to link your website (Pro tip)

Quora

1. Set up the profile with the academy’s name
2. Use a company logo as a profile image
3. Set alerts according to your domain

Instagram

1. Get the profile verified if possible
2. Generate 10,000 followers which allows you providing links to Instagram stories
3. Write a meaningful and appropriate bio
4. You may create a business profile

Use all these tips and set up your social media profile to increase your followers. If implemented well you are bound to see success with social media marketing. Now you have a profile that is up and running. But what about engagement?

Here are some tips and hacks that increase your profile’s engagement

Send page invites

So this is a Facebook-only tip. You can use your business profile on Facebook to send out invites to potential clients. These can be people who are related to your existing learners, someone who has responded to your post, or even a random profile who fits well within your ideal user persona. If you have created a Facebook ad, inviting people who have responded to this ad can also be useful.

Use Ads

Advertisements are a boon for increasing the reach of your profile. Whether you are on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Quora, or even YouTube. It might appear to be resource-draining but can work well if your profile needs a bit more followers. While someone who is beginning with this advertising may not be well versed in this advertising activity.

You can learn more about this by taking courses from Google, Facebook, and even LinkedIn on how to use their platform to get SEO running over your content. Most of these courses are available for free except for LinkedIn.

• https://www.facebook.com/business/learn/courses– Facebook (Free)
• https://skillshop.withgoogle.com/– Google (Free)
• https://www.linkedin.com/learning/topics/search-engine-optimization-seo – LinkedIn (Paid)

Answering on Quora

Creating alerts for questions related to your domain and answering those questions can be a great engagement activity. While answering these questions and solving doubts, you establish your profile as a thought leader. Being genuine and providing reliable information while resolving audience issues in the comments section can lead to growth for your profile. While replying to comments, you can even include links to your online course academy’s website to generate leads.

Using descriptions on YouTube

YouTubers often underutilize the description box below a video. They fail to understand the purpose and benefits of this crucial aspect. The description box is a great place to make the Youtube crawler begin the search engine optimization efforts. Using critical keywords that are in sync with your content, online course, and overall brand personality is highly recommended. You can even use the call-to-action statements to take the viewer to the sales page. All in all a great way to grow your following on social platforms.

Create LinkedIn groups

Creating a LinkedIn group is another way in which you can create a community of like-minded students who might be potential customers. These groups are more knowledge-oriented as most of the Linkedin users are working professionals. LinkedIn as a platform is great if your course is related to topics on career development while being knowledge-rich.

Be active on social media

Always try and be active on your social network. YouTubers should engage and interact with their audience through the comment section. Take opinions about the next video or even have a normal friendly conversation with your viewers. This will create mutual trust, thereby strengthening the relationship.

Facebook users should respond to messages they receive from chats. If you find doubts related to your domain, try to help and answer them. Same works for Instagram as well. Quora users have their entire activity focussed on doubt resolution therefore, out of all the platforms, Quora users need to be on their toes.

Sound helpful and not rude

We have often heard people using the sentence, ‘Success got into his head’. Don’t be that person who is rude and mean. Always be kind and helpful toward your audience. Never undermine their efforts to get you to your current position. Resolve their doubts, answer queries, and even provide them with coupons to reward them for their patronage.

Get your Instagram profile verified

You can get your Instagram profile verified, which will enable you to share links. Else if you have 10,000 followers, link sharing can be done. Use these links to divert the user to your sales page created by using one of the themes on the Knorish website builder.

Add links on Facebook and LinkedIn profiles

You can even add links to your profiles on Facebook and LinkedIn. While on Facebook, these links can be integrated into call-to-action buttons that appear below the cover photo. On LinkedIn, the same can be done but without a call to action button. Using these links can turn out well to generate traffic on your website.

Get images for free

Countless sites on the internet provide great High-Definition images for free. Two of the biggest names here, Pexels and Unsplash, are royalty-free while providing quality images. To read a bit about some other free image sites.

Read: 6 Awesome Royalty Free Stock Image Sites for your Online Course Content & Websites

Follow all the steps to select the platform while creating a profile by using the perfect post type to grow your social media strategy. Not only will this turn out great for marketing but you will see a rise in the sales of your course.