Digital marketing specializing in social media is considered young, and so it presents many opportunities for everyone, whether you’re an expert or a novice. For an agency owner, you may want to develop some courses that can help those who would want to start a career in social media marketing.
With many agencies starting to proliferate the online academy with their courses, how can you set yours apart? How will newbies notice your material? It is already a given that you have a team of experts and a wide array of experience on your sleeves. You just need to make sure that your material stands out.
Below are some tips on developing your course:
1. Be specific about the topic
Taking social media digital marketing in itself is already a broad topic. If you want an effective course that will not only be noticed but can also really help people, narrow your course subject to be as specific as you can get. For instance, you may want to focus on webmarketing or how to get leads for businesses.
Ask yourself which aspect of digital marketing your agency is an authority at. Identifying this on your end helps you in the background as you create your course. This gives you clarity as to which details you should include so that you won’t be giving out information that may be irrelevant.
2. Check the demand of the course subject
Whether it will be a free or a paid course, you would want to make sure that your agency’s time and efforts won’t be in vain. Check if there’s a substantial number of people who would want to learn the subject you want to offer in your course.
- Check out the common questions people ask on social media forums. Find out which aspect of digital marketing they are having trouble with, and if they are willing to learn if an in-depth course is offered.
- Another strategy is to create a poll on your social media accounts. Let people pick which topics they want. These are some course topics that you may include:
- Facebook Marketing and Facebook Ads
- Instagram Marketing
- Linkedin Marketing and Lead Generation
- Basic SEO (Search Engine Optimization) Techniques
3. Identify your target audience
Who do you want to help? Knowing your audience or setting a demographic profile helps you strategize how to communicate to them.
These are some aspects that you can plan on when you know and have limited the scope of your audience:
- Tone – You goal is to teach your audience, but you don’t want to come across as intimidating. You may want to sound professional yet very open and friendly.
- Choice of words – There are different levels of understanding that vary from a person’s exposure to the concept. If you’ve decided to reach newbies, then you may want to do away with jargons as much as possible. If it can’t be helped that you need to use some technical terms, then you have to introduce this term and give them the basics of the concept. For instance, if you’re talking about SEO, you have to include that SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, and then proceed with some details about how SEO works.
- Length and type of the material – Even if your article is as effective as it can be, but if it’s not within the attention span of your target audience, then it may just go to waste. Here, you can also think about whether you’ll use reading materials or incorporate videos. Most audiences get captivated by videos, though.
Learn to diversify the method on how you present your course. You can even repurpose your course content. Repurposing is converting it into an entirely different medium but still using the same content. For instance, instead of just creating a material for reading with words and images, you’ll create a video or a podcast out of it.
4. Create your course outline
The outline creates your course structure. Without it, you can be all over the place with your topic. Like stories, it should start with an introduction then progress to the plot until it ends. Writing your course outline is similar to writing a story—it needs an introduction until you get to the meat of what you’d want to share with your audience, and then ends it efficiently.
As you’ve already chosen your topic, think about how many subtopics you’ll include. If the course is for beginners, be mindful about the number of subtopics or points you include because you might simply end up bombarding them with too much information. Your course outline can be as simple as bullet points. Just expound on your topic as you go along with your course development.
5. Introduce your course
This is technically an add-on and it doesn’t at all affect the content of your course, but this is a significant factor that would determine whether you’ll reach your audience or not. You have the option to do this even before the material is ready. It’s what is commonly called as pre-launching. You may want to create a pre-launching hype using your social media accounts. Just give your audience a heads up that you’re developing something that can help them in some way or another.
Some of the things that you can do on your pre-launching are:
- Announce on your social media page that you’re developing a course. You can simply drop this on your status or you may create a separate image that will catch the attention of your viewers. Be as creative as you can be without exerting too much effort.
- Release some teasers at least twice a week.
- Create some interactive posts regarding the topic you’ve chosen. It can be a quiz or a trivia.
Conclusion
Profit follows once people recognize the effectiveness of your course. They’ll definitely test the concepts that you’ll be sharing with them. A well-thought-out course goes a long way for your agency. As your audience trusts you, letting them enroll in the courses you’ll be making in the future won’t be a challenge anymore.