#205: The New Social Media Strategy for Course Creators

Welcome back to another edition of the Course Creation Incubator podcast. I’m your host, Gina Onativia, here to get you excited about your course creation, your workshops, whatever you’re putting out there right now. I’m here to help you to drive action. And have you been listening over the last few weeks to get a sense of binge worthy content and going back and thinking about your courses?

Are you getting your students across the finish line? If you haven’t listened to last week’s episode, please go back and check that out. And before we dive in, we’re going to talk a little bit about social media today. And I know I don’t talk a ton about social media, but I do want to do some highlights today for good reason.

But before we dive into that, just a reminder that Legion is critical. I was just thinking to myself today, I’ve been neglecting building out my audience, building up my business development on and wanted to remind you, as I remind myself this morning, that we should always be attracting new audiences. We should always be prospecting. I’m going to set aside 30 minutes a day, which I used to do, and now have fallen off to make sure that I’m building relationships, that I’m attracting new people to are done for you to our accelerator, to our different programs because it’s so critical to not get caught up in the day to day and not think about what’s ahead

and not develop to the next phase of your business. I was on this client call the other day and it was a business development call. It wasn’t intended to be, but it turned into one and I was inspired by all the new ideas that were flying around in terms of who this client could attract. So I want to inspire you.

Go out and prospect attract, get in front of people, make sure you’re building up your audience database. You’re building those relationships because that’s how we build successful online businesses for the long term. All right. Let’s turn our attention to a little bit about social media and why I decided to highlight that in today’s episode. And I always talk about email marketing, how I want you guys to double down because you own your list.

You do not own social media. Social media can go down in any minute. However, I do feel like social media, especially organic, does have its place. It is great for social proof. It is great for establishing your authority and expertise when you are first putting yourself out there in terms of a course or a live cohort or a workshop, people are going to check you out.

And I know I go to people’s platforms just to see, Hey, do they have at least one platform to show me that they’re legit? Are they posting at all to show me that they’re engaged and that they’re committed to putting out consistent content? These are the things I look for, and this is what I think. Organic social is really good for that.

You’re showing up each and every week. Social was a part of our conversion copywriting playbook, so we did do some LinkedIn posts, we did some Instagram. So we thought today we take a few minutes and I would whip through fast as always, a workshop episode about organic, social and its place, and not only course creation, but an online promotion and what to consider.

Because here’s the thing. I talk to people all the time who worry about social media. I feel like it should be on social more. What am I doing? I’m not being consistent enough and I don’t want you worrying about it. I definitely don’t want you obsessing about it because I do have some course creators and entrepreneurs who come up to me and are obsessing about it.

And unless you’re one of these big gun influencers putting a lot of money in ads, I don’t think you need to obsess about social media because that’s not your business. What we’re talking here is not about organic social media becoming your whole business. I’m talking about it being one layer of like a seven layer nacho dip. Okay. We’re talking about multichannel marketing efforts, and you’re going to have a lot of different layers that create your promo, create your business building, create your lead gen.

Organic social is just one part of it. So now that I’ve created those caveats, we can dive into a little bit about what I consider the new social media strategy for course creators. And first and foremost, we have to acknowledge that what worked even two years ago is not really cutting it anymore because of the algorithms that keep changing, right?

That’s what makes social media so tricky. They’re constantly evolving these platforms. They’re constantly switching up the algorithms which make sense. So there’s been big shifts in platforms like Instagram, Facebook, even Tik-Tok, and they’ve all become saturated. And it’s tougher to get that organic reach. And then the algorithm values ads, right? So it’s going to reward people running ads.

So that’s something else to consider. However, let’s talk about social SEO, which is strategically creating content that gets discovered organically, not just on Google Search, but across platforms like Instagram, YouTube, TikTok. Why is this important? Because your ideal client or students aren’t just looking for social to scroll. They’re using it as a search engine. They’re looking for answers, inspirations, quick solutions in the apps that they’re already spending time in.

You want to make sure that your content is top of mind. So with that social SEO in mind, let’s talk about some ways that you can move the needle for your own organic social and one keywords are your best friend. I want you identifying the keywords your audience would naturally search for. So for me it would be something like how to launch an online course, course marketing strategies, or ways to price my course or ways to price my coaching package, and then you would strategically use them in your content.

So I want you to do a little bit of keyword research here. You should be doing this anyway in terms of ranking for your website. So start small. Think about five keywords to start with. You don’t need a ton of keywords. Okay, so start with those and think about how you can put them in your titles, your thumbnails for YouTube, your posts for Instagram, etc..

Okay, so keywords is number one. Second, think about bite size and searchable short form content that means reels, shorts, tiktoks that provide quick answers to common questions your audience is already asking. We do reels every week for the podcasts. We need to do more shorts for YouTube. We’ve been working on our YouTube a little bit more, but we definitely have room to grow.

So do a little bit of research. Doesn’t mean you’re doing 20 reels a week. Start off with one reel a week, one reel every other week, do some shorts, try out the waters. Test the waters. All right. Third point I want to make is to make sure you’re optimizing your profile, that your bios and summary descriptions include those key terms that we were just talking about, who you are, what you do, who you serve.

Be clear and specific about your messaging and who you want to attract. I was just tinkering with my LinkedIn profile. This was a couple of weeks ago. I love LinkedIn. I don’t think it’s just for recruiting. I love the content and the connections that are made there. I think there’s a great, sophisticated audience still to be won and attracted there.

So every couple of months I’ll look at my profile and I think, Am I still attracting the right audience? Is this what I want to convey? Because this is low hanging fruit for us, especially for LinkedIn? Because again, I still think there’s organic opportunities there and and that let’s make the most of those. And it really starts with our profile.

Same thing with Instagram or Facebook. Okay. In terms of your profile, so you’re checking all your profiles. Let’s audit those every couple of months. I was just checking my links today to make sure, hey, is this still relevant? Okay. Fourth step I want you to think about collaborate with intention. So in today’s crowded market, collaborating isn’t just a nice to have, right?

It’s really essential. And I was just talking about this a couple of weeks ago when I debriefed my lunch with Megan O’Leary and how we collaborated, and then we collaborated with others and we asked people to partner with us. I think this is so critical. So you can borrow audiences from someone else. You can connect with complimentary experts, influencers, maybe other course creators in your space.

And I did this exercise a few years ago when I had a mastermind, and I talked about it on the podcast and I asked, Should I challenge them? Actually, I didn’t ask or challenge them to reach out to ten people on your platform of choice. So a lot of folks at the time are on Instagram. So reach out to ten experts that you think you could have a partnership with or a collaboration and reach out, say, Hey, love your work, love what you’re doing.

I’ve been following you for a little while here. Here’s how I think we could collaborate. I think our audiences could really get a lot of value out of each other. We could swap podcast episode, we could coauthor something together. We could host live sessions. I love this idea because it expands your reach and provides fresh perspectives your audience will love.

So you can do this exercise. Okay. Ten might feel like a lot. Let’s start with five experts that you want to go out to on your platform of choice and reach out. But think about it. Do custom reach out. Okay. I do talk about testimonials. And we never just want a blanket that we want to be thoughtful about how we reach out to people and take the time.

Most people don’t take the time. I get so many vanilla letters reaching out to me that obviously were created on I. If you create a thoughtful note that really speaks to them in their content and what they love about them, you will get results because no one does that anymore. Everyone puts it into Jackie Beattie and just mass sends out, right.

Does these mass mailings. So think about why you love them. What is the opportunity here? Do you have a podcast? Do you have a blog? Do you have a summit coming up and you’re trying to recruit people? How can you add value to someone’s life? Okay. Think about that. Think about the opportunity and bundle that together in a note to them and make it count.

OK, Don’t let’s, let’s really customize. Let’s really personalize. So think about how you can cross-promote and collaborate with intention. Right? That’s what I think it’s about intention, right? And not just blasting something out there. Right. And then the fifth step, I want you to be proactive, spend 10 minutes a day commenting, liking DMing to build real connections. It takes a little consistent effort to create some nice results.

And I’ve been trying to do this on LinkedIn because again, it rewards you. It’s great for your algorithm. People see you commenting, people see you sharing, they see that you’re active and it’s so important in terms of social media to have people see you engaging. And if I was going to give a bonus step, it would be get consistent content out there, whatever it looks like.

We’re only posting one day a week right now on Instagram and on LinkedIn. And if it’s a promo, we’ll do more. Or if I have a special event or I’m speaking, I’ll do more, I’ll do feature spotlights. But I know I’m consistent about once a week. Okay, start there. Be consistent about once a week. If you are not posting at all, start doing that.

If you are posting once a week and you want to up the ante, go twice a week. Think about doing reals, think about doing shorts, whatever that looks like for you up your ante. Same with YouTube we’re doing once a week, so hopefully I’ve changed your mind a little bit about the new social media strategy. There are still opportunities to be had to help you layer this on top of your other multichannel marketing efforts.

If I’ve made an impression on you at all, please make sure you subscribe so you don’t miss one episode. And thanks for hanging with me today. Until next week, go create be you and be brilliant and get it done.