Teaching

Where To Find Students For Your Online Course

Where To Find Students For Your Online Course

Photo by lucas law on Unsplash

When your course goes live, it is natural to want to see students taking it. However, this desire can lead you to become obsessed with your course’s data. You’re not terrible for wanting your course to get recognition, as having attendees is the first sign of success. Besides, it’s rewarding to see people benefit from your knowledge. 

To help you get your first few students, we have developed a list of some free resources.

Offer A Free Course

Both Udemy and Skillshare allow you to offer free courses on their platforms. You can use your free course to build trust and rapport with potential students.

The best way to do this in a way that isn’t too time-consuming is to consider creating an introductory course of about 30 minutes. Keep the content in line with what is available in your premium course. That way you are developing a sequence and ensuring you have access to students interested in your subject. 

Facebook Groups

While it’s never a good idea to spam Facebook groups, you can find communities on Facebook that find your information fascinating. Be sure you’re adding value to the Facebook groups you join and don’t begin promoting from the onset. 

Answer questions, participate in discussions, share links to other resources, and then, perhaps, start discussing your course with other members.

Upload To YouTube

You can try your hand at creating YouTube videos to promote your course. The results are unlikely to be instant. However, if you keep your videos short and talk about subjects that relate to your courses’ niche, you’ll be able to grow a following on YouTube and, hopefully, that will translate into students for your online course. 

Interact on Online Communities

No one talks about forums anymore, but online communities dedicated to different niches are prime real estate to promote your course. The first such community is Reddit. You can find quite a handful of potential students and use techniques that work when engaging with other Redditors

However, you can find different forums to promote your course. Remember, while using the forum to avoid blatant promotion, rather focus on answering questions. 

Since you’re focusing on forums with niches that relate to your course you should have a fair share of knowledge on the questions asked in the forum, you can then focus on answering questions from members. Once members have gained an affinity for you, then you can bring up your course.

Add Your Course To Coupon Sites

Put yourself in the mind of a potential student, who could be scouring the web for deals to attend courses at a discount. Udemy gives instructors unique discounts that, if it doesn’t violate the TOS, you can add to deal sites. Not only will students who look for coupons find yours, but you’ll also drive traffic to your course. 

You can also suggest your free course on these coupon sites.

Use Twitter

It’s amazing how much you can find using Twitter’s search bar. Users are constantly asking questions and interacting with larger accounts, who aren’t likely to respond to their queries, giving you the opportunity to interact with users directly. For example, if your course is about helping beginners learn guitar, you can search for guitar lessons in the search on Twitter. While many of the posts will advertise guitar lessons, you will find users asking about guitar lessons in their region. You can then respond to these users by referring them to your online class with a simple message that isn’t too spammy.

Try TikTok

Anything can happen on TikTok, so don’t discount the power of this platform. Because videos are 60 seconds long, you can film a few a day and then upload them to TikTok in the hopes that a few go viral. You can then include your course information or other socials in your bio. 

 

Not all of these options may be the one that drives insane amounts of traffic to your course, but if you focus on building a community and developing a relationship – instead of promoting – you’ll find, over time, you’ll see an increase in attendees.

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