By Julie Hood
Every single one of us needs to be building our community – yes, even if you don’t have your course done yet. When you build your community now, then you can introduce your brand-new course to a ready-made audience who already knows who you are and why they like you. They have some sense of how you work, what you know and whether they trust you.
So don’t put off promoting yourself!
Here are five easy ways to promote your course and build your audience:
1. Connect with your “people” in a Facebook group. Go join three new Facebook groups where you think your potential students participate. And this week I want you to spend a few minutes each day participating. Cheer on successes, answer questions and help out the group members. Don’t promote yourself! You are just being helpful for now. When someone comments, send them a friend request. Once you are connected, they will get notifications when you post in the group. This step is a simple way to build your reputation as an expert in your topic area.
2. Write a blog post. Write a how to blog post with about 800-1400 words – and 5 steps. Then post it on your website with a nice image. You want to share some juicy steps to solve a problem for your potential student.
3. Share your blog post. Share your blog post on your social media accounts. One suggestion when writing your blog post is to refer to someone who has inspired you in the actual post. Then you share your blog post with them and tag their social media accounts. (For example, some of my target audience listens to the Marketing School podcast. I could add the following: “Thanks to Neil Patel and Eric Siu of the Marketing School podcast who inspired this post with their ‘Rule of 7’: if someone sees you online seven or more times, you are more likely to convert them into a follower/subscriber. Here are five ways to promote your course – and make sure you are seen at least seven times.” Then I can tag them and say something like, “Thanks @Neil and @Eric for your episode #523 of Marketing School. It inspired my latest blog post on 5 ways to promote your course: [link].” When I tag them, I get in front of their audience.)
4. Repurpose and reuse. Take your blog post content and turn it into other pieces of content. Pull a quote from the post into a tweet. Create a social media image with a quote. Do a Facebook Live and discuss your 5 steps with even more detail. Use the post in your email newsletter. This way you are not constantly having to create brand-new content when you can repurpose what you have already written.
5. Create a new lead magnet. Turn your “how-to” into a lead magnet. It can be a simple one-page resource guide with the five steps listed. Then you can offer it on your original blog post as a “content upgrade” to get more subscribers and build your email list.
If you do this every week this year, you’ll be amazed at how much your grow your community in 2018.