Introduction to Using Social Media to Increase Training Course Bookings

Welcome to the selling and promoting training seminars. This is an introduction to using social media to increased training course bookings. There are six main consideration when starting or managing a social media campaign. Remember social media isn't just a billboard it is a conversation, not too different to a training course. So the first question is: Where is your audience? The social media landscape is vast have a look at this diagram from Lumina Partners and Buddy Media showing the extent of the social media landscape there are industry and job specific platforms. Ask your customers and trainers what platforms they use. That's how you can focus your social media into the right place. Do you have the necessary resources though? You are going to need an expert who is there for content creation, for example a trainer you'll also need a supporter role that supporter role will take on community management, they could be the course administrator or maybe a marketing person. But can you afford it? It is going to cost time and money, requires hours outside of normal business hours and in the weekend because that's when most social media conversations occur. You need to be conscious of the frequency and the daily time efforts. You can't just do this for one week, skip it for a few weeks and come back to it. You've got to be there constantly. and What efforts, what marketing efforts will need to be replaced by undertaking social media? You should be measuring these marketing activities equally so you can work out what works best for you. But do you have anything interesting to say? It is important to be able to hold conversations that are interesting. It's not just a case of sending PR releases out. And you have got to make sure that you adhere to the etiquette that is appropriate for each platform. Do some research, find out what's acceptable and what's not finally measure, tweak and improve measure your social media presence either through likes, follows or retweets and a look at improving it maybe even look at using more complex measurements such using as Google analytics or the actual quality of the conversations that you have with your customers finally welcome to Social Media it's a rich source of information about your customers about your competitors and about potential future training opportunities but be careful there are reputational risks out there and there are also legal risks too welcome to social media I look forward to hearing from your experiences in promoting your training courses