Social media platforms are now a vital resource for discovering training programs in addition to being places to read up on the most recent news. Let’s explore the benefits of using them in the training field.
The Advantages of Using Social Media
The key benefits of leveraging social media platforms for training are listed below:
- Building a network through your profile, keeping in touch with previous trainees and prospective clients, and keeping other business associates.
- Improving the way of introducing the business through promoting the latest offerings and sharing insights about the training business’s activities.
- Showcasing expertise in the training field that provides real value to the target audience.
- Collecting contact information of prospective clients interested in your expertise and business by offering free training materials in exchange for completing a contact form.
The Budget Required for Investing in Social Media
The following crucial elements should be included in your budget plan:
1. Content Creation and Management
This involves daily or weekly account management, paid promotions, and sponsored content.
2. Time and Tools for Content Preparation
Your content could include articles, videos, images, or infographics. The more useful content you share, the more visible your brand becomes. The time allocated for content creation depends on its role in your overall marketing strategy. Outsourcing content creation or account management adds to the cost.
3. Time Invested in Engaging with Your Network
This includes articulating catchy headlines, creating visuals, posting content, and interacting with others’ posts. This should take up about 10-15% of your time, or roughly one and a half days per week.
4. Social Media Advertising Budget
This covers the cost of purchasing sponsored content and ad space. Social media platforms are highly effective because they let you gather extensive professional user information.
The best return on investment for trainers comes when they regularly update their accounts and pages with fresh content. Posting exclusive content works better than sharing specific business-related stuff on social media, even though you can still be active there. It helps you keep up with trends and your audience's changing needs.
The Right Type of Content to Post
Here are some of the most effective types of content to share:
- Articles published on your website, blog, external blogs, or in relevant media.
- Articles in industry-specific newspapers.
- Practical guides related to your field of expertise.
- Infographics to summarise a topic from your area of expertise into a few words, figures, and images.
- Photos from training sessions.
- Networking and partner information.
- Event announcements.
- Offers from your business.
- Company highlights, such as teams, significant achievements, partnerships, and innovations.
- Videos about specific topics, special offers, or interviews with experts, for example.
You should have all the necessary tools and elements in place to ensure your marketing content and promotional campaigns succeed. These include relevant topics, catchy promotional headlines, well-articulated text, engaging videos, high-quality images, dedicated offer pages, suitable contact forms for gathering potential client information, and other key elements crucial to a campaign's success.
The Basic Rules for Using Social Media in Marketing
We’ll go over some guidelines to help you effectively use social media in your marketing efforts:
- Reuse material from events and other communication channels, such as your website, blog, conferences, or trade shows.
- Include contact links (email, phone number, registration forms) on your blog or website when posting about your company’s activities to your contact page to make it easy for visitors to reach you.
- Focus on quality over quantity.
- Give to receive. Social media is about expanding your network by leveraging your followers' recommendations and endorsements. This happens when participants share their training experiences. Be sure also to share and support others’ content and pay close attention to how you engage on these platforms.
Strategies for Independent Trainers and Training Businesses
1. Independent Trainers
We have two scenarios here:
Personal Reputation
It’s better to create a personal LinkedIn profile to showcase your expertise and background.
Having a Brand Name
If you’re operating under a company or brand name, your personal accounts and brand pages should work in harmony. Managing multiple accounts can be stressful, so make the most out of the ones you already have. You should look into opening new accounts and paying for advertising.
2. Training Businesses
Training businesses typically fall into one of the following categories:
Full reliance on the brand name
You should invest most of your effort and budget in your business’s official channels. You should also maintain active LinkedIn personal accounts and link them to your official channel.
Active presence of trainers and managers on social media
Managers’ and trainers’ personal accounts can boost engagement on posts; however, the official channels can further expand their reach. Posts shared across official channels, and personal accounts that are mutually mentioned by other users develop more exposure.
In Closing
The insights we shared in this article highlight the importance of focusing your activity on a few social media platforms. Planning out your interactions and posts to stand out from the competition is important.
