Marketing Your Online Course: How to Build Your Online Presence Using Google+ and YouTube | Social Proof | With Mark Timberlake

Tim Cooper

Jun 05 2015

It all comes down to building relationships. How to Use Social Media Marketing to Build Authority and Social Proof.

If you are looking at creating an online course or you're in the process of creating your course then now is the time to start building your following. Don't wait until you have completed and published your course before you start thinking about promotion.

If you have already completed and published your course don't stress, these marketing techniques will work, it just takes time.

Relationships form the core of your success.

Before people are going to give you money they have to trust you. To build trust you have to communicate your expertise and then surround that with social proof.

SME Heroes teach a methodology they call “The Golden Triangle”. Firstly you have to have a good quality product. Then you need social proof and a marketing funnel.

What is social proof and where does it come from?

Social proof is what other people say about you on the internet. The more people posting comments, reviews and feedback about you and your material, the more social proof you have.

People will take the word of others and their experience with you and your product before they'll take what you say about yourself.

When it comes to social media platforms, Mark highly recommends Google+ and YouTube because the content is indexed into Google almost immediately. While other platforms such as Facebook and Twitter are extremely popular, their content is not indexed and therefore has a very short lifespan.

Likewise, if you have your own website, it can take many months before your content starts to show up in the Google searches. Google+ and YouTube get your content into the search engines quicker as long as you're taking time to use the best keywords for your topic.

If you have your own blog you should post teasers to Google+ that will entice readers back to your site.

When it comes to social media marketing you should be leaving bread crumbs everywhere that lead people back to your property. Be that a Udemy course or your own blog.

HOT TIP: If you want to dominate in your niche on YouTube get 50 or more videos out there on YouTube. One video won't cut it. There are many quick and easy ways that you can create content for YouTube.

Social media is not the platform to initiate the sale of your product. You must post content that will lead them back to your site and onto your newsletter email list. You primary goal should be to build your email list as this becomes your tribe, your audience that you can send educational and promotional material to.

It's also important to note that you should take time and find ways to build keywords into your course section titles, lecture titles and lecture descriptions as this will also help you rank on Google and also within Udemy.

It's also important to get you face on camera at some point, this really helps you build up social proof and helps you connect quickly with your audience.

Success doesn't happen overnight.

Its hard work and you have to be prepared to put the marketing efforts in for at least 12 months.

“The people that fail at online residual income are the sprinters.”

Mark has kindly offered us a special $20 deal on any of his courses. Simply email him with the name of the course you want and make sure to mention my name and Mark will email you back a link to the course. You can email Mark at [email protected]

I was going to list all of Mark's courses here, but as Mark posts new courses regularly it is best that you visit his Udemy profile to see all the courses he offers. Visit https://www.udemy.com/u/marktimberlake to find out more about all of Mark's courses.

Other products mentioned in this episode

WP-Courseware - The Best Course Management Plugin for WordPress

If you have a question about any aspect of online course delivery, from concept to market, please feel free to send me an email at [email protected]. I'd love to hear from you and your question would very well feature in a future podcast.

I want to deliver relevant material so keep those emails rolling in.

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