Linda Foirmichelli of Concord, NH and Jennifer Lawler of Lawrence, KS write:
“We’re both well-established writers who offer e-courses in our areas of specialty. Linda offers a class for magazine writers on how to break into magazines, starting April 13, and Jennifer will offer one for book authors on how to write a book proposal, starting May 4.
“We both have been offering our e-courses for a few years and have happy customers who can give testimonials and describe how our courses offer results. However, we’re finding it tougher and tougher to get the word out about our e-courses.
“We both blog (Linda’s blog has more followers than Jennifer’s, which she just started a few weeks ago). We both belong to writers’ groups and contribute to their online forums, but of course if we’re too sales-y in our approach, our posts get deleted. We’re on LinkedIn and Facebook. What are we missing?”
If you aren’t Twittering yet, start today and link to tips at your blogs or websites that tie into your courses. From the tips, link to the registration pages.
Use the search box at http://search.twitter.com to search for freelancers, writers, authors and any other ideal candidates for the courses. Follow them, retweet their tweets, and then send them a direct message asking that they retweet one of your tweets that promotes the tips. Important: Build the relationship FIRST and do something for them before you ask them to do something for you.
Courses like these are ideal to promote on LinkedIn, too, but you need a long lead time so you can plant the seed, so to speak, by asking a question about a topic that ties into your course, and then letting everyone who answers the question know about what you’re offering.
This has to be done very carefully, however. Scott Allen, one of the foremost experts on LinkedIn, was my guest during a teleminar I hosted last year.
He explained an entire campaign he designed for a friend on how she could promote something she was sponsoring. His ideas started drawing immediate response within 48 hours.
How about it, Hounds? What other ideas do you have?
Joan, thank you for posting our plea for help, and for your great suggestions! I’m already a Twitterer, and do occasionally post announcements of my new course sessions. I definitely try to balance out those promotional posts with lots of helpful info, fun Tweets, retweets, @replies, etc.
The LinkedIn tip is great…I should be posting advice on the Writers & Editors section anyway, just because I can!
Thanks again…
Try connecting with people who are in touch with the same market as you are, but offering different skills, like writer’s coaches. I’m a writer’s coach and I would love to be able to refer my clients to a trustworthy e-class on these subjects, since my focus is writing fiction. It would be added value for my clients which makes me look good and helps everyone. One coach could be sending you dozens of clients a year.
Jennifer and Linda, here’s one place you can submit course information for free to an enewsletter, called “Scribbles,” distributing to subscribers (for free) — writers or wanna-be writers: http://www.sunscribbles.com. Your information should actually be emailed to: darlyn@sunscribbles.com. You should also immediately subscribe to this enewsletter because it may contain information on other places/opportunities to connect with to publicize your course information. Be sure to put in your submitted blurb a gentle request for readers to blog about your courses and/or send out your information in their respective enewsletters. Writers are usually always willing to help other writers.
Janet and Sheryl, thanks for the great ideas!
Since you are both “well established” that means you have friends and colleagues who are also well established and they have friends and colleagues …
What about offering a “community” discount to your contacts? I’d make it at least 20% off to be interesting.
One way to do this is to post it on ClickBank which is an affiliate program. I currently list my fatigue recovery guide there and am putting up a duplicate page to offer a “community discount” for one of my clients. Since this will be a significant order I am also adding a page to the guide that will promote her organization.
Good luck!
Viveca
P.S. The class on April 13th is right before taxes and tea parties. Maybe you could work in that angle … Nothing is more taxing than not knowing how or where to get your articles published.
P.S.S. Do you offer free audio cds from the event? That would be a big plus for me. Doing a lot of commuting out here in Virginia!
I am quite familiar with your names, Jennifer and Linda! And I know that the editors of a lot of writers’ ezines (me included!) would love to run short (300-500 words) from established writers like the two of you in exchange for a resource box advertising your course. Some of these ezines also have very inexpensive advertising rates. You can easily find them via a Google search of ezine+writers.