Building a brand can help you market your online courses more effectively.

When you have a great idea for a course, it is tempting to jump straight into creating content and putting it online. However, you can reach a much larger number of people if you invest time in building your brand.

Many course creators don’t know much about how to build a brand. The good news is that there is a proven process. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel as businesses have been doing this for a long time. The following tips can help you with brand building.

1. Choose the appropriate online platform for your brand.

There are many platforms that you can use to build a brand online. From Facebook to Pinterest, you have an array of social networks that you can use to start connecting with your potential audience.

The first step is to decide which social networks fit your brand best. If your brand is highly visual, then Pinterest and Instagram could be a good choice. Corporate brands may prefer LinkedIn and Twitter (or even Facebook).

2. Use social media marketing when possible.

Once you have set up pages on the most appropriate social media platforms, it is time to start posting content that can help to build your brand. By posting interesting links and other valuable forms of content, you can encourage people to engage with you on your social media accounts which in turn means that communicating with them in future will be easier.

The key to success is to post content regularly and to encourage dialogue, for example, using Facebook Groups is a great way to build a community behind your brand.

If you go for months without posting content on social media, your followers are likely to forget about you. They will lose interest in your brand and drift away to other sources of online education. If you share a few posts a week, however, they are more likely to remain engaged and interested.

3. Create a consistent brand image.

You need to create a brand image that is easy for your audience to recognize and connect with. Spend time designing a logo that represents your brand, but don’t overthink it. Most successful logos are text-based. Avoid using a ton of images and instead use an easy-to-read font with colors that fit with the kind of courses you want to promote.

Use your brand’s logo and color scheme on all your branded content, including both your online courses and your social media accounts. This will help your audience to recognize your branded content and keep your online courses at the forefront of their minds.

4. Maintain a consistent brand “voice”.

Brand voice is extremely important when you are trying to market a product such as an online course. Unfortunately, voice is one of the aspects of brand building that new online course creators are most likely to overlook.

Hopefully you have already thought about the voice you want to use to present information using your courses. Perhaps you prefer to use a formal voice, or maybe you prefer a more playful one? Different types of voices appeal to different types of people, so it is important to decide which audience you are trying to reach before you decide on a brand voice.

Whatever kind of voice you use to teach students online, it is a good idea to keep this voice consistent throughout your marketing. This will help to ensure that you attract students who enjoy engaging with your online course content.

5. Target a specific audience.

If you try to please everyone, you risk delighting no one with your brand. Chasing an audience that is too broad can lead to bland, boring branding that is easy for people to ignore.

A better approach is to define your target audience very precisely and focus on building a brand that appeals specifically to that group. For example, if you create online courses that focus on sports nutrition, your audience might be fit, sporty people such as personal trainers and athletes. If you know that this is the group you want to target then you do not need to create content that also appeals to sedentary people who hate exercise. Focus on the group you want to be your audience and you will create content that those individuals love.

Building a brand is a vital part of being a successful online course creator

Creating fabulous online courses is only half of what you need to do to succeed as an online course provider. You also need to build a brand that helps to promote your courses to the right audience. Follow these tips to build a strong and consistent brand that is easy for people to recognize and which encourages them to connect and engage with your content. And remember that brands aren’t built overnight. Stay consistent and your efforts will pay off over time.