Generate More Online Enrolments with Facebook and LinkedIn

Are you using a learning management system to deliver courses online? Do you want to increase your online enrolments? Here are some Facebook and LinkedIn ideas that might make a difference. Both social networks have well documented application programming interfaces (APIs), with tools and support materials that make them relatively easy to integrate with third party web applications and apps. With a bit of effort you can get some quick wins that will boost your enrolments and seriously raise the profile of your brand and courses.

1. Facebook Login/Sign In with LinkedIn. Why not let your learners login with either their Facebook or LinkedIn identity? Facebook say that TripAdvisor more than doubled their acquisition of new users when they introduced registration/login with Facebook Login. It’s better for users - they don’t have to remember a new username & password and once they’re in (and they’ve given you the relevant permissions) your learning management system can start posting to their timeline.


2. Post progress updates onto the learner’s Facebook timeline. The start of a new course is important so why not encourage the learner to share it with their friends? A post to a learner’s Facebook timeline is seen by the learner’s Facebook friends - so that immediately raises the profile of your course. But it doesn’t stop there - a comment or ‘Like’ by one of those friends gets seen by the friends of the friend of the learner - so that pushes your course out to an even bigger audience. There’s nothing to stop you posting timeline updates at other milestones - end of units and assessments. The learner gets to share their achievement and you get free marketing.


3. Build Facebook comments into your online courses. Do you encourage learners to discuss work/course materials? Facebook comments are easy to integrate, there are good moderation tools and again by using Facebook comments you’re doing one more thing to encourage your learners to tell their friends about what they’re doing with you.


4. Build an app that offers a free course and then encourage learners to share it through Facebook. Use in app purchases to sell more courses or maybe keep enrolments free and charge for assessments instead. You can then use Facebook’s App Invites to grow the number of people using your app. A user invites their Facebook friends to try out your app - Facebook give your user a recommended list of friends who might be interested in the app and the people who get the invites then see both a push notification and a notification in the Facebook app with a link to download your app.


5. Go for a really quick win and let successful learners add their ‘certification’ to their profile with LinkedIn’s ‘Add to Profile’. You put a ‘certification button’ in emails or on the web page that a learner sees when they complete the course. The learner clicks the button and their certificate gets added to their LinkedIn profile. Your brand and course get shared across the learner’s professional LinkedIn network.

Using Facebook and LinkedIn to promote your company and courses makes total of sense, particularly if you’ve got some control over the development of your learning management system. The development/integration costs are low, both platforms give you get plenty of support and by making it as easy as you can for your learners to start recommending your courses you get much better brand recognition and access to many more potential learners.