Kassaundra 0:01

have a course on your heart. today I'm chatting with Melanie badda Stelly all about launching courses and how to use social media to get it done. Melanie is a wife, girl mom, former teacher, certified online business manager, and course and launch strategist she is the real deal. And after leaving the classroom in 2022, Melanie has become passionate about taking her love for learning and educating others by helping course and membership creators launch their programs. Melanie also specializes in hiring freelancers for busy CEOs and streamlining systems in their business processes. She lives in Northern Virginia with her husband, two girls, their dog and cat.

So teacher author's go ahead and reheat that cup of coffee, because I'm your host, Cassandra Foster.

And we're about to get schooled in socials. Welcome back to school in socials, everyone today I'm super excited to have Melanie about a Steli here with me. She is an amazing expert on all things, launching courses. And so today we're gonna be chatting all about how you can leverage your social media presence in order to launch your course. So welcome, Melanie, so happy to have you. Yay,

Melanie 1:23

I'm so excited to be here. Thank you for having me. It's been a long time coming. We've been talking about this for months. I know

Kassaundra 1:32

we have definitely I think we've had this on the calendar for quite a while. We have. Um, so for our listeners, could you just tell them a little bit about yourself and your business and what you do? Absolutely.

Melanie 1:44

So I am an ex high school teacher, I taught high school for 12 years, I left the classroom in 2022. This is my second full year out of the classroom. And I started as a general virtual assistant and then kind of bounced around to some different things that I dabbled in. Like, for example, I tried, like social media and being a social media manager myself, it was just not I just wasn't good at it wasn't for me. And then I eventually landed in more like project management, which led to me seeking more of a certification as x teacher while current teacher at the time I you know, love taking classes and learning. So I got a certification in online business management, which I think was really helpful. I mean, it was awesome to learn on the job. But I just also like to keep learning things in a more official capacity. So I finished that up. And then I also took a really amazing certification course in specifically course launch management and course launch strategy, which talks about not just like managing the moving parts of a launch, but also like the strategy leading up to the launch runway and things like that it was really unique and different. And I learned a lot from that one, too. So yeah, now I have retainer clients in the online business management space. And I also do side projects for launch management, we actually got to work together this summer with a mutual client who I helped with her course launch as a sort of a one off project.

Kassaundra 3:30

Yeah, I was gonna mention that. So Melanie, and I knew each other beforehand, but then we actually got a chance to work together professionally, which was really awesome. And so I kind of got some insight on what it's like to launch a course. And I got to help manage the whole social media end of it, which was really cool, because that was the first time that I've worked on promoting and launching a course, as a social media manager. So Melanie was amazing and making all of that happen. So Melanie, we're talking about launching courses and using social media to do that. But before we get too far, do you need social media to launch a course?

Melanie 4:14

Well, that's just I mean, that's a really loaded question. Right? Need need, like you don't need it. All you need is an audience that is engaged, whether that is on social media, your email list, you know, or somewhere else, like if you're doing more like a live actual launch to people. So need no, but is it helpful? Absolutely. Like 100% 1,000% helpful because even this summer with a couple different launchers that I helped in, I mean, there is a marketed difference between people who are willing to you know, help On stories and show their face on social media versus people who are just launching to an email list. So I don't know that you, like need it. But I can almost guarantee that if you build an engaged social media following, it doesn't even matter how big it is. Engagement is more important than anything. I mean, it is definitely going to help with your launch. And people you know, being willing to purchase from you whether it's a course or you know, something else smaller.

Kassaundra 5:33

Yeah, because definitely, I think you're just launching to your email list, at least in my perspective, I feel like that's a little less personal than social media is because you with social media and your engagements you really get to like, connect to people talk to people in the DMS and things like that. So I can definitely see why there's like a marked difference between using it versus not using it as a way to get your course out to your audience for sure.

Melanie 6:04

Yeah, and I think it also really depends on your audience. Because for example, a lot of like, you know, a lot of people that you and I work with are part of the Teachers Pay Teachers crowd. So it's more of like a business to customer relationship or like a b2c relationship. So I've seen email be really kind of the the sticking point for TPT. People like tending to sell their course more, but social media obviously definitely helped. But since the summer has started, I've actually been working with a new client since May, who's not in the TPT space at all. But she has a really large group of online courses and also a really large social media following like over 250,000 And we've been using UTM codes yet for all of her like stories and static posts. And her email list is pretty well, I don't want to say it's small, but compared to her social media following which is like 250,000, her email list is only about 9000 people. So her social media is actually crushing it like 70% of her purchases actually come directly from what she shares in stories and or like her Lincoln bio, but she's I mean, she's a personality so she's just naturally you know, going to do well selling on social media. So I think it also depends on your audience a little bit, but I mean, her email list alone would not have generated like the multi six figure thought she had this summer like she needed social media for sure. Yeah. Do

Kassaundra 7:41

you have any kind of preferences when it comes to like what social media platform works better when you're launching a course like Facebook, Facebook groups, Instagram, Tik Tok? Or does it not matter?

Melanie 7:54

I think it matters. When you consider where your audience is, it all goes back to a little bit of market research and trying to find out where your audience is mostly. Because it kind of goes back to like also like age, right? Like a lot of people closer to our age or on Instagram. But if your audience happens to be like in their 40s and 50s, mostly, you might be playing to more of like a Facebook group kind of crowd. And I know a lot of people right and like their mid 30s or even a little bit older like me, like don't really use tick tock. But if you're 10 years younger, like you're going to need to show up on to end if your audiences like hanging out on Tik Tok. That's where you should show up. So I think it just depends where your audience is not necessarily like the platform like I don't know anything about tick tock. I like dabble and watch their right sometimes, but like I am personally not on Tik Tok yet.

Kassaundra 8:56

And I think that was so new work together. I love that. Like the first thing we did was we dove into those analytics because we were looking at like multiple social media platforms. And just seeing like, where was it most active? Where did we have more people. And so then we use that to our advantage. And so definitely what you do as strategy for launching a course goes a lot along with looking at all of your insights. And so that's what I really loved at the beginning as I got to dive in and give you all of those insights that I had been pulling all along so we could make a decision, what direction to go in.

Melanie 9:36

Right? Because she could have went a couple of different directions because she had a very active like free Facebook group because you know, you'd been cultivating that relationship for quite some time. So yeah, we really had to try and decide what was the best way to go.

Kassaundra 9:50

Yeah, for sure. Now, you've been talking a lot about like people who are like willing to connect and gold Live things like that kind of on Instagram during their course launch? How can people kind of get comfortable with going live and showing their face on social media? Because I know, a lot of the teacher printers I talk with, that's something we talk about with social media is that they're not always 100% comfortable getting in front of that camera and talking to their audience. So how do we help them do that for a launch? Yeah,

you just have to kind of do it like, the worst, the worst answer ever. But okay, here's what I would say to like, do actual, like concrete, don't wait until the last second, where you're like, Okay, I have to start getting on stories, because like, I'm launching in three days, and they have to be really good. And bla bla bla, bla bla, like, start it ahead of time. And the more you do it, the easier it gets, you know, it's like the old adage. And when you take a break, it's hard to get back into it. Like, you know, and you were really busy this summer. And I was very busy this summer, I don't think I showed my face on stories once in July, like, I feel like, it was just you, like a crazy time. And, you know, I when I wanted to start getting back into it, this, you know, this month since my oldest daughter went to school, and I just, you know, had a little bit more time, I didn't feel like doing it. I was like, I don't have anything to say, not that I'm even, you know, launching anything specific, like I'm working on some digital products, but you don't just want to like come out of nowhere, right? And be like, hey, buy my stuff. Alright,

I see you later. So I like I definitely think if you are thinking about launching a course, you want to enter, you're going to use your social media as a way to engage and connect with your audience and or to sell that course, you want to make sure the few months leading up to your course launch, you are being consistent with your social media. You want to be sharing about yourself sharing educational content, I mean, teasing that upcoming courses launch, and just getting people to engage with you and learn about you and learn from you. Because like you said, like jumping on three days before is not a strong strategy, because people are going to be like, where did this person come out of the woodwork out of all the noise like that I'm already seeing on Instagram or Facebook? And why are they trying to sell to me, right? So if you're going to be launching a course really looking at your social media presence a few months ahead of that can I think can definitely be helpful,

for sure. And if you can come up with any kind of plan or semblance of a plan to not just, you know, be staring at your phone like, Oh, what am I going to say today? Because that is I mean, that's the worst part.

Right? Yeah. So having some sort of solid social media strategy and content plan, at least a few months ahead of when you're going to be launching is going to, I think make it a lot easier. In the long run. Like you said, it's going to help you show up and be consistent and make those connections that you need to make in order to sell your courses when they actually do launch. Yeah. Okay, so we've gotten comfortable going live, how else can we leverage social media to maximize a course launch? Yeah,

there are so many ways. So we talked about right, like planning out a couple months ahead, if possible, which I know can be especially if you're like doing it by yourself or mostly by yourself, or you don't have anyone helping you with social media, that can be a very daunting task. So even if you feel like you can't do several months ahead, just start with like one month, just start with like four weeks and look at like when you want to open cart, your your cart and start selling your course. And then think about like planning backwards. So again, like we said, You're not just coming out of like the woodwork and being like glue by this. Yeah. And then disappearing back away. And it can also like, I mean, Instagram has, that's where I hang up the most. I think it's also probably where you hang out the most. But it has so many like features that are helpful for market research. Like if you can plan your polls intentionally. If you can plan and use your question boxes intentionally. Your quiz feature, you know, to kind of gain what your audience knows and what they don't know. And then you can use that like it doesn't I think that's the other thing that even like I get hung up myself when I do this for myself, I can you know, we can always do this things more easily for other people, for sure. But you don't have to have like an exact script for every day of your story, you know of your stories. Maybe just in the first week, let's say you're launching a course about about the first like setting up good systems for your second grade, classroom, second, and third grade classrooms. Maybe in the first week, you ask your audience, like in a quiz or a poll feature, like what's your biggest struggle with the first week of school or whatever, and then you just make a plan that like, the day after that poll, you're just going to talk about whatever the answer is, like, you don't need a script, just as long as you have a follow up. And kind of a flow of what you think would be, you know, based on what your audience is needing. There's, I mean, there's a lot of great ways to leverage all of the cute little tools that Instagram has.

Yeah, and I love that you talked about market research here. Because in those few months leading up to your launch, if you have an engaged audience on social media, that is like market research goals right there. I know when we were working together, some things were tweaked based on information that we were getting off of social media from what people needed, and what people were looking for. And so just using that, to actually inform the product that you are, the course or the membership, or whatever that you are going to be launching, is just getting all of that information from those people who are your ideal customer, basically. Sure.

And you can like when I talk about course launch strategy, a lot of times, I'll you know, my clients will throw in like a cart close bonus, like an extra resource, if we're, you know, talking about the TPT world or something that they can email out to, you know, all the people that buy. And I mean, you can pivot based on what that bonus is based on what people are saying the entire time you're launching, which is kind of something that we ended up doing. In July. Yeah, we work together, we just, you have it 80% Ready, and then make the other 20% up as you go. Right?

Once you like, get all of that feedback, and you know, kind of like what people need and what they're looking for. And then that helps you have a more successful launch, because you're delivering them something that they're actually asking for, which is the which is the key.

So yes, and sometimes the hardest part.

So I've heard you talk a lot about using stories, to gather that information to talk about those topics around the course or whatever you're going to be launching. Are there any other like types of content? Because we know if you're using Instagram, there's a lot of different types of content that you can be putting out there that seem to work better when it comes to promoting a launch? Or do you think it is helpful to just make a variety of different types of content?

I think, again, it goes back to your analytics, unfortunately, and seeing like what your audience wants. The the person that I was talking about earlier that has like the huge social media following, she was making a bunch of reels because you know, you hear like reels real sales, which for most people, I think do very well. But what we kind of found towards the end of the launch is people were actually really into the carousels with like actual actionable steps. So when we reopened her cart, the very end of August, we reopened it 30 days after it closed just for like 40 a 48 hour like reopen flash sale, we we lined it up, she's a bigger team. So she's a full on social media manager. And we lined it up with a couple of like, multi swipe carousels that got way more of a reach than the reels, which is you know, you just don't know, it's just all about, like paying attention to what your audience wants, which is I mean, I think a really hard thing for some people like including myself, because you just want to apply this like launch strategy that worked for somebody and it'll work for everybody else. But like that's just not how life goes

in my social media manager brain that kind of makes sense for her because she already had such a large following and I'm sure she had like a dedicated people and reels are really about like reach and bringing new people into your community. And those carousels are a lot about like education like what those people who are already there and like dedicated to you are looking for. So it kind of makes sense to me that that that kind of set up was what helped her launch because that was what her warm audience was looking for that education piece that informational piece. Yeah,

and I mean that yeah, that makes that makes sense. And I feel like it's also probably correct me if I'm wrong because I am not the social media. expert, but I feel like that's probably why a lot of her sales actually came from her stories because her warm audience I mean, they're the ones who are going to see the stories more than anybody else. Right. Okay,

right. Exactly that check. Yes. So yeah, your followers are like the main people who are going to be seeing your stories, which makes sense that you've been talking so much about using stories, right? Because, right, those are the people that have that connection to you to begin with. And those are the people that you really want to be talking to not that you don't want to bring in new people, that's great. But that's probably more for like the three or four months before you start launching, right is bringing those people in. But once you're getting closer, it's really about honing in on those people who are already there and already there for you and what you have to offer them. And stories is definitely the place to do it. Yeah.

Well, that all makes sense. And I'm glad it worked out.

It does it does it make sense in launch world and social media? Any other tips or tricks for using social media for launches?

I mean, I think the biggest tip is just to not like take get all too seriously. Because at the end of the day, like people I don't know, I feel like in the last year or so super authentic marketing has made a comeback, if you will, yes. And people like want to buy from another person who sure might be the expert on whatever they're looking for, but like they don't need to buy from somebody who's perfect or like has every answer. So I mean, I think just being yourself and not worried about like, if everything is perfect on your feed or you know, rerecording stories at six times just to get one right? Like, it's not that big of a deal. Yeah,

people are definitely looking for that on authenticity, they want to make a human connection. And that's what's going to help them want to buy from you because they've made that connection with you, and they feel connected to you and they trust you and feel like they know you. So that definitely makes a lot of sense. Awesome. I'm so happy that we got together to have this chat and that my listeners are going to hear all about using social media, for course launches, because I know that there's a lot of people out on the TPT world that are working on launching courses and memberships and things like that. So before we go, where can my listeners find you if they want to learn more about launching or get some help with launching?

Yeah, absolutely. So I hang out mainly on Instagram over at Duxbury digital. And I mean, there's a link in my bio that has a bunch of like my free resources and of course, ways to work with me. But if you want to take the shortcut, my website is Duxbury digital.co/resources. We'll get you all of all of the things, all of the free things and all the ways to work with me.

Awesome. And so I'll make sure that Melanie's Instagram link and her link to her website are right in the show notes for you so you guys can access that. Molly, thank you so much for joining me today.

Yeah, thanks for having me.

On all right, cool coffee friends. Thanks so much for listening. If you're loving getting schooled in socials, make sure to subscribe so you don't miss an episode. Also, I would love it if you left a review so that other teacher authors like you can start getting schooled in socials too. All right, I'll see you in the next episode.