Even if your next elearning project will be a success with fewer than 100 participants, all elearning designers should incorporate at least some lessons from the most authoritative minds in marketing…. In this post we go over five tips on how to engage your learners in order to ensure elearning program success.
So, by following the 5 tips below you will:
- increase course participation
- improve awareness of the course’s importance (or relevance)
- reduce negative feedback/complaints
- improve satisfaction
- engage other (possible) learners
Find a catchy slogan for your elearning
A slogan is not the title of the course or the elearning program. A slogan is a tool that you can use to communicate better with your potential audience even without speaking. A slogan is a tool that all successful coaches have!
Tell a story
If you want to catch your audience’s attention and have them onboard in a short time, tell them a story. Storytelling has become one of the most popular techniques of marketing communication and one of the most important digital trends for this year. If you want to write a good story (linked to your elearning) you should follow some basics rules of storytelling. Check out, for example, Pixar’s 22 Rules to Phenomenal Storytelling.
In the era of information overload a story should also be told according to some relevant facts to be effective: people want multimedia so show them (not “tell” them) and people don’t want to waste time, so package your story in one single media.
Take care of design
Create an amazing visual experience for your learners. This will boost your contents.
You can be inspired by the great work you find on the Internet and by the most relevant graphic trends. Here we list some of them:
- Large, beautiful images: According to this source: “As pioneered in design trends seen in 2014, image quality will continue exploding in use and popularity in 2015, leading to an even richer visual experience for users.”
- Use a flat or almost flat design: this trend exploded in 2014 (led by Apple, Microsoft and Google) and is still dominating the 2015 scene since more designers are embracing the trend.
- Better typography: good typography is part of good design nowadays: focus on better visual hierarchy, unique fonts and strong statements.
Not all social networks are equal!
Social networks are no doubt the right place to start pushing your elearning. It doesn’t matter if you want to go massive or if you want to stay connected with only a few people: social network activity is part of an elearning program! So, it’s important to have a quick look at statistics about Twitter and Facebook usage. The interaction with these social networks follows very different paths. And each of them is the preferred social network for different targets (age/ geography/ education). If you want to get the most from each network you absolutely need to take into account the different “flavours” of each.
Do you know for example that:
- 40% of Twitter users will read others’ Tweets without Tweeting anything themselves
- 44% of people say that they will like content that has been posted by their friends at least once per day.
- 29% of people say that they’ll like content several times per day
(Source http://brandongaille.com/)
The interaction pattern with Facebook seems to be more “call to action” oriented while Twitter seems to lean towards a “read only” social network. So just use the one or the other for different goals! And this is just the beginning of the story! Because for example:
- Twitter has a presence in 83% of the countries that have a presence in the United Nations
- 33: that’s the number of languages that Twitter is currently able to support
Where is your target located? If you want to really go global, you should look at Twitter rather than Facebook (which remains somewhat US-centric).
Connect elearning subject with mass audience topics
In a digital world where all is connected don’t leave your elearning ‘on its own’! Try to connect your training subject with relevant, up-to-date topics. Show your audience that this elearning is relevant not only when it comes to business goals. In this way you will create some hype around your elearning, and that will produce more engagement.
Concluding remarks
You can use one or all of these tips. You can decide if you want to use them only for promoting your elearning or even to be a part of the project itself. It depends on how daring you are! But be sure of one thing – if you are struggling to be creative/ innovative your customers are a your greatest resource!