Best Practices
How To's
How to Find Students on LinkedIn: Bright Ideas for Adult Ed
You may not think of LinkedIn as a place to find students. It’s probably more familiar as a platform to search for jobs or hire a new employee. But, it’s also filled with professionals and job seekers.
Both groups are often eager to learn so they can advance their careers. In short, they’re ideal candidates for adult education programs. But how can LinkedIn be used for your adult education program? Making LinkedIn part of your online presence can connect you with these motivated learners.
Colleges and universities already use LinkedIn to find students. Many with great success. There’s no reason your adult ed program can’t follow their lead. Even if you’re not a LinkedIn pro, this post will show you how to find students on LinkedIn.
Who uses LinkedIn
Marketing opportunities are only useful if they help you reach your ideal audience. On LinkedIn, the user base is smaller than other social media sites. Before you invest your time in the platform, you should know whether your audience is there.
LinkedIn only has about 810 million users compared to Facebook’s 2.9 billion. It still might be a valuable tool because LinkedIn users tend to be focused on their careers and professional development.
That means you’ll find college graduates, people who hold a high school diploma, and those with some work experience. They are ideal candidates for non-credit and certificate courses. Show them how your courses can help them reach their professional goals.
Is LinkedIn worth your time?
LinkedIn can be a valuable place to find and enroll learners, but it won’t work for everyone. If your students tend to be under 25 or learning primarily for fun, you may not find them on LinkedIn.
If your potential students are on LinkedIn, the platform is well worth your time. LinkedIn generates leads 227% more effectively than Facebook and Twitter, according to a Hubspot study. That means you’ll find more learners with less investment.
Choose LinkedIn if you:
- Want to reach learners who are in their mid-twenties to mid-thirties or older. 60 percent of all LinkedIn users are aged between 25 and 34.
- Can tie your courses to professional learning outcomes. Many adults want to learn skills that will improve their careers.
- Offer certificates or certifications in business-related skills.
How to Find Students on LinkedIn
Start by setting up a LinkedIn Page for your organization. Just like on Facebook, pages are different from profiles. A LinkedIn profile represents one person, while the page will represent your whole organization.
LinkedIn offers an easy to follow guide to creating a page. Follow their steps to get started.
Once you have a page, you need to fill it out. Make sure you have a clear and compelling profile summary that tells visitors what you do and a profile image that can represent your program. It’s a good idea to have a banner image as well.
Next, invite employees and instructors to like your page. This will help you start building your network. A combination of a wide network and consistent posting can help you find students on LinkedIn. The CourseStorm business page is shown below.
Then you’re ready to start finding students. Here are three ways to get started.
- Post useful content
Every post should have an interesting image, relevant text and hashtags. Use about three relevant hashtags in each post. They help you appear in search results which puts your content in front of potential learners. We’ll give you some post topic ideas below.
- Grow your network
When you created your profile, you added employees and instructors. Grow your network by inviting other connections to follow your page. Ask your instructors and employees to do the same. Adding connections increases your visibility.
- Look in groups (or start your own)
LinkedIn offers groups based on common interests. Look for a group where members post regularly and interact with each other. Don’t just post about your upcoming classes, engage in the conversations.
If you don’t find groups that make sense for you to join, you can start your own.
What to Post to Find Students on LinkedIn
Most social networking sites offer a mix of professional and personal content. You might see an announcement about the grand opening of a new store under a photo of your best friend’s dog.
LinkedIn is different. Although personal content does pop up from time to time, most users are professionals who come to the site for networking and personal development.
The content you post needs to align with those goals. Wherever possible, show the career outcomes your programs offer. Explain how the skills you teach can help students find their next job or get a promotion.
You can use LinkedIn to:
- Congratulate current and former students on new jobs and promotions
- Resources for professionals like your students
- Post testimonials from current and former students
- Promote courses and learning outcomes
- Poll potential students on what courses they’d like to see
- Share information about upcoming certifications, testing dates, or credentialing news
How LinkedIn Fits Into Your Marketing Strategy
Unless you’re focused exclusively on teaching business content, LinkedIn probably won’t be the only social media platform you use. Remember that it’s one part of your overall marketing strategy.
In previous posts, we’ve showed you how to use Instagram, TikTok, Facebook , and the importance of social media metrics for marketing. The goal on all of these platforms is to invite potential students to your website so they can enroll.
When potential students land on your site, they’ll expect a course catalog that’s easy to navigate and a simple registration system. That’s where CourseStorm comes in. Our impossibly simple course registration software turns new LinkedIn leads into enrolled students. Start your free trial today.
Nic Lyons
Nic is skilled in scaling start-up edtech and education organizations to growth-stage success through innovative marketing. A former journalist and copywriter, Nic holds a postgraduate certificate in digital and print publishing from Columbia University School of Journalism's publishing course.