NEW YORK, NY / ACCESSWIRE / August 30, 2019 / In today’s digital age, we unfortunately hear more about the dark side of social media, than the light. At the end of the day, it’s all about how you use these tools to help you create value.
For media platforms such as LinkedIn, Forbes, and Foundr, offering educational programs to users creates a different type of brand loyalty, but also, a huge return on investment. Every media company out there, produces content such as videos, audio, articles, blogs, etc.-whatever the market or niche they serve.
Take Forbes, for example-its content is tailored for people in the entrepreneurship and business sectors; Refinery29 targets young millennials; and Barstool Sports obviously targets the sports industry.
Foundr, for example, creates an even more refined model. We spoke with Foundr’s CEO, Nathan Chan, on the importance of media companies having an educational division.
“IF your niche-focused audience loves your content, then there’s a way you can create premium content to serve them,” Chan shared. “But, you must find out what that problem is and how you can use that content to solve that problem. This is what we have done here at Foundr.”
Chan identified two types of premium content that media companies should be assessing-(1) vitamins and (2) painkillers.
“Think about the type of free content your company is pushing out-online courses are a form of premium content that is packaged up to solve a certain problem. From Foundr’s perspective, we produce content that are ‘painkillers.’ Think about what kind of premium content you can create to solve a deep pain that someone in your audience has-to ensure there is truly a demand for it. We want our products and services to be a real painkiller, versus a vitamin. That’s how media companies should be serving their audience, because it’s a strong way to diversify.”
If your niche-focused audience loves your content, according to Chan, there’s always room for premium content to be made available.
“But you must find out what that problem is and how you can use that content to solve that problem. That’s what we’ve done with Foundr, and what other progressive media companies like Barstool Sports, have started to do in terms of offering premium content and memberships.”
So how should an educational program be designed to ensure it is providing enough relief to the audience’s pain?
Focus and a successful track record are key. “You have to be super-focused on a great product that is going to solve someone’s problem and help them,” Chan pointed out.
“The success of your educational program comes back full circle to the success of its students. This is something we are very proud of here at Foundr. We continuously ask ourselves how we can consistently increase our student’s success rate and course completion rate.”
Foundr has quite the list of success stories. But what we were most curious on is how they determine courses they offer and who they select to teach them. The courses are created based on a democratic vote by their audience, with the assistance of producers, content developers, videographers, and the entire marketing team behind it.
“We will not produce a course until we pre-sell it-until we see a very strong demand for that topic,” Chan explained. At which point, the company will then select from a pool of successful entrepreneurs they have interviewed, to see if they are interested in teaching a course.
“If they aren’t, we will go out and look for a ‘practitioner,’ rather than a ‘guru” or ‘expert’ which are self-dubbed titles. A practitioner is someone who’s walked the walk, multiple times. These individuals have real businesses and make all their money from that business.”
A few of Chan’s favorite success stories include Adam Hendle and Ballwash and Priscilla Hajiantoni and Bangn Body. You can read other success stories here.
At the end of the day, we all have something to learn from those who have perfected the craft. If you’re good at something, you don’t do it for free. As JB Glossinger, the founder of Morning Coach repeatedly says in his Sacred Six program-stop living in that “lack” mindset.
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SOURCE: MentionWorth Media