How to choose an online marketing course and not be left without pants

Online marketing courses are expensive. What is taught is not clear until you finish. I tell you what to look for in order to make the course useful, and the money does not go down the drain.

Genres
Courses come in three and a half genres. I must say that I do not know which one is better. Pay attention to the features of courses in different genres.

Author’s course
Author courses are usually taught by one person. For example, a good specialist who decided to share his knowledge. Usually they are interesting in two cases.

The author is a leader in the industry, a person with a wealth of experience and non-ordinary views. He has experience of unusual creative solutions, which he is ready to share.
The author promises to nurse each participant personally: help with solving problems, explain and chew, guide his actions.
Course authors often try to impersonate the first type of specialists. Do not get fooled. Cool specialists rarely conduct online courses. It’s just that they usually have a small team of carefully selected apprentices who are interested in teaching them. To conduct online courses they are not interested and there is no need. But sometimes it really happens.

If you met the author of the course, who talks about his slope, look at his portfolio. Are there really outstanding works there? All-Russian or world level? Does he have branded customers? Did major media write about him? If not, his professional experience has no special value. Alas.

A course from a cool specialist is rather an advanced level. If you are learning a profession from scratch, the amount of time that the author is willing to devote to you will be more important.

Of the benefits, authoring courses are usually cheaper than company courses and online universities. On the other hand, their certificates are usually lower valued by employers. Simply, if the employer has never heard of the author of the course, then he will not make a special impression on him.

What to look for when choosing a copyright course:

Program: a list of topics and competencies that you acquire.
Checked homework: this is required. If the course consists of some lectures, do not go, you can find a theory and for free on the Internet.
Free materials. Browse all that the author offers for free. Is there any useful information there? Or just promises to reveal all the secret secrets of the profession for money? Does the author speak more about himself or on the topic of the course?
Personal counseling. The author is ready to analyze your problem, answer questions, give maximum attention.
Competence of the author. Pay attention to the portfolio, not the author’s stories about yourself. It does not need to be a great world-class master. Enough strong average.
InfoBiz – this is a subspecies of the author’s course.
In general, infobusiness is the sale of information, as the name implies. In a broad sense, we and Texterra both come under this definition. But usually this word means trainings and coaching sessions.

How to write for infobusiness: rules, chips, motivation
In the first version of this article, I wrote that it is definitely bad, but … what the hell? Not so simple.

Educational and business literature is divided into two categories: educational and motivating. Teaching gives a lot of useful and practical knowledge. Motivating inspires, tells cases and success stories, easily explains ideas.

Motivating books are usually interesting, their eyes are burning, I want to quit and run to implement the tips. But when it comes to business, it turns out that there is little practical information in them, because it is not always clear how to apply this knowledge.

It used to be a creative person had to fight for each viewer. And now the audience can be found with one click! Just put your work on the Internet and immediately find fans and associates!

An example of a motivating text. Just specify, please, where exactly to lay out, how to stand out from the general information noise and how much money you need to promote your page.

Reverse approach:
The best way to promote the creative page is “Instagram”, “Facebook” and “Pintest”.
Great, but reading a dry instruction is very boring. The inspirational text without details was more fun.

The fact is that the purpose of motivating books and trainings is to remove psychological blocks and tell that everything is not as scary as you think. But when it comes to real work with services, applications and the audience, it turns out that it is still difficult. It is not possible at the same time to give detailed instructions on the chore and stressful work and to tell that this is easy.

Of the people who have managed to combine both approaches, I only know Artemy Lebedev and Maxim Ilyakhov, but also with bills. In marketing, infobase is represented by courses like:

Pay attention to two things:
This is not about how to become a cool specialist, but about how much money you can earn on it.
Next comes the statement that the average SMM specialist earns 100–200 K rubles.