Bob from GoSkills explains how they use YouTube's monthly Excel Challenge to engage customers: participants submit answers via Slack, solutions drop 1-2 weeks later. Their social media manager Maria produces frequent videos and shorts. They're planning avatar-based instructors next, then AR/VR classrooms.
Questions this video answers
February 21, 2025.
Once a month.
In the organization's Slack community.
Maria.
goskills.com.
Chapters
Is there any one social media platform that you find resonates the most with your customers from the standpoint of they're already customers and it's nice for them to be reminded of you versus other platforms that are maybe bringing in customers for the first time?
Yeah, we found a lot of success with YouTube. We post a lot of our free courses and free tutorials there and we have challenges, for example, that we post on YouTube and people love it. They love getting engaged. We have an Excel Challenge that goes out once a month and, you know.
Excel Challenge, that's something. Sounds like something I would fail miserably at, but it's. Perhaps I should take your course.
I'll give you a good price. Yeah. So it's a monthly challenge. We create, you know, a scenario and give you the workbook and people can submit their answers in our Slack community and I think a week or two later we provide the solution. And that's all on YouTube as well. So, yeah, we found YouTube to be great for customer acquisition. And then.
And is this from organic content? Are you doing advertising or a mix of both?
We, we do a mix of both, but a lot, A lot of it is organic.
And then. I'm sorry, go ahead.
I was going to say, and then in terms of retaining customers, we found LinkedIn really useful as well. We do post a lot on, on LinkedIn to target our business customers.
And with your YouTube, how much time and effort and energy is spent editing, polishing. I mean, you can spend $100,000 a month editing and polishing videos on YouTube to try to hit algorithms the right way and go viral. How much of your team's energy is spent crafting the YouTube and then promoting it in order to get the biggest audience and the right audience.
Yeah, we have an amazing social media manager who seems to just churn out tons of videos and shorts very quickly. I don't know how much time she spends on this, but she's highly.
Well, let's give a shout out to her. Who is it?
Maria.
Okay. We won't say her last name because we don't want anyone to steal her away from. That's. But that's great that you've got that.
Yeah. So she's amazing. And, and we do, we do churn out a lot of content because she's just, she's just incredible with, with all the social channels.
And do these challenges work on LinkedIn as well? I would think that would be a lot. Where a lot of your audience is as well, since it's so business focused.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, we do have. Yeah. So LinkedIn, we don't really, we don't really acquire new customers from LinkedIn. It's just more re. Engaging with our existing audience. But we found that YouTube is helpful for new customer acquisition.
Okay, that's great to know. Well, Bob, we really appreciate your time and insights. I would like sort of your final thoughts on future trends in online education because I certainly am wrong frequently. I've been way too early, sometimes I'm too late to the game with certain trends. I'm sort of placing my bet on this clone thing as being kind of the next big thing in online education. Right now you make your money selling courses, but I'm wondering, are you, are you looking down the road where there's 5, 10, 15 years, it's something else that's still going to be in the online education space, but has a different look and feel than the traditional video based course.
That's a great question. So in the immediate future, I think you're right, these avatar based instructors would be, it would be great to see more of that. But 10 to 15 years down the line, I mean, I would love to see something a lot more, more immersive where you're in some sort of, you know, AR environment or. Yeah, like even a classroom environment, but you know, in augmented reality or virtual reality. Yeah, I think that would be incredible. You can play out real life scenarios and you know, just create a totally immersive learning environment. I think that would be lovely to see. Great.
Well, I hope to see it with you there and with me there and all of us watching as a part of it. Online education has been fantastic to you and me for the last 15 years. Certainly hoping for another 15, 30 or more. Bob, goskills.com is the website. Check it out. Especially if you need tech skills, things like Excel. But remember, they have great soft skills. I hear they have a good public speaking course. Thanks so much, Bob for being our guest today.
