Marketing

BEST E-LEARNING PLATFORMS FOR ONLINE EDUCATION

Published

3 months ago

July 6, 2020

The best e-Learning platforms for online education – Online education has never been as popular as it is right now. The education sector is experiencing a major shift from traditional to virtual education.

AFFILIATE DISCLOSURE

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Especially with the stay-at-home orders in many countries at the moment, people have taken to virtual education as opposed to traditional face-to-face learning.

The Learning Management System (LMS) provides people with a vast array of digital courses. Essentially, users have access to a tutor as well as digital lessons through the use of videos, images, audio files, etc.

You are learning as you always have, except you can’t touch and feel the tutor or your classmates.

And that’s great. You can learn multiple things online without necessarily leaving the comfort of your home.

It’s not that the traditional method of classroom education is bad or ineffective. However, businesses, tutors have realized that they can reach a much larger audience through online education, and this is true.

E-LEARNING PLATFORMS WITH MILLIONS OF STUDENTS

Many of these e-learning platforms have millions of students looking for one thing or the other to learn and improve themselves

From learning a new language to taking professional courses etc. e-learning platforms have got a variety for everyone and all you need is a smartphone /laptop and internet to access learning materials wherever you are.

Seriously, who wouldn’t opt for that?

Developing new skills has never been so easy.

So, if you are a student looking to explore a new field or improve in a particular area, or a tutor looking to offer courses online, this article is for you.

Without taking much of your time, we are going to dive into some of the best e-learning platforms that can move your education and career forward.

THE BEST E-LEARNING PLATFORMS IN 2020

1. UDEMY – BEST E-LEARNING PLATFORMS FOR ONLINE EDUCATION

I can’t think of any other option that could top this list apart from Udemy.

According to Forbes, Udemy is the best online learning platform for the average learner, and you get over 150,000 courses.

The platform is not for learners only, so if you are an instructor, you can create courses on topics you love and make money from them.

Udemy - 10 best e-Learning Platforms for online Education

UDEMY – BEST E-LEARNING PLATFORMS FOR ONLINE EDUCATION

Udemy has over 57,000 instructors and lessons in over 65 languages. You are offered a wide variety of courses to pick from, ranging from design, finance, business management, photography to personal development, lifestyle, etc.

You even get to choose the level at which you’d like to start the class, there are beginner, intermediate and advanced levels, so no one is left behind.

Instructors can upload courses in video format, audio files, PowerPoint presentations, etc.

UDEMY PRICING

The cost of each class on Udemy varies and can get as pricy as $200, nevertheless, once you purchase your desired course, you have access to it forever, it doesn’t expire.

Awesome right?

More so, you can preview courses to determine if you are interested in a particular course or not and if perhaps you buy a course and it does not meet your expectations, you can request a full refund within the first 30 days of your purchase.

As an approved instructor looking to upload a course, you can do that for free on Udemy. However, according to Adam Enfroy, you will be charged a 3% revenue share for sales through instructor coupons, 50% for students who found your course through organic search (SEO), and 75% for transactions made through paid search marketing efforts.

Udemy offers such a great opportunity, and you will get a certificate of completion on concluding the course, you should utilize it.

2. SKILLSHARE – BEST E-LEARNING PLATFORMS FOR ONLINE EDUCATION

Skillshare is mainly for creatives. If you are a creative looking to expand your scope, or just someone looking to explore your creative side, Skillshare might be for you.

SKILLSHARE - 10 best eLearning Platforms for online Education in 2020

SKILLSHARE – BEST E-LEARNING PLATFORMS FOR ONLINE EDUCATION

Skillshare offers you courses on

photography
design
filmmaking
tech
fine art
cooking
web design
project management
language learning
etc.

What’s most interesting about this platform is that you don’t learn just by listening or reading. On the contrary, the courses are video-based, so you are getting practical lessons that you can follow to create your piece of creativity. Especially considering that you will be required to make a project of your own.

Skillshare has more than 4 million students, which is good for you because it encourages interaction through discussion forums. Hence, you can interact with other creatives around the world as well as provide feedback on the course you are enrolled in.

Unlike some others, Skillshare does not bill per course, once you make a payment of $99 annually, you are entitled to their array of courses.

14 DAYS FREE TRIAL

Not to worry, you get 14 days free trial to see if Skillshare is right for you.

For instructors looking to offer courses, Skillshare is free to upload courses, and you’ll be paid monthly for every minute of your video watched. You can also earn $10 for every student that signs up to Skillshare through your referral link.

You must know though that Skillshare does not offer a certificate of completion to its students.

But if you are interested in learning a new skill, Skillshare is the one for you.

3. COURSERA – BEST E-LEARNING PLATFORMS FOR ONLINE EDUCATION

If you’ve been looking to go to an Ivy League school to study, Coursera brings the Ivy league schools to you. The platform partners with top-tier universities to bring courses and skills to the digital front and at a reduced rate when compared to going to these schools to study.

COURSERA - 10 BEST ELEARNING PLATFORMS FOR ONLINE LEARNING IN 2020

BEST E-LEARNING PLATFORMS FOR ONLINE EDUCATION

Coursera offers tons of free courses. It is a good way for students to take extra courses without paying extra money, but you will have to pay to obtain a certificate for the course.

However, some other more complex ones will cost you. They are sort of like taking a degree at a school, except you do everything online.

Coursera is majorly for academics, people looking to get academic certifications. The courses can span for as short as 4-6 weeks and as long as 1-3 years. Students are engaged in video lectures, discussion forums, assignments, etc.

It’s basically like being in school. If you are looking to expand your resumé by getting an advanced degree, learn a new skill, increase your knowledge bank, you can’t go wrong with Coursera.

Coursera does not offer opportunities to instructors outside its partner institutions.

4. TEACHABLE – BEST E-LEARNING PLATFORMS FOR ONLINE EDUCATION

Unlike the other platforms above, Teachable was created with the instructor in mind. It is a course creation platform where tutors or experts at certain skills can develop their courses and sell them to students.

If you are a tutor and you are looking for an easy and interactive way to create courses online and communicate effectively with students worldwide, Teachable offers all these.

With over 14 million students on the platform, your course(s) has the potential to reach a large majority and you will enjoy the autonomy of creating your course in your style and determining the price at which you want to sell it.

You can grade quizzes to determine the progress of your students, and you can create your completion certificate for your students. More than just creating courses online, Teachable offers you the autonomy to create an online school community of your own.

5. WizIQ – BEST E-LEARNING PLATFORMS FOR ONLINE EDUCATION

If you prefer to live classes to pre-created courses, then this is for you. On WizIQ, tutors can teach students to live through virtual classrooms and webinars. In other words, you can deliver and receive lectures in realtime, especially with tools like discussion boards, video streaming, etc.

But if you prefer pre-created courses that can be studied at the determined pace of the student, you can get that here too.

You can also assess the progress of your students through tests. This platform pays you to teach a community of students all watching at the same time.

It’s simply a live classroom.

6. LEARNWORLDS – BEST E-LEARNING PLATFORMS FOR ONLINE EDUCATION

As a teacher looking for the best and most interactive ways to digitally communicate with and teach your students, or just an individual trying to create and sell courses online, Learnworlds offers a platform to create courses that can capture attention and build engagement.

On this e-learning platform, you can do more than just create a course, you can brand your course to fit your style with the several templates, themes, and color schemes.

What more? You get to use the interactive video players and ebook where you can pause the video and text highlighted on the ebook to help your students retain whatever information they choose.

No, that’s not all. You can create assessment exercises for your students on this platform as well as digital certificates that can carry your brand, logo, course name, and date of issue.

So your online school can become known far and wide.

Awesome right?

Although at first glance this platform might throw off a few users. However, once you have started, you realize that it is easy to use; you don’t need prior knowledge to navigate this platform.

Learnworlds is a bit pricy, it goes for as low as $24 per month to as high as $249 per month.

But, they offer a 30-day free trial, so go ahead and check what this platform has to offer your brand.

7. THINKIFIC

Thinkific is another platform geared towards instructors. It has over 40,000-course creators, more than 53 million courses taken, and is used in about 164 countries.

164 countries! Now, that’s a large market if you are looking to sell your course online.

On Thinkific, it’s easy to build your education enterprise and you have full autonomy.

You can upload videos for your courses, schedule lesson time, set the course price, control your student information, and you get paid instantly.

Go even a step further to design your course site to make it more attractive to your students, with no knowledge of coding.

You can sign up for their 30-day free plan, after which you have to pay $49 per month for the Basic plan; $99 per month for the Pro plan; $499 per month for the Premier plan.

Moreso, as a student, you get a certificate for completing a course on Thinkific.

8. edX

This is a great platform to take academic courses for free. Harvard and MIT created Edx as a nonprofit organization.

edX one of the BEST E-LEARNING PLATFORMS FOR ONLINE EDUCATION

You can find lots of courses on this platform that are free to enroll. However, some others you will have to pay for. The price of each course varies.

Schools, non-profits, etc. offer courses on the edX website. Millions of students have enrolled in thousands of courses on this platform.

edX offers you university-level courses across several disciplines, from some of the world’s top universities.

On completion of a course on edX, you can receive a certificate of successful completion. Some edX courses allow you to purchase academic credits. Those you can apply toward a degree at a college or university. Only the school offering the course can decide whether or not to offer credit on a course.

9. GOOGLE CLASSROOM

As a teacher, to connect with your students just got easier with Google Classroom. Google classroom is mainly optimized for schools to make teaching and grading of assignments easier.

With Excel sheets, PowerPoint slides, Word documents, Google calendar, students can receive lectures and notes from anywhere across the world. Students can either join a class through a private invite code. Alternatively, they can buy it from a school domain

With this platform, it is comfortable for teachers to create, distribute, and mark assignments for every student. According to Wikipedia, each class creates a separate folder in the respective user’s drive. The student can submit work there that the teachers can grade.

You don’t have to worry about your students forgetting their assignments! Students can keep tabs on all their assignments and their due dates through the Google calendar.

This is an excellent platform for schools, and it’s free to use.

10. KHAN ACADEMY

Khan Academy is a nonprofit education platform and among the BEST E-LEARNING PLATFORMS FOR ONLINE EDUCATION. The organization creates lessons in the form of short videos for students all over the world in over 30 languages.

At Khan Academy, you can learn almost anything for free. The organization is hosting most of the videos from this organization on Youtube and is quite easy to access.

On the website, you can track your learning progress, take practice exercises, etc.

Khan Academy has become more than an e-learning platform, it has begun reshaping the education system. You can learn even the simplest thing on this platform. It is best for students in

secondary schools
middle schools
high schools

to complement their school work and make understanding a lot easier.

Create an e-Course

Learn here How to create an e-Course!

CONCLUSION

I’m sure you have learned a lot from this article about the best E-Learning Platforms for online Education. If you are a tutor looking to sell courses online, or a student who wants to take courses for personal development, you can’t go astray with this comprehensive list of e-learning platforms. So, go ahead and try them out.

Are you interested in making money with eLearning courses? See the article from Dave of OfficialReviews “How to make USD 100,000 with eLearning Platforms“.

Marketing

TOP 7 CRM SOFTWARE IN 2020

Published

3 months ago

July 6, 2020

Sarah L.

THE TOP 7 CRM SOFTWARE IN 2020

TOP 7 CRM Software in 2020 – Are you overwhelmed with the amount of work it takes to handle all your customer interactions and relationships? Then you need a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software.

AFFILIATE DISCLOSURE

CRM is the approach adopted by a company to manage its interaction with its current and potential customers. Using Whatever CRM approach and software, businesses can best fashion their mode of operation to fit their target audience.

Why are you running a business if not to get customers, retain those customers, and make money?

CRM software is especially good for this; it utilizes data about a customer’s history with a company to improve business relationships with customers. It is specifically good at retaining customers and driving sales growth.

With CRM software, you can do anything from managing customer’s and potential customer’s data to using such data to improve business relationships.

It’s easy to use the CRM system to record and update the contact details of your customers, track interactions with your customers, and much more.

With this, you are less likely to lose customers due to negligence.

Every phone conversation with a customer, pitch to a new client/customer can be recorded in the software to avoid a mix-up of valuable information that could have made all the difference to the growth of your business.

You don’t want your customers frustrated because their complaints and issues are not being attended to quickly. Chances are they won’t be asking for your services again. Hence, you need to have all this information stored in one location, and ready to be found when the time comes.

THE Best 7 CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP SOFTWARES THIS YEAR

There are so many CRM systems out there, it can be difficult to know which one to use for your business

With the right CRM, you can:

have information about potential clients, where and how to find them
be up-to-date about potential clients before calls and meetings
have reliable and accurate sales data
prioritize and get full reports on all day-to-day business activities

With this list, you can make the best decision out of the best 7 CRM software in 2020 to adopt for your business.

Don’t worry, we’ll only give you the best of the best.

1. ZOHO

Before jumping into Zoho CRM, you have to know that the CRM is part of a clique of applications within Zoho One designed to run a business.

You can access all the digital necessities for the smooth running of your business and serving of your customers in one location on this platform including Zoho Mail, Zoho Planner, Zoho CRM, Zoho Writer, Zoho Slideshow, Zoho Sheet, and a lot more.

Zoho CRM is just one of the excellent applications you can get from the Zoho package. It doesn’t matter if you are a small business or a large corporation, you can use Zoho CRM to optimize your relationship with your customers.

ZOHO CRM Features

Several features make this CRM one of the best of the 7 TOP CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP SOFTWARE IN 2020.

You can handle email communication completely inside Zoho CRM. You don’t need to use an external email channel to send emails. On Zoho, you can send emails and even connect your emails to the customer records already on the platform.

Another awesome thing you can do with Zoho CRM is to make calls, schedule calls, get reminders, and save call logs from every interaction. To do this, you will have to connect your telephone provider to the CRM platform.

SalesSignals on Zoho keeps your sales team updated about every external interaction with your company. If someone mentions you on social media, if someone visits your site, if your email is opened, you will get immediate notifications.

With this, you can know who’s interested in your product and the leads to follow. Because following the wrong leads and prospects can hurt your business.

Let me say here that Zoho CRM can be a bit tricky to navigate for beginners, but eventually, you will get the hang of it.

To cap it up, Zoho CRM makes life and business easier.

Zoho offers a 15-day trial period and has a free plan for up to 3 users.

The pricing ranges from $12 per month on the Standard plan to $45 per month on the Ultimate plan.

ZOHO ONE 30-DAYS FREE TRIAL WITH EVERYTHING YOU NEED

ZOHO ONE is one of the best options for your money. The monthly pricing is just USD 35/EUR 30/GBP 30 per employee. It includes features such as:

CRM
Sales
Marketing
Support
HR
Accounting
Operations
Office Suite
Project Management
Social Media

See how Dave from OfficialReviews uses ZOHO ONE in “Make USD 10k or more per Month“.

2. HUBSPOT

In the world of CRM, HubSpot is one of the well-established names.

HubSpot has been designed to fit a larger number of customers than many of the other CRM software out there. But that doesn’t mean you can’t use it if you are still in the small business category. After all, the goal is to grow right?

If you are into marketing, sales, or just rendering services, HubSpot can be great for your business.

One of my favorite features of the HubSpot CRM is that I can sync it to my Gmail and Outlook, and easily keep track of my priorities on these platforms too.

On the HubSpot dashboard, you can keep track of relevant information about your company. Scheduled appointments are displayed so you don’t risk forgetting them, keep track of all sales information and performance of your sales team.

Essentially, with HubSpot, you have all your email interactions, calls, and social media handles at one spot, ensuring that you don’t miss any angle from which your customer might be trying to contact you, and you can easily interact with all your leads.

HubSpot CRM is free, but they do offer other paid CRM software like the Marketing Hub, Sales Hub, Service Hub, and CMS Hub all of which vary in price.

Thoughtfully, HubSpot has a blog where you can read helpful content on marketing, sales, and customer success, so head on to their website and make the best out of the offers.

3. SALESFORCE

With over 1 million users worldwide, you must know that Salesforce must be giving businesses what they are looking for.

This CRM software with the entire App Suite will cover every angle of your customer interaction. All the branches of your business including;

Small Business
Marketing
Sales
Commerce
Analytics
Engagement
Productivity

This CRM offers many mind-blowing features;

It is easily customizable; a very essential feature in any good CRM as every business is different in what they need from CRM software.
Mass emailing option, and a variety of email templates to choose from; you can use different templates for different customers to give your business a fresh look.
AI Einstein ensures that every email and reminders on your calendar are synced with your CRM software so you don’t miss out on any detail.

You can get Salesforce for your business for as low as $25 to as high as $1,250 (every plan contains different features).

4. FRESHSALES

Do you need an all-round view of your business and its requirements for growth? Don’t look too far, Freshsales offers this and more. Freshsales is a cloud-based CRM, which means whatever you do with this CRM will be fast and a lot more efficient.

With Freshsales, you can do a lot that will project your business the right way. We’ll help you out with some of the features of this software.

Sending personalized bulk emails, and tracking activities on said emails. If someone clicks a link within your email, the Freshsales CRM software will notify you.
Lead Scoring; Prioritize and follow the right leads. The software uses collected data to show you the right customer prospects to follow.
Built-in Phone. Yes, you can make calls on Freshsales. Get notified about scheduled calls, and make those calls right on the platform.
Freshsales works in sync with Google Calendar
Monitor the progress of all on-going deals
Tracks web pages that your prospective clients are visiting so you can use that data in interacting with them.

Freshsales offers a 21-day free trial after which the pricing ranges from $25 to $79

5. PIPEDRIVE

Pipedrive is a sales-oriented CRM, meaning you won’t get some of the features that an all-round business CRM offers. It’s perfect for use for just your sales team as opposed to the whole of your business.

Pipedrive is easily customizable to fit your sales process, sync emails, track calls, review your contact history, and keep track of schedules.

Pipedrive also supervises the efficiency of your sales process by monitoring your performance.

The average conversion rate from potential customer to customer is calculated, so you know if you’ve been meeting your targets, and the new leads to follow.

There’s a lot more to Pipedrive and not everything can be covered in this article! You need to discover them for yourself. If Pipedrive seems like the best fit for your business, then check it out.

The pricing for this software is quite reasonable. Billed monthly, you can get it for as low as $15 and as high as $99 for the most features

6. ACTIVE CAMPAIGN

ActiveCampaign is a full-on email marketing tool which also offers CRM tools as a part of its package.

This software offers personalized email marketing, to ensure that every customer receives emails best suited to them.

Also, marketing automation makes it super easy to segment your contact and computerize the sending of emails.

But you are probably not here for that, so let’s talk about the CRM tools of ActiveCampaign.

The first thing I noticed about this CRM system is its ease of use. It is quite easy to navigate and centered on following the progress of every deal.

You can create stages for the progress of your deals, and update them as they evolve from just potentials to customers/sales.

This CRM also manages your contact data. If a contact is associated with a deal, it is recorded on the contact’s account alongside every action you take and interaction you have with the contact such as sending emails. With this, you can keep track of the steps you’ve made with a particular contact to lead them to sales.

With Deal Scoring on this platform, with the activities of your contacts, ActiveCampaign can tell you if they will convert to sales or not, so you don’t waste your time following the wrong lead.

On the lowest subscription plan, you will pay $9 per month, the most expensive plan costs $229 per month (all paid yearly).

7. INSIGHTLY

Insightly’s most unique feature is its integration with many external applications. Therefore, on the software, you can still work with all your favorite applications at one location. Insightly CRM fully integrates G Suite and Microsoft Office 365.

Insightly caters to the CRM needs of over 25,000 companies.

If your goal is to improve customer relationships and to do it quickly so it can impact your business, then Insightly might just be right for you.

Insightly helps you create engaging experiences with your customers, by giving you a clear picture of your customers, their needs, their preferences, making every interaction with all your customers unique.

Furthermore, it also manages your customer data, tracks your leads, and contacts to the point of sales by managing your schedule alongside your emails, phone calls, contacts, and meetings.

The Plus plan on Insightly costs $29 per month; the professional plan costs $49 per month; while the Enterprise plan costs $99 per month (they bill all plans annually).

CONCLUSION

That’s it. We have just given you 7 of the best CRM software in 2020 that can promote your relationship with your customers and increase sales. Choose the one that best suits your business, and start making these software work for you.

PR

How to cook a Press Release: Simple Step-by-Step Recipe

Let’s say you have an info case and you want to get as much media coverage as you can, what should you do? I say “Get them interested”, and yes, it is that obvious.

Published

4 months ago

May 24, 2020

Anastasiya B.

How to cook a Press Release: Simple Step-by-Step Recipe – Let’s say you have an info case and you want to get as much media coverage as you can, what should you do? I say “Get them interested”, and yes, it is that obvious.

It doesn’t matter if you send a paragraph via email, or you do Direct Message via Instagram, or you call up and pitch your news, or if you just post it on your website — all means are good if they help you ‘sell’ your story.