The Better Your Plan, The More The Course Will Write Itself
Let’s continue with the week’s theme: Creating online courses that are useful.
So far, we’ve talked about the very basics of what an online course needs. It’s not a 6 part video sales letter, it’s not a private members forum where you connect with nerds all over the world to plan world domination (if that’s your product though… sign me up) and it’s not a hundred different bonuses.
It’s two key things, plus another key thing. Read about it in this article.
I also gave everyone a framework yesterday for finding out whether there’s demand for a course. You can read that here. As always, do your own research, but those things are basically the method I used to determine whether there was need for my course. (As well as being a potential customer for my product. I forgot to mention that, but it’s a given really.)
With those things said, let’s move on to creating your course.
Creating A Great Course Is About Planning
As I wrote in my last article about writer’s block, not knowing what to create isn’t anything to do with the creating itself.
Essentially, if you don’t know what you’re putting in your online course, then you haven’t done your research and planning.
An online course is basically a set of organised materials that’ll help your target market solve a problem or get better at a skill than they are now.
That’s true whether it’s a “Fix your posture in 12 weeks course” or a “Learn to Master the Cello in two hours a day” course.
People who buy a course as opposed to a book are people who are looking for structured material. They want you to – in most cases – guide them through what to do, when to do it and how to do it.
That’s why they’ll pay you $500 and not $5.
It’s (loosely) why people go to University as opposed to the library.
When you’re a course creator, you’re a tutor, instructor and a guide to the people you’ve bought from. That is to some extent your guiding light for creating a course, but it’s not your USP.
Your USP is the reason people will pick you as their guru and not some other guy on the internet or from their local college or whatever.
How I’d Recommend Structuring A Course
I think that a good course consists of two parts:
- Knowledge
- Skills
People want a step-by-step, as I’ve talked about. However, people learn at different speeds and through different methods.
That means that some people are going to want you to dump a ton of information on them and leave them to their own devices. (That’s me!)
You have to provide both, and you should. Doing so is also good practice for you because it means you’ll include everything you need to and you’ll have to have a great knowledge of your subject area to do this.
People who are on a course are going to have a few different questions, which I wrote about here.
If you want your course to be considered “complete” then you’ll need to answer those questions:
- Why is your customer doing what your course prescribes?
- What if they do/don’t follow your instructions?
- How is this making them better?
- What are they specifically doing every day/month/time they use this information?
- When are they going to get the skills?
Your course should comprehensively answer these questions. If it does, then people will rave about it. Most courses don’t do this. I’ve paid for courses which are great at showing me step-by-step how to do something, but they never mention the why. I’ve also taken courses which are the opposite – they’ve dumped information on me but never given me any structure or step-by-step means to make that information useful.
Surprise, surprise: I didn’t finish those courses and I wouldn’t recommend them to anyone.
Let’s Reiterate
Another short article here, but again it’s because this is quite straightforward and very context-specific.
When you create a course, you need to ensure a few things:
- The course contains all the knowledge and skills people need
So you can’t create a course that says, “Flat abs in six weeks” and then not give your customers diet programs and exercise information.
- You need to answer all the questions and learner types with your material
Some people do things for the sake of knowledge, some people want hands-on activities. You don’t have to create a product for all of these people, but if your course has all these elements then you’re going to succeed with a lot of different learner types.
Providing you can plan the above, you can build the above into your course and the structure will practically write the course for you. This is especially true if your course is a timed one; for instance, it might be a six week course.
Your plan would look like this:
Week I: Essential Skills And Knowledge
Material about the how, why, what, where, what if, who? Etc.
Then repeat that with gradually more dense/advanced information.
Remember, a good structure will create the product for you.
It’ll also write the sales material for you, which I’ll talk about tomorrow.