In today’s episode, host Julie Hood shares four steps to decide what kind of content you must include in your course – and what kind you can skip! She also gives you three of her favorite tools to speed up the process.
Links mentioned in this episode:
JVology Live
https://www.CourseCreatorsHQ.com/jvlive
24 Hour Course Creator
https://24HourCourseCreator.com
Searchie for videos, audios and captions
https://CourseCreatorsHQ.com/searchie
Zoom for video recording
https://CourseCreatorsHQ.com/zoom
Google Tools for slides, checklists and PDFs
https://coursecreatorshq.com/GoogleTools
FREE TRAINING
Is My Course Idea Any Good?
https://coursecreatorshq.com/idea
More on course marketing – including a webinar checklist - https://CourseCreatorsHQ.com/marketing
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Videos audios PDFs oh my. Which one of these should you have in Your course and why let's talk about it on today's episode. And I share my secrets to what else you need to create an amazing online course. Welcome to the course creators, HQ podcast, helping you navigate the latest techniques for creating and marketing online courses. And now here's your host Julie Hood.
Hey, there, I'm so excited you can be here for episode seven of the podcast where we're talking about what kind of content you must include in your amazing Online course. Also, I wanted to tell you about an event this weekend called JVology live, depending on when you're listening, it may or may not be this weekend, or that could be a new one coming up,
but joint ventures and partnerships are one of my very favorite ways to get your course off the ground. It's like having a swarm of salespeople for your course, and you only pay them after they make a sale for you. So they earn commissions on the students that actually sign up. So it's much better than something like Facebook ads, where you're paying for the ads ahead of time,
hoping that someone will sign up this way. You only pay after students have paid you. So there's a lot more to doing joint ventures and getting partners and doing it correctly. And this weekend in September, 2020, you can do this and learn all about it at JVology live. So to get the details, go to coursecreatorshq.com/jvlive, and you'll get the scoop on how to do joint ventures.
Okay? So today I want to talk about the content of your course and how you should put it together to make sure that you have the best possible course for your students. And there's this question that can easily send a lot of my course creators over the edge. They say, you want me to create videos and audios and transcripts of the videos and workbooks and checklists and all of these things.
And it really sounds like a lot. It reminds me when I would tell my kids that they had to clean their room and they respond with, but mom, do I have to sell? Let's make it a little simpler. You don't necessarily have to do all these, but let's talk about why you would choose one over another and make sure that you have good reasons for what you are including or excluding.
So these four steps will walk you through the decisions you need to make. Step one is to think about your audience and your students and what kind of materials do they prefer to consume. So when I started online, I was working writers and they preferred to read. So in that case, lots of PDFs was perfect for them. But your audience may actually prefer to watch you on video or even listen to audios.
So I, chances are your ideal student probably has a preference in format and what they want to see. So some people will love watching videos. Some want to be able to skim through written instructions. Some people learn best by doing. So they'll have a checklist and you can walk them through the, the experience of what they should be doing. Others maybe prefer to have audio that they can listen to while they're cleaning house or while they're exercising while they're running.
So think about, here's a simple question to ask yourself, does your audience tend to talk more about books they read or the latest show they've watched on Netflix that may give you a, an idea about whether they prefer videos or audios. So step two then is to consider the kind of content that you need. And this is basically asking yourself, what does my audience need to succeed with my course?
So sometimes you really need a video to understand a concept or you walk them through maybe a software tool and how it works, or you're walking them through how to cook in the kitchen. A really good PowerPoint can also share some information that you can't just talk about. If it can show relationships and connections between what you're talking about, and that could be really powerful for your audience.
And yes, they need to be more than just bullet points on the screen to be powerful. One of my most important suggestions for you is if you're using PowerPoints, try to keep them to where you have a one thought per slide so that the student can see maybe a photo or an image and have one bullet point thought. And then at the end you can recap them all,
but don't have a big list of bullet points. That's incredibly boring for your students. I also really like to do screen share sometimes when I'm explaining tools and software makes it so much easier for my students to get the idea and the concept of what I'm talking about, the downside to videos is they can be a little bit time consuming, for your students because they have to sit and watch everything.
There's no way to just like skim through a video like you can with a written PDF. So think about that as you're putting your materials together and every lesson doesn't have to be the same. Some of them may need videos. Some of them may just need some checklists that you use and you just talk them through it. It just depends on what exactly you're teaching.
So step three to this process is to play with your price point. So imagine for a moment, I wish I had this, the secret to selling 50,000 copies of your next course. And first let me say, I would offer you the secret to selling 50,000 copies. So how much would you expect to pay for a book about this maybe $14.95 or even $29.95,
but suppose I offered you instead, my super-duper deluxe marketing course with videos, audios, and checklist, and it's the same material pretty much that you would get in the book, but just packaged differently. You get to listen to me instead of read it. But how much do you think I could pay for and charge for a course like that? $197,$ 497, $997.
So, you know, have you ever bought a book for $997? So since we're all in business here, I want your course business to do well. Think about the perceived value of what it is that you're offering. Generally. People expect books to be cheaper than courses, even if they really have the same content. So in fact, a lot of people will give away eBooks for there to get folks to join their email list,
or they'll give away their physical books and sell them as a, get the book for free when you pay for the shipping. So books and eBooks and PDFs alone may not be at the price point you need. So if that's the material that you have right now, let's say you already have it together and you want to get your course up as quickly as possible.
One of the things you can add is group coaching, because then you can provide some zoom coaching where folks will get to interact with you and get their questions answered. And that becomes almost the video portion of the course. And that way you can have a higher price than just using PDFs alone. So step four then is to create what you can right off the bat and then upgrade.
So the thing to consider here is what format is the easiest for you to create? Is it easier for you to write and create audios and create videos? Which, which one of those is easiest for you? So start there, get your first course live and selling and you can go back and expand it and upgrade it, add more and the best part,
then you can raise your price, but your first priority is getting something out there that can help your students get moving. And as the instructor, you want to provide your transformation in the fastest and easiest way possible. So for example, my course 24 hour course creator, most of it is actually a written course because it's the fastest way for you as a student to get started on it.
And the basic premise of the course is that it's quick, you just spend 24 hours to create your course. So every decision on the content was based on whether or not it would save you time. Now, since I first launched it, I have added some group coaching and video lesson type sessions for my students in another version where I charge a little bit more.
So plus I also have checklists and fill in the blank templates because that will save my students a lot of time, but I haven't included a lot of videos on purpose because if they spend 24 hours watching videos, they won't get to the actual working on the course. So I want them working and not just watching a videos. So the best part of all of these decisions is that as the instructor,
you get to decide what's best for you and your students. You can try out different parts and pieces and then change and expand it as you get more experienced. So let me recap those four steps for you. The first step was to think about your students. What is it they prefer to consume? Step two is to consider your content and what you need and how you need to share it for the best understanding.
Step three is to play with your price point, depending on what type of contents you're sharing. You can have a higher price point and then step four is to get started, create what you can, what's easy and then upgrade your course in your price as you go. So I want to also share three different tools to make this whole creation process a lot easier for you.
The first one is called Searchie and I really love Searchie. I was doing a happy dance. When I found this tool, what it does is it let you upload your videos. It will create a transcript for you. It pulls out the audio file automatically. So you're not having to have someone edits your video to give you audio files, to put in your course.
And then the very best part is it inserts, captions automatically into your videos for you. And if you've ever tried to do this or paid someone to do this, it's incredibly time-consuming to do this by yourself and do it manually. So I love this tool. You can get the scoop at coursecreatorshq.com/Searchie that's coursecreatorshq.com/Searchie S E A R C H I E.
That's one of my very favorite tools. And secondly, if you haven't seen or used zoom yet to record your videos, it can be one of the best ways and easiest ways, honestly, to create videos for your course, you can just talk to the camera. If you want to have a voice to camera presentation, or you can share your screen and share a presentation or a PowerPoint or keynote presentation and talk over it.
You can have yourself in the corner of the screen when you're recording. So it's a really easy way everyone lately have been using zoom. So it's a great way to get started on getting your videos created. And then the last tool I want to share with you is free. It's the Google tools suite. So it's Google docs, Google sheets, and Google slides.
And they are really fantastic for creating checklists and workbooks and documents for your course. And especially the slides functionality it's as good as PowerPoint. So rather than having to pay for those tools, you can just use the Google tools for free. And then I'll give you a little pro tip at the end, after you save them, use their save as function,
and you can save them as PDFs to super easily put those in to your presentations or to save and put an add to your course files. So I hope that's helpful for you. The three tools Searchie, zoom, and Google tools. I'll put links to all of these in the show notes, at coursecreatorshq.com/7. So you can get access to all of these different tools.
And then finally, I wanted to provide you a really quick win for being in this podcast and listening to the end. I have a training called is my idea any good to help you decide if your course idea is worthwhile to pursue or not. So really quick way to evaluate your concept. And I want to give it away to you for free to thank you for listening.
Just go to coursecreatorshq.com/idea to grab that training at no charge. So I have one last request. Could you please hit that subscribe button if you've learned anything valuable or helpful from this episode, I would really, really appreciate your five-star review. These reviews have me doing happy dances, and I really, really appreciate your help. When the podcast apps see positive reviews and lots of subscribers,
they'll suggest this podcast to others who are also interested in course creation. So thank you so much for listening and subscribing. Thank you for reviewing. I can't wait to connect with you next time and Have a fantastic week.