In this episode, host Julie Hood shares her Top 10 List for course creators... including the 10 things that will make your students love (and finish!) your course.
In this episode, host Julie Hood shares her Top 10 List for course creators... including the 10 things that will make your students love (and finish!) your course.
LINKS MENTIONED
Jump into the FREE 5 day challenge at TopicAndTitleChallenge.com to find your rockstar course idea and name your course!
KEY TAKEAWAYS
The Top 10 List for an Amazing Online Course:
#10 An audience that needs your course... and knows it!
#9 A topic that's focused.
#8 A title that wows.
#7 Modules and lessons that flow logically.
#6 Checklists that simplify.
#5 Lesson summaries that surprise and delight your students.
#4 Coaching that answers questions from your students.
#3 A sales page that grabs attention.
#2 An email newsletter that nurtures potential students.
And the #1 thing you need for an amazing online course...
#1 A student experience that impresses.
COME VISIT!
Clubhouse
Connect with me on Clubhouse for FREE masterclasses at @JulieHood.
CourseCreatorsHQ.club – to join the waitlist for my upcoming Clubhouse course
Website
https://www.CourseCreatorsHQ.com
Facebook
https://www.facebook.com/CourseCreatorsHQ
Instagram
https://www.instagram.com/CourseCreatorsHQ
Twitter
https://www.Twitter.com/CourseHQ
Hey there. So glad you're here today for the top 10 list for an amazing online course. I thought we'd do something fun today and I'd share with you 10 different ideas to help make your course even better sort of reminiscent of the David Letterman top 10 list, but I promise you, it won't be nearly as funny as his lists were. So Enjoy.
Let's jump in. 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, I'm so glad you're here today. And I can't wait to tell you about what we've got coming up on June the seventh. It's the topic and title challenge for A rockstar course.
So I really hope you'll sign up. It's free and I'm going to spend the week working with course creators to figure out what their topic should be, figuring out what their title should be, and really get started on that amazing rockstar course. So I hope you can join us at topicentitledchallenge.com or the link will be in the show notes. All right. So let's get to it my top 10 list for an amazing online course,
number 10, you need an audience that needs your course and that they know it. So what I mean here is you need to have a really focused audience and know who it is you're trying to reach and who it is that needs your course. And so it's so much easier to promote and sell a course when your audience recognizes that they have the problem.
So for example, people who are wanting to create a course, they usually know they need some help. They need to figure a few things out. They have some questions. So it's not like I have to convince them that a course is a good idea before they'll purchase. So when you're thinking about your course and how it's going to work, really spend some time thinking about your audience and whether or not they self identify for the audience that you're trying to reach.
And the reason this was coming up, I was on a clubhouse a couple of weeks ago, and the people were telling me about their courses and they had a very specific name that they were using to describe their audience. And so one of my questions for them is does your audience self identify? In other words, do they already know that that's who they are?
Because if they do, it's so much easier to sell your course, if not just plan that into the way your sales process works, is it you're going to have to educate your audience on why they need you. So maybe you have a quiz, maybe you have some kind of checklist that you share, you know, to see if they are a good fit for your course.
So that's number 10, an audience that needs your course and that knows it. And then number nine, you need a topic that's focused. And this is one of the biggest problems I see course creators making. They want to do a signature course that has everything they know about a topic, but in the process, you don't have a specific enough result for their students.
So when you can really narrow down what it is that you're providing, the transformation that you're giving, or the result that you're giving, it's so much easier not only to sell, but for your students to say, oh yeah, I really need that. So trying to do a here's how to do online marketing course would be insane because there's so many different pieces to the puzzle.
So many different things that people need to consider. All of those pieces will just frustrate your audience. But if you can pick one piece of that, that can be your first course. And then all of those other pieces can be additional upsells and additional courses later on that they can continue working with you. And it just, it becomes so much easier to build an entire business rather than just a specific course.
Plus for you as the course creator, it'll be so much easier than trying to make it all work together when it's so huge. So let's just get started with something that can give a specific result for your student and makes life easier for you. So that's number nine, a topic, and that's focused and number eight, you need a title that wows.
So it needs to be something that really jumps out and grabs the attention of your potential students. So for example, I could do how to create an online course does that wow. Oh no, that's pretty basic. But if I can make it seem much more interesting, like your ultimate guide to an online course, that rocks, that sounds much more intriguing.
So there's a bit of curiosity built in. There's a bit of use those adjectives that, that apply. Of course, the, the ones that are legitimate and then use some of those words that really get someone intrigued and creates some curiosity. So we're going to be working on this for the topic entitled challenge. So I really hope you can join us for that.
And we can talk about specifics around how to name your course. So your students go, Hmm, wonder what that is. I want to jump in, let me look at more. I want to find out that might be helpful for me. So I hope you can join us for that. That's number eight, you need a title that wows and number seven,
you need modules and lessons that flow logically. And what I mean by this is probably best described with an example. I was in a course the other day, all about doing Facebook ads and there's a lot to Facebook ads. It's very, there's a lot of different options and waterfront ways you can do it. And there's a lot to the strategy. And then there's a lot to the actual execution.
So in order to put together a really good course on this, you have to spend some time presenting that in a reasonable way for your students. But this course started in the intro video with a welcome video. That was obviously a Facebook live at the end of a session of trainings. And so the instructor was saying, oh, and I taught you this.
And I taught you that. And I thought, wait, you haven't taught me anything yet. This is the intro to your course. So I was very confused and you don't want to confused student. So take some time to figure out what is the logical flow of what my students need to know? What is it they need to know first? You know,
am I going to start with the strategy? Am I going to start with maybe some vocabulary? Am I going to start with giving them an overview of my framework? Those are all really good ways to start. And then the process of the lessons needs to build upon each other. And what I mean by that is I do the first lesson. I get one piece of the puzzle and then the second piece builds on it and takes me to the next step.
So you're, you're putting it together in this logical order that makes me go, okay, now I understand I have this baseline. And then your next lesson takes me up a level on the ladder. And then the next lesson takes me even farther. So by the time I get to the top of the letter, I've gotten through all the lessons. I feel like I've built this less,
this experience, and I've done my homework along the way. So that at the top, I get the result that you've promised. So spend some time, however, your brain likes to work. So some people like to do mind maps. Some people like to do outlines. Some people sit down with post-it notes and move them around and put the process together that way.
And then really the way you'll know if you've done a good job with this one, your students will let you know in the reviews. So your first round of students who go through your beta course or go through at the beginning, they will let you know, Hey, your flow worked or it didn't work for me. And then you just improve. You keep going at it and make it even better.
So that was number seven. You need modules and lessons that flow logically. So number six, I want you to add checklist that simplify. And what I mean by that is giving your students checklists throughout the course will help them so much because then they have the steps, they have the list and they just need to go through it and check it off as they go.
It's something they can print off. So it's something tangible that they can work with. And you simple simplify, let's say you have a video with all of these steps or even multiple videos, but on one page you can summarize with a checklist, what it is they need to do. So for example, in my 24 hour course creator program, I have a one page sheet that summarizes all 24 hours.
And then it has some notes over on the right hand side of, for the students. So they can literally print off that checklist and get through the whole course. It's not always set up to where you can have one checklist for your entire course, but definitely take some time and think about what kind of checklist could I share with my audience that would make their experience that much better when they're working with me.
So number six is checklists that simplify. Number five is I want you to create a lesson summaries that surprise and delight your students. And what I mean by this is if you remember cliff notes versions, that would take these really long, difficult English books and summarize them in the language that works for a student and makes it easier to comprehend the material,
want you to create similar things for your life. And the reason for this is that then your students can read through the lesson summary and get the idea of what the lesson is about, because sometimes they might not need to watch that video and then make sure you include at the bottom, the instructions for the homework or whatever assignment they have. So on this lesson summary,
they get not only the content of what it is you're talking about, but they also get the assignment that they need to do. And so some of your really advanced students, they might just use those lessons, summaries, and that's about all that. They won't need to get through your course, but you will make your students so happy because it will help them comprehend and get
through the course, even faster. So that's number five, lesson summaries that surprise and delight your students. Number four, I want you to add coaching that answers your students' questions. So maybe this is a Facebook group where they can submit questions, maybe it's comments, even in your course, or it's some kind of Q and A live sessions that your students can join,
because they're going to have questions, you know, as we're learning things, things don't always make sense or they jump into something and they're unsure. So give your students an option to get in contact with you and get their questions answered. Because sometimes if we have questions that we don't get answered, then we just stop. We're like, Ugh, I'm stuck and don't continue on.
So we're, we're talking about when we're creating this really amazing course of yours, we want to also help our students get through the course. And so having a way to get questions answered is another way for them to actually finish and complete and keep moving. So that's number 4 coaching that answers their questions. Number three, you want a sales page that grabs the attention of your students.
And this is one of those things that you may not know how to do right now get started. I'll give you a couple things to make sure you include. And then I highly recommend jumping into an extra training about how to do this. So a couple of things that I want to make sure you have first a pre headline at the top that describes who the person is.
So it may say something like attention, entrepreneurs, experts, coaches, and consultants, because that's the audience that I work with. So that's up at the top. So they're like, oh, this is for me. Then you have a headline. That's not the name of your course is a headline that's intriguing that pulls them in and gets them really excited.
And then I want you to talk about the problem that you're solving so that they recognize, oh yeah, this is me. You can sort of ask questions in here that they will say yes to. And then describe the course, get into the content. You may have a list of the different modules in the lessons and definitely a short paragraph about you and why you're an expert at it.
You can also add in some testimonials of people who have been through the course and what it is, they liked about it at the bottom. Be sure to include a PS. A lot of times people only read the PSs. So summarize the course at the bottom and the PS. And then my final tip is to make sure you've got Buy buttons throughout the page because sometimes people will decide as they're going through.
Okay, I'm ready to go see what the price is. I'm ready to jump in. So really, really quick sales page lesson there, but some ideas you might not have considered. So that is number three, a sales page that grabs the attention of potential students. And then number two is I want you to have an email newsletter that nurtures your,
because a lot of times you're going to connect with people who aren't quite ready to buy from you. Maybe they don't have the money yet. Maybe they don't have the time yet, but they're, they're not saying no forever. They're just saying no right now. So let's figure out how we can continue to work with them. And what is it you can share to help build your credibility in their eyes and help build that know like,
and trust factor. And an email newsletter is the best way to do this. I've talked before about how with many of my clients, that's where they get the majority of their sales. So I want you to make sure that that is on your list, that you're collecting names and each week you're sending out something useful to your audience. So number two is an email newsletter that nurtures potential students.
And then number one, the number one thing you need to do to have an amazing online course is a student experience that impresses your students. So we've been touching on a lot of these different topics all the way through all 10, but we really want to have that experience that your student just loves taking your course, they get through it. They're excited to move on to the next step.
They're feeling confident in what they're doing. And part of that comes based on the hosting that you use and how you order your course, part of it is your interest in them and the way you connect with them, part of it is having really good videos and lessons for them. So there's, there's lots of pieces to that, but that really is the number one thing that you need to have is a student experience that just amazes and wows them.
So I hope you've enjoyed this top 10 list of the things that you can do for an amazing online course. Thank you so much for listening. Thank you for subscribing. Thank you for a reviewing. If you enjoyed this, I totally appreciate a five star review on your podcast app. It helps us get in front of even more potential course creators. And it has me doing a happy dance in my office as I read them.
So thanks so much. I hope you're having a fantastic week and that you join us on June the seventh for the topic and title challenge. Jump into that link in the show notes and it's free. So why not jump in Catch you soon? Thanks so much for listening and have a fantastic week. I will talk to you next week.