Course Creation Bites

Show Notes:

This season we are going to move away from the theoretical and look instead at what people are doing in the industry, courses that I have loved, what is working and also some course reviews that I am working on with clients currently.   

Today I’m going to take you behind the scenes and give you an insight into a course review.  

The client that I am working with in this example is moving from the platform Elucidat to Kajabi.  Elucidat is a program that focuses on slide by slide activity & is often used for corporate training.  When moving to Kajabi, a lot of time had to be spent combining bite sized chunks of information together to make more robust lessons.  

This is an important thought – how long can your student focus and concentrate for and how big should a “bite” be?   The truth is that when we want to we can concentrate for far more than 30 seconds and so if you have good content that your students are interested in, then you can make the slide bigger and a more effective and clear presentation of information.  

The other major thing that needed to be worked on with this course was adding more action steps.   There was some brilliant content that gave some great insights into the industry, but there was nothing that allowed the student to use the information in a real-life situation.   Using action steps within a course gives students the opportunity to apply learnings and ask questions in the learning environment to ensure they are clear on the process. 

Action Steps:

Apply what you have learnt here today to your current program.  The first thing I want you to do is really think about whether you have action steps for every piece of content you share.   (Season 1 has some great tips on developing action steps).  The second thing I want you to do is look at the length of your lessons and consider if they are the right size.  Have you got too much?  Have you got too little?  Where can you pull two random parts together so you have one more robust lesson rather than two tiny bite size pieces?  

If you haven’t created your course already, keep them in mind because they will definitely help in the future.

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Show Notes:

Welcome to the wrap up of Season 2. 

Today’s podcast is a quick summary of the highlights of Season 2 and a big thank you to the guest speakers who took the time to come and present throughout the season. 

In Season 3, I’m going to do things a little differently. 

Firstly, my goal is to present what is most current when it comes to course creation.   Things are always changing, not just from a technical point of view (as in platforms etc) but also from a theoretical point of view on content & course creation.    E-Learning is still relatively new and the way we approach that and the theory behind it is still shifting.  

I want to share with you what is working now (not what worked 10 years ago) so for the next season I’m going to share examples of courses that are for sale in the marketplace currently. I’ll go through what they have done well and what makes their course great.    Some of these will be past courses that I have helped to build, and some will be courses that I really admire or have completed myself.    There will be a whole range of different examples – some corporate, some small business, some marketing or sales – and I want to go into what they are doing differently, what is working and why. 

The other thing I am going to introduce for Season 3 is live course reviews.   This is where I go through a course from beginning to end, do a complete review and give the course creator an action report on the things they have done well, things they can improve upon and what they can change.    What I plan on doing (with the owner's permission) is sharing the results with you too so you can have practical examples on how to improve your course. 

Finally, we will be looking at strategy.   I want to share some of the things I have seen working in the industry in terms of sales and marketing strategy and how you can implement this with your course.   

Action Steps:

It's over to you today – only you know where you are at with your course & I want you to take a moment to reflect on this and to think about what comes next.   I would love you to reach out and tell me what you thought about this season and what you would love to see coming up in future seasons.   I want to make sure that I am talking about the aspects of course creation that are most relevant and interesting to you and I am completely open to the hearing about the things you want to know about.

Connect with Sam Winch About Your Online Course:

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Show Notes:

No matter where you are in your course creation journey, there is a lot to be said for taking a pause and reviewing what you have done and what you plan to do. 

1.       If you are thinking of creating a course and are at the beginning of your course creation journey, what I want you to do next is to write down exactly what you are going to teach in what order.   A course map is an overview or outline that helps you to consolidate your thoughts and logically think about what goes where and is an incredibly important step in developing a successful course. 

2.       If you are part-way through writing a course, I want you to pause, review what you have done and take stock.   It is easy to get bogged down in all of the things that you have to do; there are so many moving parts when writing a course and sometimes the job feels overwhelming.  It really helps if you take a moment to write a physical list of all the things you have done and then another list of all the things you still need to do - and celebrate your accomplishments.  

3.       If you already have a completed course, I want you to leave it for a while.   Once people have started to complete the course, do a course review and learn from them what works and doesn’t work.

Action Steps:

If you are at the beginning of your course creation journey – put together a course map. 

If you are in the middle of your course creation journey – pause and take stock of what you have and haven’t done. 

If you are at the end of your course creation journey – wait until some students have completed the program and then ask and learn what worked and didn’t work for them. 

Contact me and let me know what you have done and where you are at so I can celebrate your wins with you!

Connect with Sam Winch About Your Online Course:

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Show Notes:

This week’s podcast is the third in the series about sales, and is about what you can do to make a sale.   

There are many strategies that you can use online - some better than others - but I want to focus on some important ones that we can use to ensure that your sales strategies are genuine and honest and grounded in good faith. 

1.       Learning the difference between features and benefits.  A feature is an aspect of a course – it might have 6 modules or 9 videos.   A benefit is something a buyer ‘gets’ after finishing the course or the outcome.    Both are important, and both should be included on your sales page. 

2.       A sales page that sells.  Do some research and learn how to make a sales page sell – good copywriting is really important.  

3.       Clear pricing.   Confusion with pricing will stop people from purchasing. 

4.        Clear Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs).   You can use the FAQ to ask the questions that you want people to ask and to answer the questions that they have already asked. 

 Action Steps:

Reflect on your sales page.  Is it converting for you?   Do you have clear features and benefits? Do you have clear pricing and FAQs?    Do you know your stats?  It is really important to know your stats to know where you can improve.   

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Show Notes:

This is Part 2 in the series about Sales.   

Having an audience is one thing but making them feel like the are nurtured and important is another.    So, what can you do to nurture your audience?

1.        Show up.  I’m not going to put a caveat on that because it completely depends on you and what works for you.    It doesn’t have to be all the places all the time, but you do have to be there regularly so people can get to know you. 

2.       Offer longer form value-based contact.  Your audience is looking to see value from you and to learn from you.   They want to know that they can trust you and sharing your knowledge regularly is a great way to do this.

3.       Build a community.  People love to feel like they belong somewhere and that they aren’t alone.   It could be a Facebook group or an Instagram page.   

4.       Start a conversation.  Your audience wants to feel heard and the best way to do this is to start a conversation in a forum where they can contribute and have their say.

Action Steps: 

Reflect on what you are currently doing and pick one thing that you can work on.  If your audience feels nurtured, respected, looked after and heard they are far more likely to buy from you because they trust you.

Connect with Sam Winch About Your Online Course:

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Show Notes:

Over the next couple of episodes, we are going to talk about sales; and today we are specifically talking about increasing your reach and growing your audience.  It’s about increasing the number of people who hear you and see you and know who you are.

Sales can seem like a numbers game, but you don’t necessarily need a huge reach, you just need the right reach.  

I’m going to share with you three things that I think are important to consider when determining your reach. 

1. Reach them where they are at.  You need to know who your people are and where they are hanging out. Their age and their interests all make a big difference to where they are going to be spending their time – and that may or may not be online. 
2. Collaborate with others.  It’s really hard going it alone and building an audience is no different.  There are lots of ways you can collaborate to help build your audience, eg being a guest on other people’s podcast or blog, or a presenter on a summit. 
3. Options that other people may not be thinking about.   You need to think outside the box – what other strategies could you be using other than online marketing.   Face to face networking, radio ads, offline media.  There is nothing wrong with using offline media to reach an audience and sell an online program.  You can reach them where they are at, then drive them back to your website or socials. 

 Action Steps:

Make a decision about trying one thing that you aren’t doing.   Where is your audience & can you either collaborate with someone else to do something new or can you find another option (which might be an offline option) to reach people you haven’t reached before. 

Work together!  You are going to get much further working with other people than on your own.

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Show Notes:

While it's true your course should be all about your students, what I do want you to think about is you and your personality and your presence and what goes into making your course yours.   

Today we are going to talk about how to bring you into your program.  

You can outsource workbooks, pdfs, content – but you can’t outsource you.   If your course needs video or audio or those sorts of support aspects, it needs to be you.  You are the person that your audience wants to buy from, you are the person that your audience trusts.  

There are three ways you can bring your personality and presence into your course:

1.       Face to camera video.   Great for introduction videos, explainer pieces, sharing stories and building relationships.  Allowing them to see you and who you are really helps you build that connection.  If they trust you and they believe you, they will learn from you. 

2.       Audio.   People like to hear who they are learning from.    Letting people into your ears (like in a podcast) is quite a personal relationship – the audience gets to the point where they feel like they know you, they recognise your voice & know what you are going to say.   

3.       Live support.  There are many ways you can do this, it might be one on one, or group support or a live Q&A.   Be on camera so everyone can see you.   People want to feel like they can talk to you, as though they have a personal connection with you and a personal response to their question. 

Action Steps:

Think about the importance of you in your program.   How can you bring more of you into your program?   Think about face to face, think about audio, think about live support, and really think about how you can be there for your audience.   It’s all about building a relationship with your student and supporting them to get the outcomes they want.

Remember, every course is different and there are no right answers.  The only person who knows what is right for your course is you, so think about your program and what the best ways to bring your personality into it might be. 

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Show Notes:

Most people I know go out of their way to build a good course and I don’t want to take away from what they are giving and what they are trying to do -so this isn’t coming from a place of being nasty or horrible.  Its more what I see people doing that I think could be done better. 

The three big mistakes I see course creators make are:

1. Not truly understanding the needs of their audience.   

2. Not setting a clear, realistic, launch date - and this can be two-phase, either

• Not setting a launch date at all or
• On the flip side, it could be an unrealistic deadline.    

3. Not considering the strategy behind pricing.  

 
Action Steps:

If you are already running a program, reflect back across those three things and consider if there is a gap and whether you can go to it now and dig deeper.

If you are still building your course I don’t want you to panic about these all at the same time, but pick the one that resonates with you the most and spend some time researching it.  Work out what will work for you, your audience and your strategy so you can develop something sustainable for you.

Connect with Sam Winch About Your Online Course:

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Or connect on socials. Simply look for samwinch... no one else is silly enough to be named after a lunchtime food. 

Show Notes:

Today we are going to be talking about ego - and this might be a little bit raw, so stick with me with this one.  This is your reminder that your course isn’t about you. 

I hear warning signs from course creators all the time and its normally statements like ‘I want’ and ‘I think’. 

There are a couple of ‘I want’ statements that are red flags and show that you need to adjust your thinking:

The biggest one I see from course creators is ‘I want this to be perfect’.   

Another warning sign I see is when course creators are focused on the branding and design elements of the content, slides, and PDFs without thinking about the learner and what they want/need it to look like.   

In a similar way, the same thing happens with platform design and development.  It's statements like ‘I want this button here’ and  ‘I want this button to click through to this thing’ that cause concern.    

 Action Steps:

For the next couple of weeks when you are working on your program, I want you to look out for when you say ‘I think’ or ‘I want’, because it is probably not about your student, it’s about you.  When this starts to happen, it’s important to take a step back and really think about what is going to work best for your student – not what you want and not what you think, but about the best for them. 

If you can do that, you are going to create a great course – not perfect, because that doesn’t exist - but it will be great, I promise you that.

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Or connect on socials. Simply look for samwinch... no one else is silly enough to be named after a lunchtime food. 

Show Notes:

Everyone knows how important it is to test your course before you open it to enrolments, however testing comes down to more than just poking around and making sure it is ok.

Here are the three things that I think you should be testing that you probably aren’t doing independently at the moment:

1. The content: Is the content understandable for your target market?   You want to find your ideal client – this is where beta testing comes in – and ask them to go through and do all or part of your course.   Is everything clear or are there some areas that are confusing?
2. The tech: The tester needs to work from beginning to end and test every button and link. 
3. The process and user experience:  This is going through the journey as you would if you were a customer or client of your program.  It also includes completing the payment process right through to the end to make sure it works the way you want it to work.  

 Action Steps:

Test!  

If you have a live program that is already running, this is a good opportunity to go back and make sure everything is running right.  

If you haven’t launched your course yet, this is your reminder to book in some time to test your program before launch date.   Remember, it is important to give yourself time to test your course and enough time to correct the issues as well.

Connect with Sam Winch About Your Online Course:

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