Creating an online course has been fundamental in shifting my business
model from just 1 to 1 services to now, including one to many.
So essentially having copies of myself, my expertize in these versions on
my online courses to make sure that I can impact as many students
as possible around the world through the power of the Internet
that they can actually access my content on any device from anywhere.
And the self-fulfilling, because I've been doing this since 2014
and I have the privilege of actually impacting over 10,000 students
and helping them to be better versions of themselves
in terms of their business, in terms of their lives.
And I'm just really grateful that I was able to do that
by actually creating my first online course, taking that first step.
So in this video, I want to break it down for you to show you step by step
on how I create my online courses and how you can also use
these simple processes to make sure that you can avoid the overwhelm.
I'll try and do everything the same time and actually be able to create your own
first online course and getting it out there into the world.
Because I get questions from my audiences all the time that they want
to also create their own digital products and online courses and memberships
and things like that.
And they just feel so overwhelmed with all the different things the tech,
the the marketing and everything around that,
the creation of the content itself to actually know where to get started.
So don't worry, I got you covered in today's video.
Just follow along the video and let me know by the end of the video
how you found the process and you probably feel
like you can definitely do this and getting started today.
Hi there. I'm Laurie Wang.
Welcome back to my channel.
If you're new here, it's great to have you here.
I run a digital marketing training and consultancy company
underneath my personal brand here in the channel.
I share my business journey on topics around marketing and selling your products
and services strategies to help you grow and scale your business and mindset
that ultimately accelerates your success to create a life doing what you love.
So that all sounds interesting.
Make sure to hit the subscribe button and hit the location bell
so you get notified every time I release a new video.
So in my opinion, there are actually three main stages
on creating an online course, and that is Discover, Plan and also build.
So underneath this cover is mainly about finding out about yourself,
your topics, and what your audiences are interested in learning from you.
So here's step number one, is that you want to find your ideal course topic,
because many times I find that a lot of people tend to stumble
at this very first step is that they're so overwhelmed
with so many different topics that they want to teach,
they don't know where to start.
And actually, I would say the key thing here is think about the ideal combination
between what you want to teach and also what your audience is out
there willing to pay for or willing to subscribe to a course like this.
So, for example, imagine that I was, let's say,
a food blogger and I want to create a cooking course.
Then in this case, if let's say in my situation,
I clearly have a young toddler daughter and I want to make sure
that she's eating healthy but also liking the food the same time.
Then I probably want to create a course
looking out there in terms of what's being available at the moment and see
to my target audience on whether or not they would be interested in the course.
Like this was all about creating healthy and delicious kids meals.
That's easy for the parents to make as well.
So in this case, the course topic combines one naturally interest in,
which is because in person,
from personal experience, these are things that I want to make sure my kids
actually have in their everyday lives in how they're eating their food.
But same time, I also want to make sure there is an existing audience out there,
and I'm sure there are lots of these audiences
having spoken to other moms in my space where essentially they're be interested
in creating food that's easy to make, healthy and tasty the same time.
So just the example there to show you how you can think about the ideal combination
between your topic and also what your audiences are interested in to learn from.
And the other element here to think
about how you can evaluate your ideal course topic is whether or not
your current expertize that you want to create your course around
or your skill that you're creating your course around
is already bringing you an existing income.
So that means that there's actually an existing market out there
they're willing to pay for your services or whatever it is
that you're looking to teach.
So the key thing
here is that you want to pick a topic that you know that you passionate about,
but same time, there's also a potential of actually marketing it later on.
So you're thinking about the future ahead, right?
Rather than creating a course where it might be
something that you're super passionate about,
but there's currently no existing market for it that you probably won't
be able to make too much of a momentum on that straight away
if you currently already have a social media presence.
And I recommend also leveraging
some of the features on social media to survey your audiences.
So for example, on Instagram stories, you can actually put out a survey.
On some of the topics are looking to create the course around
and ask your audiences to choose on which one that's most interesting to them.
There's two reasons for this.
One is that you get a sense of the majority interest
on which topic to go for, which is the easy one here.
But secondly, what's really great to use this feature for
is that now you really have potential inches the buyers
that you can reach out to once your courses live,
because they already responded by saying that they're interested in that topic.
You can always maintain that conversation, the two way conversation on social media
and ultimately when your courses live,
you can let them know that's available for purchase.
So now we're moving onto the planning
stage, which is a second step in your course creation journey
and in the planning stages.
This is where the fun part begins, in my opinion, because I love this part
where I get to jot down all the different ideas I have
about the modules, the lessons I want to put together in my course,
and also the key topics. So maybe I'll do an outline.
First off, the different areas of in this particular topic.
So let's say social media marketing, then I will possibly break it down
into the different stages of how I do my social media marketing
and how to teach that to my audience from start to finish.
So think of it like a journey, right?
You're taking your audience from the start of your tour, of their journey
all the way to the end, where they become a transformed individual
of now knowing the step by step process of how to do this
and ultimately be able to do it for themselves as well.
So you want to make sure there's a there's a nice journey to go
from start to finish so they can easily follow.
Now, one thing I like to do is to use slides in my process
because I find that it's a really easy way to keep me on track
on how much more content I need to create before I finish off the slide deck
and knowing that everything I want to cover is in there.
And of course, in my course content, I do a combination of speaking to camera
directly like this, or else I'll have some combinations of me
presenting on my slides so others can see what I'm talking about
by demonstrating examples and things like that.
Now, if you're super talented without having to use slides
and you just want to talk to camera, that's absolutely okay.
Or maybe you're a type, of course, where
you want to demonstrate more on video and how you actually do something.
So it can be something that's much more hands on.
Let's say a cooking course where you're showing the step by step cooking.
That's absolutely great, too.
So it's all about thinking
what makes sense for your content to demonstrate your course content
the most effective way to your audiences in your online content creation?
LV Do you currently have any research or statistics
that's really useful to back up your claims
and what you talk about in your theory for your audiences?
Definitely reference them in your content slides or in your course materials.
And lastly, one thing I love to do and I think my audience love me for this,
is that you want to create a PDF guide or a summary sheet
for all the things that you talk you talked about in the course itself
for the Kashi Go references.
So obviously your audiences can take notes as they want to throughout the course,
but much more useful to them to provide a lot more value
actually to have a summarized guide that they can take away.
And referring to this again and again in future cases
or whenever they're working on something relating to your course.
And the other thing, to have a worksheet that you can provide
to, they can actually use to follow along your course and during the exercises
and the questions and the problems that you have for them and really helps us
cement the material as well in the way that they're learning from your courses.
And one thing I want to mention is that Post-it notes are so great for planning,
because what I would do is I would actually write down the topics
on each one of these Post-its or modules or things I want to put into my course.
And I kind of put them over my wall.
So essentially very easy to move those different topics and content around.
I want to shift things around to see
how it all looks in my overall bird's eye view of my entire course.
And this has been really fundamental and also simple but still useful
in how I actually make my course a lot more coherent.
The structure actually made a lot more sense when I see it
from a step back and actually seeing how everything fits in one place.
So I highly recommend getting some Post-its from your local stationery store
and then getting started on that planning process
also makes it super physically fun because you can actually physically
move things around.
So rather than having everything on your laptop,
so now we're moving on to the last page, which is the bill stage.
And the bill stage actually consists of two different steps.
So the first step is obviously then
to now on the back of your planning for your courses since our shooting,
all your course materials in one go and that could be over,
let's say several days or a day depending on how long your courses.
Then a second step of that build stage is actually also to build
your marketing materials.
So for example, the cover images on your modules,
the cover images for your courses, right?
Going to be using to showcase what your courses about your landing pages
on describing what the course is actually consisted of
and the transformation which is so important here,
the transformation that you're providing for your.
Audience from start to finish on their course journey.
And again, I talk about this a lot more in-depth in how to market
your business and your services without being salesy and actually selling
the transformation rather than selling the content itself is really important.
So make sure to check out that video.
I'll put a description the link below.
So now let's go to the fourth step,
which is basically creating and recording all your course materials.
And this is where I say
batch recording is so efficient and makes you take away a lot of headaches and also
actually moves you a lot quicker and that momentum of creating your course.
So that way you won't give up too quickly in the process.
So what I do is usually I plan all of my course content to be recorded
over, let's say two or three days if it's a really big long signature course
or let's say it was a really quick short one, I can do it over in one day
or a day and a half and we can do is make sure you list
all the things that you want to talk about in each one of your modules
and you can record all your speaking to camera videos like this in one go.
Then you have all that, all those files done, and then they record
all of your on screen slide presentation files in one go as well.
So I use this software called Loom, which I highly recommend checking out
my tutorial video on that as well.
I put that all in the description of video,
so I went through step by step and how you can actually use loom
to create on screen recording that looks super professional and actually
ultimately high definition, which is great to have in your online course materials.
So I would
then just present through my slides, put myself also on the on screen camera
so that my students can actually see me presenting away on these slides.
And ultimately then that's essentially part of my key modules
because I usually introduce my modules with me speaking to the camera
and then I would jump into the slides itself
to talk through my course materials.
And I love having a conclusion video at the end of the course to celebrate
with my students on completing the entire course, which is a great accomplishment
as itself, and also celebrating all their next steps going forward
on where they can take this knowledge applied to what they do.
So as you're planning and also building your course,
think about the overall experience you want to create for your students.
Because nowadays there's so many online courses and online
memberships and digital products flying around the place.
How do you actually stand out for your students in the right way
to make sure they feel like they're being seen ?
And also, you're creating
the best experience possible, even though virtually online like this.
So the last step, which is number five, is how to then create and build
all your marketing materials around your course.
Now I would say having a course itself is fantastic,
and by completing it, you've done so much of the bulk of the work .
However,
the rest of the work really lies in how you can market your course effectively.
Now, I probably have a separate video on this just to talk about
how to market your online digital products the right way.
But actually, I mentioned here
is that you want to make sure you have some simple marketing materials
at least created , so you're ready for that process.
So in this case would be a simple landing page, which can easily do,
let's say, using a software called to Job, which is what I currently use.
And there are lots of other softwares
you can use as well, but good job is one of my preferred ones to go to.
So the other ones I want to mention here,
the also very good to check out are teachable and also Podio.
And again, it depends on what you prefer.
Personally, I've been using good job all the time
because it looks very professional in terms of how everything is laid out
and easily druggable in terms
of how I want to maneuver the different sections on my landing page.
So it just makes the whole process a lot easier for me.
So I use code job for a lot of my signature bigger, larger courses,
and I also use Skillshare, which I can link to in the discussion below.
I have a lot of my more shorter but quicker win courses for my students
who want to maybe
tap into wide or coming across my platform for the very first time.
It's a great way to discover what my courses can do before they go for that
the much more in depth signature courses later on.
So again, it's a great way to think about where do you want
your courses to be hosted, how will you actually market courses?
The other things that you want to make sure you plan out
before you actually create your online course as well so you know how to actually
get your courses out there in the world
and people are actually interested in buying from you as well.
So have an idea where you want to ultimately have your courses
hosted will be a great way to make sure you have a place where you can sell
your course to others online and to get your course out into the world.
All right.
So you're all of my tips on how you can create
your first ever digital online course.
So the main three stages are Discover, Plan and build.
And by following these five step process, you can get to those first three stages.
And also we had
the first course in your hands and ready to get out to your audience in the world.
Are excited to get started.
I can't wait to see what you can create, so make sure you leave a comment below.
Let me know what you're currently creating or think about creating
and some of the topics are you currently considering.
Also, if you find the video helpful,
make sure give it a thumbs up and share with a friend.
So thank you so much for watching. I'll see you next time.