Creating online courses is extremely popular today. Any business can create and run an online course to extend their reach, build their audience, share their expertise with the world, and turn a nice profit.
Here are the three biggest mistakes businesses often make when creating their first course.
Related: How to Research Online Course Topics
Creating Online Course: 3 Mistakes to Avoid
1. Creating the Course YOU Want (Not the Course Your Audience Needs)
You may have a great deal of knowledge in a particular area that you can teach others. You might think you know exactly what course your audience would like.
But it’s a fatal mistake to create the course you want rather than your audience’s needs.
You may be able to create an excellent course based on what you think you should teach, but it’s not likely to reach a great number of people or earn you a profit if it’s not about what they want.
And then, what’s the point? You’ll have a highly informative course that no one signs up for.
Instead, it would help if you start by considering your target audience. What problems are they struggling with? What do they need to know? What are their interests?
Once you have some ideas, consider how you can help them. Try to match your audience’s needs to your skills and expertise.
For example, you may find out through surveys that your email subscribers want to know more about using LinkedIn.
You can take your knowledge and experience with LinkedIn and create a course that teaches them how to set up a profile and use it.
2. Making Your Course Too Long
Naturally, you have a great deal of knowledge you want to drop on your course participants. It also makes sense that a longer course is more bang for the buck.
A long and thorough course offers more value to its participants.
The problem is that if your course is too long, it might overwhelm your students. You might lose some of them along the way. The best courses are tightly focused.
They teach what they need to teach for students to overcome the problems they’re struggling with. Your course should be just long enough to do that.
The ideal length for an online course is five to seven modules. Each module should have three to five steps or small sections. Each course has its own structural needs, so this is a guideline.
If you find that your course is longer than three to five modules, try breaking it down into two courses. If there is a sequential relationship, you can make parts one and two.
On the other hand, suppose the course is slightly too long, and you feel the information is valuable. In that case, you can remove one module and offer it as supplemental material, a bonus add-on, or an additional resource for participants.
3. Putting All of Your Effort into the Course but Skimping on the Marketing
Organizing and running an online course takes great work, but you can’t forget to market it. So before you even start, make sure you have a solid marketing plan.
How will you get your course in front of your target audience? How will you advertise it and put the word out? Which marketing channels will you use, and how will you use them?
If you have a topic that aligns with your target audience’s interests, a tightly focused course, and a marketing plan, you’re guaranteed a successful course!
Are you interested in creating your signature course? See the details of my new program, How to Create Your Online Course.
To Your Success!
Coach Cheryl Thacker
Master Board Certified Coach
Successful Coaches Enterprise LLC
For more than ten years, Coach Cheryl has applied the concepts of emotional intelligence to coaching entrepreneurs and other coaches. With a fresh approach, she helps clients take structured actions to define and scale their business and grow personally and professionally. She is also the training director at World Coach Institute. She holds more than a dozen coaching certifications, including the Professional Coach Certification through the ICF and the Board Certified Coach Certification through the Center for Credentialing and Education. Coach Cheryl is Certified in both Emotional Intelligence and Risk Assessments.