Online Courses
Entrepreneurship
Digital Marketing
Podcast Host
Personal Journey
“Knowledge without action is meaningless.”
– Abu Bakr
Creating a digital course for your business is a great way to leverage your knowledge and expertise to make money. People need what you have to offer and so digital courses provide a massive opportunity.
The digital learning market is expected to be worth over $325 billion by 2025, and in 2018, digital education and e-learning took more than $46 billion in sales. Not bad eh?
Digital courses are growing rapidly in popularity due to the ease and accessibility of online learning platforms such as Udemy and Teachable. It’s now a commonplace for adults to ‘upskill’ and learn new things, and digital courses make that possible.
Gone are the days where you would need to physically attend adult education classes in order to learn something new. Now you can find digital courses covering anything and everything at the touch of a button, so you can learn from the comfort of your own home.
It is a great time to create a digital course for your business as anyone can create a profitable digital course — all you need is a subject that you are passionate about and one that you can teach. If you facilitate learning in any way, then you can create a digital course.
How do I pick a topic?
Now when it comes to choosing your course topic, there are a few ways to determine which topic to pick.
With a lot of topics to choose from, choosing a topic out of the blue is not ideal; it’s important to not only know your audience but you also need to understand what they want and most importantly, what they need support with.
When choosing your topic, focus on a niche area (a segment of the market) rather than going too broad on a subject. Don’t try to appeal to everyone as you can’t cater to everyone’s needs. Instead, focus on a core group of people that you can really help.
For example, if you were going to create a digital course on social media, instead of trying to teach students all about social media, narrow the topic down to a specific area, such as social media marketing or management. The more focused your niches is, the more opportunity you have to convey your expertise, and students are also more likely to get better and more effective results.
It is also worth considering the following:
-
What are you passionate about?
-
What could you talk about?
-
What do you like to teach?
-
What are you good at?
-
What do people ask you for help with?
-
What comes easy to you?
-
What do you want to learn more about?
Once you have decided on your topic then it’s time to deep dive into your target audience. Profiling your audience will give you insight into who they are, what their challenges are and how you can best help them. It will also help you to understand where they hang out so you know where to go to validate your course idea.
What to consider
Tip 1 – Define your goals
How often do you set goals?
We all know how important it is to set goals, but we often overlook how important they are as we progress through our business or in course creating.
Setting goals can help you start new habits, focus your attention, and keep your momentum going. Goals can also help you focus and feel more in control of your life. The bottom line is that you can’t manage or improve something that you don’t measure properly. Setting goals helps you in accomplishing all of these things and more.
By understanding where the digital course sets in terms of your overall goals or strategy, it’s going to fine tune your thinking and that’s going to act as a motivator.
Tip 2 – Teach what you know
One of the challenges of choosing a course topic is choosing that one topic that everyone already knows.
Think about what you are an expert in.
What do you currently talk a lot about to your clients? Where is your expertise? And what do your clients ask you for help with? Are you doing something that you’re delivering over and over again? If so, is that the thing that perhaps you want to create a digital course then so that you don’t have to continuously deliver it? When do they come to you? What is the the the ongoing trend if you like that you are seeing amongst your clients? Is there one thing that they are constantly asking for support with? Could that be the thing that you you start the digital course with?
Ask yourself these questions and you might just find what you’re looking for.
Tip 3 – Understand your audience
In order to define your topic, it’s important you know who your audience are and what they need support with. The more you understand your audience, the better your digital course will be for you will be creating something transformational.
You’ll have more success if you already know your audience’s pain points. Afterwards, you can now put together a course that solves their specific problems. Let’s say you have multiple courses to create and teach – the goal here is to pick one that is most beneficial to your audience.
What is your client’s biggest struggle or pain point? What do they really struggle with that a digital course can help?
In a nutshell, keep these tips in mind when trying to understand your audience:
-
Know the demographics
-
Understand what their specific challenges are
-
How you can resolve these challenges through your teaching
If you already have a following, then you can go ahead and ask for their insight. It doesn’t matter how many, what matters is you have an engaged group who are interested in what you’re going to offer or teach.
Try doing a poll or asking a question in your IG stories, or sending an email or a post, or even a blog. Let your audience know what types of information the course will include, how it will benefit them and so on.
Tip 4 – Connect to your passion
When you are deciding your course topic, it’s vital that it’s something that you feel passionate about.
If you’re delivering a course on something that you really don’t care about then that energy is going to come across to your students. As a result, they will be less engaged which may result in them not completing your course.
Choosing a topic that you are feeling incredibly passionate about, will help create an effective course that your students are going to respond to as they will feed into that passion you are displaying.
Tip 5 – Know your zone of genius
We sometimes struggle to know whether we are doing the right things in our business, and become easily distracted (hello shiny-object syndrome!). The following questions have been designed to help you get clear on what your sweet-spot is in your business so you can create a successful business that you are fully aligned to.
-
What’s your ‘superpower’?
-
What comes natural to you?
-
What job could you do all day, every day for no money?
-
Who do you like to work with and why? (e.g. children, women in business, mums, schools, etc.)
-
What specific needs does your ideal client have?
-
How could you fulfil these needs? what skills do you offer?
The overlap is where you can focus your energy as this is where the magic lies.
BONUS TIP – Get specific!
Here’s the key: no one is buying your course just for the hell of it, they’re buying it because it solves a problem they’re currently facing. And in order to solve their problems, you need to be very specific. Otherwise, you’re just wasting your time creating a course that appeals to no one.
If you appeal to a lot of people, you appeal to no one. People will be drawn to a course most specific to them.
There is so much to teach!
To conclude, the process and system of creating an online course is the same every single time. Once you have mastered the process, feel free to try on other courses and topics you think can help people and address their pain points.
Before you commit to a course topic, make sure it feels right. Use your intuition. Ask yourself, is this the right topic for me?
If it feels right then go for it and have fun!