Memberium Consultant on How Best to Organize Your Online Courses
As a Memberium consultant, I've seen customers take many different approaches when they organize and plan out their course content. Sometimes that works. Sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes it fall somewhere in between.
I'm going to cover what my Memberium consultant team and I have seen works best. This is a good idea jogger to use so you can decide how best to organize your online course content.
Memberium Consultant on the Importance of Our Buyer's Perspective
It's important to think like your customer thinks. This should be a big driver as you organize your course content.
As the subject expert, you know how to teach what you teach. What stands in your way is viewing what you teach from the perspective of someone that is new to this topic. We've known what we know for a very long time, but are now selling and we are selling to someone who's new to it.
This is an issue we all face. People new to our field are going to have a lot o misconceptions we have to correct. This can be frustrating. We want to get in there and build our course, but going through this mistakes is important. It's what will allow us reach our buyer with a message that resonates with them at gets them to pay attention.
Memberium Consultant Top Ways to Organize Our Content
What does this mean for us as we work to sell what we know as a membership or online course? It means that you have to build content prioritizing how it connects with what your ideal client wants to solve. They are NOT wanting to learn everything you know. The want to learn what they need to address their issue.
I like to think about our content as a river. That's where the bulk or the meat of our content lives. We then have these small streams or tributaries that flow into it. As a subject matter expert, our perspective is the river. Where we should start and where we need to focus our time, attention and effort is on the tributaries. I find that most site builders do NOT focus enough on this.
You must ask yourself, "What part of my course material addresses a very real problem someone wants solved?" Those answers become your tributaries.
Think of this like building a landing our sales page. You need a title or a headline aimed at attracting perspective clients. We then need a course, probably a mini-course, the customer gets when they purchase from that sales page.
I recommend this first course run 30 to 90 days. You want it to be short. It's a set of lessons that give members a concrete win in under three months. When they complete the mini-course, you introduce them to a larger river of content. It can a catalogue consisting of several rivers each addressing different topics the member would want to learn next.
What you have to remember is that the member is now convinced you are the right expert for them. They are confident that your way of teaching works for them. The next sales is natural because you have established credibility.
Memberium Expert Explains Via an Example
Let's consider a course on learning to play pickle ball. I don't play pickleball (yet), but it's popular, so let's use that in our example.
A course on pickleball could be pretty extensive teaching all aspects of the game. The bulk of the content is what I refer to as the river part of your course content. Let's consider the tributaries. What sales page titles could we use that would target potential customers?
- The First Timer's Guide to Playing Pickleball
- Practicing Solo to Improve Your Pickleball Game
- Recruiting Friends to Form a Pickleball Playing Group
I'm using these titles only to illustrate how to organize your content, but notice that these titles are intentionally written as landing page headline. We want to attract someone that might be searching for terms like the ones we use in our titles.
The titles are aimed at solving your target audience's problem. The course to be delivered when they purchase could be a sliver of your existing river of content contains. It could be a fringe topic used to attract potential buyers. The point is to get a newbie into some part of our course content, deliver something concrete they consider a win and convinces them of your expertise.
Upon completing the first tributary or mini-course, they can be flowed into a larger program that keeps them learning assuming they are wanting to learn more than what they originally purchased. Now your thinking like a good instructor starts working to your advantage. You are in a position to teach them what they need to learn next and not just what they want. They should at this point be looking to you as the guide and wanting you to point them in the right direction.