Memberium Expert on Organizing Your Online Course Content So It Works Best for Your Students
As a Memberium expert with many years experience building membership and online course sites, I've seen customers take many different approaches to organizing and planning out their content. I've observed some that worked really well, some that didn't work at all with others falling somewhere in between.
I want to go over the approaches my Memberium expert team and I have seen work best. This provides you with some ideas to consider as you decide how best to organize your membership / online learning site content.
Memberium Expert Explains the Buyers Perspective
Before we start on the organizing of your content, I need to discuss the importance of placing yourself firmly in the customer's shoes. This has a big influence on how you organize your content.
As experts, we know how best to teach what we know. What's challenging is viewing what we teach from the perspective of someone completely new to it. We've known what we know for a very long time and we are selling to someone who's new to it.
This is an issue all subject matter experts face. We have to connect with naïve buyers who not only know little about our subject, but likely have misconceptions and bad assumption that we have to correct. This can be frustrating as an instructor because we want to get in there are build our course, but understanding this so important. It's what will allow us reach our buyer with a message that resonates, connect with them, and convince them to buy.
Memberium Expert on the Best Ways to Organize Your Content
What does this mean for a subject matter expert looking to sell their knowledge as a membership or online course? It means that you have to build content prioritizing how it connects with your perspectives buyers. They are looking to solve a problem. They aren't looking to learn everything about our topic, but just enough 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.
