#213: Do I Have the Right Amount of Content for a Course?

Welcome back to another edition of the Course Creation Incubator podcast. I’m your host, Gina Onativia. Here to get excited about packaging up your expertise into a profitable online course and hopefully giving you a little push to help make that happen. Now, today, we’re continuing on our series Your Biggest Course Creation Questions Answered Last Time. Two episodes ago, we talked about pricing last episode.

I spoke with my friend dammit, about charisma. I thought that was a really fun episode. Check it out if you haven’t listened already. And the last time we talked about this series, we discussed pricing how to land on a number that reflects your courses, value and sells with confidence. Today we’re diving into a new question, something I know some of you have asked yourself, Do I have the right amount of content for an online course?

This is one of the top reasons I see clients and students hold back or get stuck. So I wanted to break it down today. That’s what we’re going to talk about. Another workshop in terms of getting the right amount of content. Now, I was recently traveling and then did a fun event, the personal story Power event with both Eason and Don Eason and I’m the digital marketing expert at the event and we do a dinner.

I’ve talked about this on the podcast before and we go around and people get to ask us questions and there were a lot of questions about how do I get started? How do I get started with video? How do I get started with Instagram? Somebody was asking about ads, specifically media ads, and it struck me that people didn’t want to ask me crazy funnel questions or integrate questions about their course, like, Hey, how should I script this or that?

They really have been noodling on starting something, starting something with content or their course or their marketing, and they were kind of stuck like, Where? Where do I start? What are the first steps? Video For example. One of the members was asking me, Hey, I’ve been thinking about video. Doing video in a bigger way for a long time.

Where do I start? So an inevitably, you got to start with the plan and what’s the outcome? However, I bring this up because people want to know the first steps talked about this before that you’re more than likely a black belt in what you do, and people just want to walk on to the map, right, and say like, okay, now what?

Guide me. Tell me the first steps. So do it on a podcast. We’re doing it right now with the biggest course creation questions that folks have. You can record this on YouTube or the platform of your choice. You can do a video series, you can do a series of blogs, work it into your weekly or monthly emails. This can be a theme of your newsletter, etc..

So never discount that question. Where do I start? Because I heard it again and again. And that’s one of the great things about going to these events, right? And connecting with people and hearing what do people really want? What are they getting stuck on? So I wouldn’t discount that either. All right. Hopefully that’s helpful. And as always, this episode is brought to you by our done for you course creation.

If you want some hand-holding and highly custom support when it comes to your, of course, creation in your marketing, think about applying and having a discussion about done for you. All right. Time to get down to business. How do you know if you have the right amount of content for your course? Because I don’t want you feel like you’re coming up short or you’re overwhelming your students and clients.

Now, there’s two ways I mainly see this going as a course consultant. One, you don’t have enough content and then two, you’ve got too much content. Now let’s start with one. I had a client. He was a pediatrician who had a sleep course, and we were working with him. And his system could basically be summarized on a one page worksheet, nothing more, nothing less.

It was an incredibly effective process, but it was more of a starter course and he wanted a signature course, so he didn’t necessarily have enough content for where he wanted to go. And, you know, the guy was so effective in his five steps and his one page that it didn’t really warrant a bigger course. Long story short, he eventually found success doing 30 minute workshops.

So he didn’t have enough content for what he thought his outcome was going to be. So he didn’t have enough content, which is, I would say, unusual. More than likely, you might be in the second boat, which is you have too much content. Your course, by the way, isn’t about covering everything. It’s about getting your students a clear result.

Oftentimes I see people get stuck when they have way too much content. And an example of this is we had a done for you client who was teaching a lifestyle course about diabetes, helping people kind of live with diabetes and coming up with some natural options to help them. And she kept getting very smart, Doctor. As you can imagine, medical practitioner and she kept getting stuck on the scripting because there was a lot to cover guys.

I didn’t realize how much there was to cover when it came to diabetes, and I learned a lot in terms of how people can be treated and with medicine, but with also protocols and lifestyle. There is a lot that you can teach in that course, and we kind of got stalled on scripting until I said, you know, what is your transfer station here?

Let’s go back to what you’re promising your people. You cannot do everything for diabetes patients in a box. I mean, you could that would be a very comprehensive program. You would want to charge more for that. We talked about a mid-tier course. So going back to pricing, going back to a few weeks ago, when we talked about that, we talked about structuring this as a mid-tier course and a promise around getting them on a different path of taking care of themselves with diabetes and exploring some natural options.

That’s what we talked about in terms of the promise, not giving them all things. When it comes to diabetes, Right. You see the difference. And a lot of times that’s where we get stuck as course creators, as entrepreneurs, as business owners wanting to put out anything from a live cohort to a course to a self-paced course, hack to an event, to.

So once we drill down on that and that promise and then looked at the scripts with that lens, things started to fall off like, okay, this script could be a bonus, this script could go into the next course. This is not going into this course. This whole module, we moved a whole module over because it didn’t fit into the promise of the course.

It was too much. It wasn’t the right amount. Now, you know, saying the right amount is so difficult to like. It could be the right. I’m just coming out a lens of a course consultant who has seen a lot of courses over ten plus years. So I always fall back on what’s the promise that we’re giving so we don’t overwhelm.

We provide the transformation and then and then we can sell them into the next step. Always thinking about that. So some of these pieces for this medical practitioner will go into their next step with her. So everything starts with that course. Promise the clear transformation you are helping your folks achieve. Once you know that, it becomes a heck of a lot easier to figure out what content belongs and content that you go elsewhere in bonuses in your next course.

Or maybe you’re just not a part of this course. You could teach it in a workshop. It might belong somewhere else. I’m a proponent of never wasting content, but you just have to be thoughtful about it and think back to your course. Promise. Now, here’s another example. You could have a simple course like a 30 day health reset versus an advanced business coaching program.

So let’s say your promises. Get your first hundred email subscribers in 30 days, then everything you teach should point to that. You don’t need modules on advanced marketing funnels or SEO. Your course should be all about the first hundred subscribers. So a great tip. And by the way, I’ll link in the show notes. I did a whole episode about course promise.

I love that one. We’ll link to that in the show notes. You can go back and listen, but you want your course. Promise to be specific. Okay. So if you are making a broad and gosh, I see broad course promises all the time. Dig, dig deeper. What does that mean? Be specific. What is a specific result that you are providing that you can point to?

Because when it comes to your, of course, promise, this is how you’re going to talk up your course. Right. This is how you are going to promote it. This is what’s going to go all over your marketing. And when you’re talking in person about your course, you also want to nail down your audience. This is a little bit of a sidebar.

I was just working with a client who has a workshop that they’re advertising for, and it’s two clearly different audiences and it’s been a bit of a challenge to target ads because there are two separate audiences. I’m telling you right now, it’s better to start with a targeted audience niched down and go from there, and then you can always expand to the other audience.

No doubt you have multiple audiences that you want to speak to a lot. Of course, creators and entrepreneurs and business owners have multiple audiences. That’s awesome. But I really encourage you to drill down on the one you want to start with. And by the way, if you don’t know your course promise yet, then it might not be time yet.

You might not have the right amount of content for a course. You might want to think about doing more validation. What’s the result? Your people want to see? What will they pay for? What have they tried before, successfully or unsuccessfully? What’s the real challenge here? Really dig like you’re a detective. Because once you know your promise, you can then figure out all the steps that

Now, if you’re familiar with my posted exercise process, this is what we do. We talk about your course promise, and then we think about the overarching steps, and then we break it down into videos for each step. So I’ll link to my posted exercise process in the show notes. It’ll help you get your course out of your head and into a Google doc and it’ll be really effective for you.

 

And if you want to do it with me as a custom part, think about done for you. Another great strategy to test and validate your content is doing a workshop or a live mini training. So we did this with the conversion copywriting playbook. We went live for 30 days. Then we turned into a self-paced course and now we’re going to go into companies and can train entire teams.

But we went live first to make sure we wanted to nail down the material. This gives you the chance to see what resonates, where people get stuck, what questions they have. And of course, afterward your live session becomes instant course material, win win. And of course, once you’ve nailed down your content, the next big piece is figure out where to host it.

I’ve talked a lot about hijabi. It’s all in one intuitive. My team knows it inside and out. We do it for all our done for you clients. Lately I’ve also been exploring Learn Worlds, which is another fantastic platform with different features. Also great if you’re focused on interactive learning or want more flexibility and course design, we have affiliate links for both.

If you’re deciding on your platform, I’ll drop those in the show notes. And remember, I’m going to talk about this next week, actually early plug for next week where we’re going to talk about what platform might be right for you. All right. Let’s recap. One, you’re going to figure out if you have too little content, not a ton of you or if you have too much content.

And if you have too much content, you’re going to compare it against your course promise. Then you’re going to map out your modules and your lessons. With my posted exercise process, maybe you’re going to think about testing it out live. It doesn’t have to be this big six week course. You could do it over a day, by the way, or over a week.

You do like an hour session twice a week. I want you to choose a platform that supports you and if you’re getting stuck on content or outlines or where to start, check out the shownotes. We’ve got plenty of resources for you. Or think about joining me for our done for you services. Go to course Creation bootcamp slash course to learn more.

And like I mentioned, next week we’re going to continue the series and we’re going to talk about how do I know if I have the right platform. We’re going to talk about a bunch of different platforms, so stay tuned for that. Until then, go create, be you and be brilliant and get it done.