How to Design Engaging Online Course Content

Online courses are a great way to bring more size and adaptability to your business. But translating your program online takes some thoughtful prep work in order to ensure a successful presentation.

To help you navigate this process, we spoke with Paul Thomson, an online course creation specialist. Paul has a company that provides consulting services focused on helping coaches as well as business owners scale by creating as well as selling courses online.

In this article we've collected the most important insights of our chat with Paul where he shared his process for helping coaches profitably to make their coaching programs accessible.

  Take a look at this video to find out ways to create engaging content for an online coaching program!  

Where Should A Coach Start in the process of creating an online course?

If you have an existing coaching curriculum, the initial thought of making it an online program is to divide it into modules and put it on the internet. While this may make sense on paper, it's crucial to take a step back and think about your goals with online coaching.

A good place to start is outlining who you plan to be serving.

Create a plan for your ideal online student

Is the client you plan to serve through online courses is the same one you're currently serving in the flesh? It is important to find clarity on the personality, skill level, and expectations that students should be able to attain, and note any distinctions between the segment you are currently teaching.

With this new persona in mind, it will be easy to determine what content should go into your online course.

Select Your Online Course Topic

Based on the persona you've developed, think about what kind of transformation you'd like to see them undergo. Clearly articulate which obstacles they'll be able to overcome.

Beware of the mistake that plagues many coaches at this point in trying to squeeze everything you've learned in the same course.

It's not just leading to a flurry of information being thrown at your student, but it can make it difficult to be a teacher. The last thing you want is to have your student choose to leave your class simply because they thought it was to be too long.

To start narrowing your content down, pick out some topics from your curriculum. If you're a business coach who helps others develop and expand their businesses, think about the topics you typically will cover, and then how you can break them into multiple lessons. For example:

• Digital marketing strategies
• How can you retain and sell your customers
• How do I hire and supervise an online team
• Automating your business processes and your sales funnel

Students will benefit from finding targeted content that speaks directly to where they're at in their own business development. As a coach, you'll be able to upsell and bundle your offerings, which increases your profits in the long term.

Strategies for Creating Online Coaching Course Content

In the process of making your own material, the goal of you as a coach is to deliver a transformative educational experience that takes students closer to their ideal goal.

Many coaches also have the same concern about losing the high-touch part of their coaching programs through the use of online platforms.

If that's the case, fear not. There are many elements you could use to design a course that keeps students engaged and happy all through. Between verbal lessons, visual elements, as well as interactive aspects Let's take a look at what is the best option in an online coaching course.

Content Types to Create a Personalized Learning Experience

It is recommended to employ a mix of methods for teaching in your online course. Below are some suggestions you can think about:

• Lessons that are verbal. For auditory learners, using audio files helps to explain your lessons and help you understand more deeply the ideas. If your current coaching plan involves phone calls with your clients, incorporating the recordings of different conversations during your class can create a more cohesive learning lesson.
• Visual materials. This may take shape as slides for presentations, screen share demonstrations or any other illustration to communicate with visual learners.
• Interactive components. An important component of the most successful online classes is provide your students with something to do to apply the lessons they've acquired. This could be written tasks or challenges, writing journal entries, as well as reading workbooks or other guides to resources.
• Questions. These are useful to create engagement and a sense of connection in your class. The course includes an interactive quiz feature that allows students to reflect on their experiences and help coaches gauge how much they are applying the concepts to their lives.
• Videos. Videos are very efficient in putting a personal touch on your coaching online program. Create an intro video, and greet your students in the same manner as you would when in person. You don't have to be overly strict, professional or even robotic in your videos - simply be you! In your role as a coach, students are looking to interact with you the same way as they would one-on-one.

Pro advice:If you're new to the world of video do not worry about creating the perfect video production. Just focus on providing value in your content and then delivering the change your students signed up for - you can invest in equipment to improve your skills as you go along.

• Assignments. Creating tasks for students to work on each week also helps provide a more personalized experience an online coaching program.
• Check-in emails via email. Set up emails to be sent at specific times during the lesson to check in on your students. This can be something as simple as asking what they thought of the lesson, or what they learned.
    If you'd like to track student progress, you could make an email alert to connect with a student when they are struggling with their work. In this case, for example "I discovered that you've only completed 50% of the lessons Do you have anything I could aid you?"
• Surveys. When you coach on the spot and face to face, you'll be able to easily obtain a read on how helpful the content you provide to your clients. With online courses, there's no way of knowing until you've asked. Setting up a post-course survey helps you stay up to date with the way your courses are thought of.

Strategies for Creating A One-on-1 experience, online

One of the best parts about coaching one-on-one is the capacity to look into your clients' experience and identify the areas of growth and improvement. It can be difficult to duplicate using online classes, but there are ways to make similar experiences available online.

For example, let's say you do mindset or life coaching. Most likely, you'll make a statement or two that could spark conversation face to face such as, "what do you feel hinders you from commanding the influence you desire in your workplace?"

Because students can't reply to you on the spot it is essential to incorporate this question into your course. Instructing students to use a the workbook to write in response to this question is a great alternative. Then you could follow up by introducing a video-based lesson that is specific on this particular topic.

This is only one instance of how you can create the full circle experience for your students. If such open-ended, open-ended inquiries are crucial to the coaching process, think beforehand how you will utilize the different types of content listed above together. You'll soon have a seamless and professional service to provide your customers online.

Include Community Conversations & Support

In addition to expanding your learning options You might also consider adding a group element to go along with your classes.

It could be a Facebook Group or Slack channel Voxer group, or any other that allows you for you to connect with your followers.

A community built to work with your online course offers a few benefits:

• It will be possible to respond to questions within a team setting which will reduce the requirement to answer the same question twice
• You could hire support admins to watch your group, and to help you address common queries or queries
• You'll be able to see live how students are responding to your content
• You can leverage the community to sell subsequent online courses
• Your students will thrive in feeling as though they are part of a community that is traveling the same path like them.

Beware of the following pitfalls: Offline to Online Courses

Here are two of Paul's biggest mistakes to stay clear of while building the online coaching system you're creating.

• Creating lessons that are too lengthy
    "Coaches typically conduct lengthy calls. If they are first introducing an online class the instructors will often create long lessons that are sometimes one hour or two hours! It's not the ideal user experience for the students. The best approach is creating your material into smaller pieces that are bite-sized. You should aim for 5-20 minutes per piece that are targeted and to the main point. You'll see a lot more energy as students go through your material."
• Not validating your course in advance
    "It's regrettable to see instructors spending time to create an online program that nobody purchases. Work hard on validating the course prior to launching and you will avoid this issue. Check the quality of your content by interacting by interacting with your target audience. Create an email list, start conversations via social media and ask your followers to vote using questionnaires. You can get feedback from your audience early and then refine the material until it reflects exactly what your audience needs ."

Keep these tips in mind so that you're on your way to creating engaging content for your online coaching course. Maintain a mindset of growth and expect to test each aspect of your program throughout the process and following the launch.

Connect with Paul at www.thepaulthomson.com and in his Facebook group, the Online Course Creators Hub.

Are you a business coach who's utilized online training to grow your company? Tell us about your most challenging problems, your best practices or how your business is evolving since the remarks below!