The Keys to Successful Online Course Creation

If you are employed as an instructional designer, then you know how challenging the job can be. Sure, it’s easy to just throw a course together and call it online learning, elearning, or digital learning, but it takes time, effort, and skill to create a quality course. So, we wanted to write a short blog that helps instructional designers do their jobs better, by listing the keys to successful online course creation.

1. Develop a clean class outline

Letting people learn at their pace is essential, but not guiding their path will almost always guarantee their failure. Remember, small wins lead to big wins. Big wins lead to success. Creating your classes with this in mind is the path to success. That’s why your class should be straightforward in nature, and learners should readily understand how to go about achieving the promised outcomes. It helps them know exactly what is the next step to take and what they have to gain from it.

Every module and lesson should have one objective or goal. When learners know what they’re working for and how they’ll benefit from it, they are much more likely to be motivated to follow along with the class, and they will learn faster. If a module has three to five or more goals, learners can’t wrap their minds around what they’re trying to accomplish, and it’s easy for them to get overwhelmed and drop out. Contemplate splitting a lesson into two or more shorter lessons to make the path easier to follow.

2. Create an exciting learning experience

A key aspect of making a successful online class is making it rewarding and frictionless. When learners feel empowered as opposed to confused and purposeless, completion rates increase! Better organization and reduced learner friction™ are what will keep customers more content.

Here are two effective techniques to create a rewarding and frictionless experience:

  1. Content chunking
    Content chunking is the technique of breaking content into smaller chunks that are easier to manage and learn. Small challenges or chunks are easier to handle and help learners comprehend the material faster and retain it all while exerting less effort.
  2. Digital badges
    If you want to inspire learners to finish your class, participate, and interact more with the teacher and the other learners, offering a tangible reward is an excellent method. Why? People love rewards. They want to feel unique, recognized, and essential. And if you can help them accomplish this, their self-confidence will increase, and they will be more willing to continue in your online class. How can you create tangible rewards for your learners? Start by using digital badges to reward your learners:
  3. Provide a digital badge for class completion. People love sharing their achievements with the world and adding them to their CV.
  4. Offer bonus points for accomplishments. When they reach milestones, they get points. They can then turn in their points for Amazon cash, gift cards, etc.
  5. Design a virtual training “passport” and inspire participants to earn visas. The more modules they complete, the more visas (or badges) they receive.

3. Develop actionable class content

Although you may know a lot, resist the urge to pack your class with “nice-to-know” information. Learners want “must-know” information that they can apply to their daily lives. They want to know how to get ahead in their careers. They want marketable skills they can add to their resume.

Don’t ignore theory, but you need to find a way to connect it to the learners’ lives and make it actionable. You can do this by showing how theory can be applied to real situations, exposing case studies, finding applications in real-life issues, adding exercises, missions, and assignments to your class.

If learners can’t see how your content is relevant and don’t have a vision of what they can do with it, they will not learn it. Even if they do learn it so they can pass the assessment, they’ll likely forget about it in a short time. If they learn how to do something, they’re likely to complete the class, achieve their goals, apply the knowledge, and retain the information for a long time.

Actionable content not only tells your learners what to achieve but how to achieve it. It’s engaging, informative, and, most importantly, action-driven. Your learners bought a class instead of an eBook because they were looking for something more likely to help them achieve their desired outcomes. As a class creator, it’s your job to help them do that. You play a major role in helping your learners take action!

4. Separate your class into chunks

Many class creators feel like a longer class packed with lots of content is more valuable, but that’s far from the truth. Having too much content makes you lose customers and blurs the learning path. Remember, you want learners to come back for more, so keeping the lessons short and focused on a specific topic is vital. Breaking down a long class into smaller chunks or mini lessons that are easier for learners to digest increases motivation by giving them the feeling of progress.

The “zeigarnik effect” states that learners are more likely to remember tasks in progress than those they have completed. The zeigarnik effect indicates that people are more likely to want to complete a task once they have started it. This means that when you separate your class into small chunks, it gives learners the motivation to complete all the sections once they have started. It helps learners comprehend the content better, learn more of it, and remember it longer. It also makes each class goal clearer, more specific and easier to achieve.

Concluding thoughts

So that’s it for this article. We hope that it will help you in your quest to create successful online courses.  Do you have any additional tips, techniques, or strategies that you would like to share with our readers? If so, leave them in the comment section below.

By Matthew Lynch

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Latasha James 46.3K subscribers Sharing a step by step guide of how to create an online course! I created an online course in just a few days using Thinkific. My Video Content Creation for Business Course is out now: https://ajourneyeast.thinkific.com/co… Links Mentioned Thinkfic: https://get.thinkific.com/give-a-mont… ✖ WORK WITH ME » 1:1 Coaching https://latashajames.com/coaching/?ut… » Social Media and Influencer Marketing Courses https://ajourneyeast.thinkific.com/?u… » Social Media Marketing, Podcast + Video Editing https://www.jamesandpark.com/?utm_sou… ✖ LET’S KEEP IN TOUCH » podcast: the freelance friday podcast http://bit.ly/freelancefridaypodcast » instagram: @thelatashajames http://instagram.com/thelatashajames » twitter: @thelatashajames http://twitter.com/thelatashajames » facebook group: the freelance friday podcast community http://facebook.com/groups/microinflu… » business email: hello@ajourneyeast.com SUBSCRIBE for weekly videos on life as a social media manager, entrepreneurship tips, Detroit lifestyle, and travel: https://goo.gl/3Klxj9 ✖ DISCOUNT CODES » TubeBuddy is a must-have service for YouTubers: http://tubebuddy.com/latasha » Monetize your product links with Skimlinks: http://go.skimlinks.com/?id=67873X151… » Get 50% off your first 6 months of Quickbooks Self-Employed: http://fbuy.me/fumsv ☽ video is not sponsored. #SocialMediaManager#Freelancer#Entrepreneur

How B2B Brands Can Identify Their Target Audience

How well do you know your brand’s target audience?

Or, how well do you think you know your target audience?

We find that many brand managers in Europe assume they know their audience very well indeed. They might even have a very clear image in their head of the type of individual they are trying to target with all of their advertising and marketing strategies. 

What is often the case, however, is this image in their heads isn’t always completely correct. When it comes to targeting your audience in Europe and motivating them into making a purchase, you need to ensure that your understanding of this group is bang on. Any slight differences between what’s in your head and your audience could result in some of your targeted work falling flat.

If you know that you have this problem in your business currently, here are steps to take to understand your target audience better. If you follow them through, you’ll know how to discover your target audience and start fine-tuning your aim for them in all your campaigns.

Brainstorm your target audience.

The first thing you should do is sit down and brainstorm what you already know about your target audience. Think about the characteristics that all of the individuals who are most likely to buy your products will share. Are they in the same age group? What is their job title; what kind of salary do they earn? You should also look at the common challenges, needs, and objections that this group of people might face in their life.

One great tip is to take a look at the audience that your competitors are targeting. How does that group differentiate from yours? Examine the data-driven insights using the right tools to understand the entire funnel, and how you can leverage this data to incorporate your USP to retarget.

Take advantage of brand trackers.

Use a brand tracker to get measurable and actionable data on your audience. This data can give you various, but specific insights. For instance, tracking brand awareness will tell whether or not your ideal target audience actually knows about you. As well as that, tracking brand consideration will show if they would consider using your brand. You can also track this data for your competitors and compare how your brand fares against them. 

In addition, you might even discover that this isn’t actually the best audience for you to be targeting. By digging deep into all of this brand tracking data, you might see new audiences appear that you had never previously considered. Just make sure to choose a brand tracker that caters to niche audiences.

Develop a persona for your target audience.

Now it’s worth creating a persona of what the quintessential member of your target audience is like. There are so many benefits from audience personas, so why not use it?

For example, if you target the millennial generation, go beyond a generic idea of a millennial and think more closely about who you are selling to. If you find that millennial females who live in urban areas and work in the tech sector buy your product more than anyone else, then their defining features and characteristics should also be those of your audience persona. 

Once you have made a persona, it’s important that you inform everyone on your team. To keep everyone on the same track with all their strategic work, you all need to be targeting the same persona.

Start targeting.

Now that you know who you are aiming at, it’s time to start trying to reach them. In order to target your audience, focus your efforts on the channels they use most often. 

If you know that your target audience spends a lot of their online time using Twitter, then it’s worth starting a campaign on that social media platform. However, if you are targeting an older audience who might prefer to spend their evenings in front of their TVs than tweeting, think about running some TV adverts.

Researching the channels that your audience use really can help you immensely — not doing so could end with you shooting blindly and completely missing. 

How does running marketing campaigns help find your target audience, you may ask. Well, how can you be positive that they are the audience for you unless you see if they work? And don’t forget…

Continue to monitor.

So you research your target audience well and then start to target them using suitable methods and channels. Job done, right? Not quite.

Sure, you’ve taken the right kind of steps so that the right kind of consumers will see your brand marketing. But how do you know whether that’s really happening once your adverts and promotions are out there in the wild? How do you know that they are helping your sales?

Keep your eye on the ball and monitor how your marketing efforts are doing. You can do this by tracking your brand guidelines and campaigns to make sure that they are hitting the spot. 

It’s also worth noting that target audiences can change or shift over time, so monitoring them is a continuous task for every brand manager. As long as you do make monitoring a habit of a lifetime, then there’s no risk of you ever being left behind by competitors. 

Those steps don’t sound too difficult, right? If you follow through with them, you should discover new things about your target audience that you might never have realized. And those nuggets of wisdom could help you polish up your marketing campaigns like never before. 

Not only that, but you can now carry out all of your campaigns confidently, as your target audience shouldn’t be even easier to reach.

By: Steve Habazin Entrepreneur Leadership Network VIP

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Adam Erhart

How To Identify Target Market | Target Market Examples Click here to subscribe: https://bit.ly/2HxjQRa If you don’t properly identify your target market then none of your marketing will work. Period. Not your ads, not your content, not your website, not your social media, nothing. It will all fail miserably. And I don’t want that for you. So in this episode I’m going to be breaking down exactly how to identify your target market and give you a few examples of what that might look like for your business. ***Marketing Resources: Work With Me: https://bit.ly/2FY2vzF Our Advertising Agency: http://aerh.co/1oVVeEc Facebook Ad Image Guide : https://bit.ly/2H9EPt9 FAST Content Formula : https://bit.ly/2JEu5kz 60 Second Video Ad Script : https://bit.ly/2GQF0Kl One Page Marketing Plan : https://bit.ly/2v6HPBp ***Let’s Connect: Website: http://adamerhart.com Click here to subscribe on YouTube: https://bit.ly/2HxjQRa Twitter: http://twitter.com/adamerhart Facebook: http://facebook.com/officialadamerhart Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/adamerhart

VideoFlow – An Easy To Use Software Creates Videos For Publishing Over Social Media.

VideoFlow is a new approach to selling with video based on proven & tested sales methodology. Every video that you create within VideoFlow is generated in minutes, optimized to make creation easy and completely fiddle free. Out create your competition and save on monthly & yearly fees.

Why did McDonalds grow so big, so fast and completely take the market by storm? It wasn’t because they hired the best burger artist or spent hours fretting over how to position the lettuce. It’s because they used the same formula every time AND everyone working behind the counter could do it. The burger was delivered fast and effectively using the same method every time.

  • Burn captions into videos
  • Add video wrappers
  • Record Screen & Webcam
  • Animated logos, intros & outros
  • Client Project management system
  • Sub-users
  • Project collaboration & review system
  • Animated text overtop your videos
  • Scene transitions
  • Animated Emojis
  • 4k Rendering And much much more…

VideoFlow Creation is fast! The longer a video takes the more it eats into your agencies bottom line. You can’t afford to spend days fiddling with overly complex settings or time-consuming free flow editors (Built for Video Artists).So we crafted a new way of editing. And it’s faster than ever before!

With VideoFlow it takes just minutes and a few clicks of your mouse to fully customize any of your videos, create high converting scenes and use templates to pump out videos at a rapid pace. Choose videos you’ve filmed on your mobile, camera or stock footage you’ve purchased. You can import freely and easily with a couple of clicks then instantly edit your video within our easy to navigate interface. Select videos from any device.

YouTube, Facebook & Instagram combined have over 2 billion people logging in every day. Use your videos as updates to Social Media & distribute your videos instantly from Within Video Ad Maker. With VideoFlow — you can in 1 click post your videos live to these networks ready to grab visitors or as part of a social media strategy for a business.

You can render your videos in any resolution right up to 4k. We also have standard presets such as 720p HD, 1080p Full HD, as well as social media presets for square videos and even vertical videos for mobile users. VideoFlow creates high quality short videos. If you want to though, you can create videos of up to 10 minutes. If thats still not enough then you can upgrade to professional and create videos up to 20 minutes long.

Source: VideoFlow – Create & Publish Short Videos Fast…

YouTube, Facebook & Instagram combined have over 2 billion people logging in every day. Use your videos as updates to Social Media & distribute your videos instantly from Within Video Ad Maker. With VideoFlow — you can in 1 click post your videos live to these networks ready to grab visitors or as part of a social media strategy for a business. Select the size you want. You can create videos quickly and easily for ‘Video Ads’, Stories or Video Updates.

 

 

How Video Marketing Will Grow Your Business Into Profit

Image result for video marketing

You have a unique story to tell: maybe you’re great-grandmother started the business in her kitchen, and you’re continuing the tradition. Maybe you were down and out and developed an idea to help people improve their lives. Maybe you developed a brilliant tech solution and want to keep innovating. Whatever the backstory, video provides a way to tell it effectively and with impact.

According to Forrester Research, one minute of video is worth 1.8 million words! You don’t have to produce epic tales: use each second to connect with your audience, build trust, and grow your business.

In fact, with a little creativity and the right software, your videos can become an integral part of your inbound marketing strategy.

Software such as 23 allows you to turn your videos into points of conversion for your users. You can edit your videos with links to relevant supporting content on your site, as well as overlay forms right on the video!

For instance, if you have an educational series of videos, you can collect valuable information from your audience, so you can continually provide them with content that nurtures them through your marketing and sales funnels.

Using video in your growth strategy in 2020 will empower you to grow your database with engaged contacts and continue to deliver valuable and engaging content. Your videos will stand out and become your competitive advantage and give you the push you need to become the thought leader in your space.

Stay Top of Mind

People are busy. Surprise, right? Whether you are trying to reach consumers or business decision-making, time is of the essence. Your audience is more likely to watch a video than wade through a long article (at least initially: as they delve into the topic, complementing your video marketing strategy with a strong written content strategy is essential).

Video can convey key information in minutes; a text version of the same content could take up to 40 minutes. While your videos should be long enough to say what you need to say, remember you can say a whole lot in a minute or two!

Email is a great medium for using video. If you’re utilizing video on other marketing channels, there’s no reason you should exclude email. In fact, videos in email can lead to a 200-300% increase in click-through rates!

As with all things email marketing, you’ll need to relentlessly test your emails. Many email clients such as Outlook have fallen behind and don’t render videos directly in email. However, an image with a play button overlay conveys that there’s a video on the other end of the click and works just fine.

We’ve started doing this for a few of our clients and click-through rates have sky-rocketed. Campaigns with video have had click-through rates of 51% against the email marketing average of 12%. While we made sure we had a solid method of collecting contacts, it’s unbelievable how a simple video can drastically improve your email marketing.

Reinforce Your Brand and product Messaging

Whether you’re creating video marketing ads, brand stories, customer testimonials, or how-tos, your audience is paying attention. More than half (55%) of people say they pay “close attention” when watching videos, a higher rate than all other types of content.

Moreover, they retain significantly more. When reading, we retain about 10% of the content. When viewing a video, we retain 95%. That is powerful – and it is a great way to reinforce your brand message clearly and consistently.

As for your product messaging, as people are researching their choices on the internet, video can be a great tool to position your product or service as the right decision. In fact, 90% of users say that product videos are helpful in the decision process.

When you’re making these videos, focus more on the value your product or service will deliver. You want to get people to visualize themselves using it, and experiencing that value. Make it all about them instead of all about you.

When you position yourself as the right solution you empower consumers to choose you over your competition. Not only do people use videos in their journey towards a purchase, but 64% of people are more likely to buy something online after watching a video.

Capture their attention, engage them with value, and offer the opportunity to purchase.

Reach a Wider Audience

Social media offers a cost-effective avenue for brands, but results depend on how many people you can reach – and if you can do so organically, all the better for your budget. The good news is that Facebook videos get 135% more organic reach than a photo and significantly more than status updates and links.

As marketers, we like video marketing stats that blow our minds. The fact that social video generates 1200% more shares than text and images combined definitely falls into that category. That’s the power of video. Reach more people and engage them with your brand. Utilizing social media in 2020 to share your videos will generate massive engagement with your content.

When you invest in video marketing, make sure you’re utilizing social media channels such as Facebook to get your content in front of your community, so they can share it with their friends.

Demonstrate Your Value and Gain Buy-in

When looking for a product, almost 50% of people look for a video before visiting a store. Consumers who watch demo videos are 1.81 times more likely to make a purchase, and 39% of executives who watch a video contact the vendor.

Demos can be utilized effectively with both B2C and B2B companies, and they allow prospects to see how your product/service works and how it can enhance their lives.

Other types of videos can be potent as well: for example, searches for “how to” topics on YouTube have grown 70% year-over-year. It’s no wonder the video platform is actually the second largest online search engine. Consumers can get quite a great (and free!) education on YouTube. Be there. Give them the answers they need, and they’ll see you as the trusted authority – the go-to problem-solver they need. Capitalize on the fact that the video platform (owned by Google) reports a 100% increase in mobile video consumption each year and shows no sign of slowing down!

When you utilize YouTube correctly, it combines your content and SEO strategy perfectly. Search engine results pages now pull in video results from YouTube and other video platforms to provide searchers with the most engaging and relevant content.

Optimizing your videos with in depth descriptions, tags, and relevant links to your site will tell search engines what your video is about, and you can drive traffic to your engaging content.

When setting up a plan for video in your 2020 content marketing strategy, make sure you don’t dismiss the written word entirely. This is not only what search engines use to tell what your video is about, but it also gives users the choice between reading and watching. It’s all about creating a great user experience.

Capture interest with Video Marketing Ads

Video marketing ads are far less intrusive than other digital ad formats; in other words, consumers are far less likely to get irritated with you and furiously click the X to close it out. The average click-through rate for video ads is 1.84%, better than all other digital ad formats.

With compelling videos, you have the chance to make an impact on your audience – to stand out from the noise and deliver a message that resonates.

Need Help with Video Marketing in 2020?

The bottom line: video is good for your bottom line! Brands that utilize this tool grow revenue 49% faster (year over year) than brands that do not. If you want to grow your business, video is essential.

The first step to using video marketing to grow your business is to get started. Start incorporating video content into your 2020 digital marketing strategy so you can jump in and start seeing results.

If you’re unsure of where to begin, that’s alright! There’s a lot that goes into it. We’ve made video a huge part of our 2020 strategy here at THAT Agency, and can help you set goals focused on realistic and measurable business growth.

To see where video can take your business, reach out to our content team, and we can formulate a video marketing strategy for you.

Source: https://blog.thatagency.com/video-marketing-will-grow-your-business-in-2018

 

Social Media Marketing Counts Workshop With Paul Counts

Paul Counts here and I am so thrilled and excited to tell you about this brand new Marketing Counts workshop called Social Media Marketing Counts. Inside this workshop we dive in and take you over the shoulders as we show you how to get traffic from social media marketing!

You watch me market online via social media channels. We’re going to cover Facebook marketing, Twitter marketing, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and Instagram. So you’re going to learn how to market effectively on the most popular and largest social media channels online. As a bonus, we’re going to teach you how to use Quora as well.

You’re going to watch over our shoulders as we set these up and you’re going to learn the best practices for effectively marketing with social media.

Now this workshop is being created for our Marketing Counts Club students and we’re offering it for you at a discount right now.

What we’re also going to do with this training is we are going to be transcribing this training so you will get the transcription, but we’re going to make it part of a book so we have a lot in mind for this.

  • Watch over my shoulder as I layout in detail how to get traffic from social media!
  • Understand how social media works in 2020!
  • Get the inside look at how real marketing experts use social media to grow.
  • Setup free traffic systems with social media marketing!
  • Limited Time: Resell Rights Bonus Included!
  • Bonus Traffic Checklists
  • Bonus Traffic Copy/Paste Templates
  • Bonus Transcription Included

If you know how to setup proper social media marketing campaigns in 2020 you can achieve unlimited success!

We are so excited for you to learn from us, and also get the chance to resell such a high-quality and robust video course. This is a 2 hour course with transcripts included FREE. It will be sold for more than this price WITHOUT licensing rights!

Just secure your spot now to save big!

 

Source: Social Media Marketing Counts Workshop – Paul Counts and Shreya Banerjee – Marketing Counts — Private Label Rights – Paul Counts

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