Day 2.4 Building an online course 2016Planathon com

Hey, planethoners, it's Ann. Some more love here. And this is my third year with the Plan A Thon crew and I am so glad to be back. For those of you who don't know me, my name is Ann Samoylov. You can find me@ansamoilov.com which I'm sure is spelled out somewhere here. I won't bore you with that, but I teach entrepreneurs how to take their ideas and then launch them. But I was super excited this year because Amber asked me to share something else that she knows that I'm passionate about and she knows that I honestly can't stop talking about. I think when we were on the phone talking about this, we started talking about this exact topic that I'm going to talk to you about today, and that is course and product development. So why is this in Plan A thon? Well, if you've ever tried to create a product or a service, you know that there are various stages things have to go through from an outline to maybe that final, you know, if you're creating an online course, maybe it's that website, you know, so there's a lot of to dos and tasks and things that have to be planned out. And honestly, I think we all make or can, can all make the mistake of starting in the wrong place. So you might be starting with that outline. You might think, yep, I know my commonly asked questions. Okay, so I'm going to write that, write all that stuff out, kind of like you would a blog post. That's okay. And then maybe you just, you did start figuring out where the modules are, what modules are going to be involved. Then perhaps maybe you're going to create some videos, maybe you're going to schedule when you're going to do your video shoot. And then maybe you create your audios from those videos, send out those videos to get transcribed, and then maybe finally you put everything inside some sort of members area. All that's great. And that is part of the course development process, but it certainly isn't where you should start. And this is something I've been raising my flag about lately. I've been even saying that I'm raising my flag so that you guys hear me. And actually so I hear myself too, because too many times I've gone through this process and then when I've actually launched has kind of not happened in the way I thought it would. And then afterwards I'm like, oh, well, that's because I didn't really find out who this was for. And I didn't really do this, this and this. So today I want you to kind of put that, that's going to go in your planner later, that's going to be on in your trello, in your asana, in whatever planning system you use. But you, but here's where you really should start. And these are five things, five kind of things to just be thinking about as you're developing a course, a product, a service. Even if it's a coaching program where you're going to bring people through your own curriculum for, you know, so many weeks, let's say you have month long coaching packages and you take people through the same process. You can consider that a course as well. So, so just think, what is your course going to be? And here's how to find that out. First you gotta connect with your audience. You actually have to talk to people. And I say if this is difficult for you, then get on the phone with people that you actually know and love and trust. Get on the phone, just start talking to them about their business or their life or what they struggle with. The funny thing is that even if they don't have a business, you might not even have a business product. So if you don't have a business product, that's actually easier in some, some regards because you can talk to anybody. So get on the phone, just start getting used to that and making that part of your development process. No matter if you're launching, relaunching, creating a new product, you know, revising an old product, you need to get with people who you can trust, who will give you their honest opinion and who won't just, I don't know, shelf the free food. Basically you want people who are, who are interested in what you're doing. So start there. Then I do think, number two, you should survey and listen. Surveying is something like sending out a survey monkey or sending out a Google form. And you can do that in a bunch of different ways. So I'm thinking of someone like, I've seen a bunch of different amazing ways to survey. So very direct. So a lot of people just use SurveyMonkey. They put it in a blog post, they make a call to action publicly. They want to know what people think about this, this and this. So check out Michael Hyatt, check out Amy Porterfield, check out James Wedmore. And they use those surveys at various points in their content. So they might not just use it in their blog posts, they might actually end up using it in their autoresponders. Maybe the first autoresponder that goes out to A customer maybe to people who said that they didn't want to buy, you know, who ended up not signing up for something. So there's different places you can use those, you can post those in your Facebook group and, but I would, I would say for Facebook groups, that's where you can listen. Do lots of searching for your keywords, look for people talking about what, what you are passionate about, what you think your course might be about. And listen. Number three, I want you to start based on all of this, surveying, listening, connecting with your audience. Start creating some key content that's going to be kind of like it's the seeds to what you're going to create. And I'm going to share some real story about something at the very end. So basically you're creating this free content, whether it's blog posts, podcasts, maybe you're doing webinars, free webinars. They don't have to be selling anything. Maybe you're creating some free opt ins, some downloads. You're looking for the interaction, you're looking for the interests, you're looking for people sharing something that's valuable. So once you kind of hit on that thing, that's where you can kind of go, oh, that's interesting. People are interested in that. I thought they were coming here just to learn about launching when in fact they, they want to learn about building their list. Whatever the case is that that was, you know, that's not completely true of me, but people are. Obviously if you're interested in launching, you want to grow your audience, you want to grow your business. So create that free content to gauge the interest. So someone who's done this really well and he even talked about it on Periscope last week is Derek Halpern. He created a course called yes Engines, which is really about selling more, which is amazing. I actually just signed up for that course. Okay. Anyways, I just wanted to say that he, he went back and he said 18 months ago, I posted this post just to see kind of like as like the, here's, here's that topic that I got to see if people respond to. Now you do have to share it. You can't just say, okay, I'm going to put it there and see if people want it. You so make sure to do that free content, promote it and really try to get people's, gauge people's interest by what happens, whether it gets shared, whether there are comments, whether it brings up a whole like people reach out to you. You've got to pay attention to those things. Number Four. Yes. Focus on the challenges. So at the beginning we talked about questions, the frequently asked questions. Focus on the challenges. All those people you're talking to, all those people you're listening and watching are challenged with. And think of them as questions you might be able to answer. Number five, continue. Continue canvassing all your Facebook groups. But here's an even easier place to look. Inventory your content. Because you may have actually written about the topic, you may have actually presented the topic and the answers might already be in your bin of creation. So here's that. I mean that that has happened to me on many occasions where I literally am like, okay, what can I do to update this content? Oh my gosh, I should just add this in. This was a blog post from like a year ago. So look at your existing free content as a place to give you clues only when then, then you are going to have to kind of like come in and kind of hand pick the things that really stand out to you and then do the outline and developing the content that day that way. But these should be your first steps. And how long should it take to do this? Well, I say take one or two months doing this. Honestly, unless you get like such an immediate response, I say take one or two months or up to a year. Fearless Launching started the idea started happening in August of 2011. I didn't launch it until February 2012. Now that didn't mean I was actually creating that course the whole time. I was actually doing other things later leading up to that. When I first launched Fearless Launching, the course wasn't even created really. There were two modules created and I had to do the rest on the fly. Don't recommend that, but it is what it is. And again, look for the clues in your content. Of course you can look for the clues in other people's content as well. But it's better to see the reaction to your own content because that's your interaction with people, your what people want from someone else. Just because that's a proven topic for them, like for instance, sales or actually no blogging. Blogs that convert, getting, building your audience. That's something that Derek Halpern talks about in a very specific way. Just because those site, those kind of topics and very specific things that he writes about work well on his site don't mean they're going to work well on my site. So, so plan a thoners. Take one to two months to really develop your customer. Figure out what they need, what they want, who they are and you will thank me. Don't rush into the launch. Take your time. And I know this is a long video, so I'm really sorry, but hopefully this actually just starts that thought in your head. This is why I'm taking people through early, some people through, a small handful of people through Fearless launching early because this is so critical to your launch. If you don't know this information, if you haven't connected, if you haven't listened, if you haven't created free content that there's a proven need or reaction to, no amount of creating a pretty site and a pretty product is going to get it sold. All right. Have a wonderful day and thank you guys for watching again. And I am here in the group, so definitely ask me questions and I will talk to you soon. Bye. Bye.