Creating Online Course Videos

There we go. Hello, welcome to Cash In On Camera Live. Few things before we get started with today's live training. Those of you who've been following me for, you know, doing these live trainings for half a year, you know that there are a lot of sometimes moving parts. Today is no exception. So today we're using Restream to multicast this live streaming out to YouTube. So if you're watching on YouTube, welcome. If you— and we just crossed 14,700 subscribers, so that's awesome. If you're watching on LinkedIn, great to have you here. Maybe you're watching on Facebook. Grateful-is-to-be-here. And if you're watching and you're going to be joining me here with Restream on whatever platform you're watching, glad to have you here. I see the numbers starting to climb up, so that's great. One thing that's happening, something new that's going to be happening in 2021 is that these live trainings are going to originate from Restream going forward, as opposed to Zoom. And I'm, listen, I'm a fan of Zoom. I totally, that's awesome. But I am going to be using this platform because I have a few more bells and whistles that I can use from a production standpoint. So that's something that you're going to be noticing as well as we go forward. Bear with me for a moment. I just want to make sure that there aren't a bunch of people over on the Zoom side who are going, hey, like Teresa. Hi, Teresa. That link that you see in the chat is where you can go to join me in the Restream broadcast. So feel free to check— to click that, and you should be able to join me in the Restream. I know it's going to be a little clunky here as we transition from using Zoom to using Restream, but I'm starting an exciting partnership with Restream. And, um, okay, I'll put it in again. And we want to use that platform, so let me just go here. Bear with me for a moment, we're going to get started. There you go, Teresa. So you should be able to see that. Awesome. So, we are going to, and as per usual, we are going to of course have our friendly reminders being sent out to you if you are registered for these free trainings every week, and we'll put in the link for this broadcast, okay? So, let me know if you have questions in the comments, or if you have questions, type them in the chat. Happy to answer your questions as well. Let's see here. Hello, Yaseen, nice to see you. Milan, how's— I'll watch here today and figure out the Restream features afterwards. That sounds great. That sounds great. So for those of you who are new to me, my name is Sheryl Plouffe and it says so on the screen. And I'm a video strategist. I'm a former TV broadcaster. And now what I do is I help you, the offline authority, be it a coach, a consultant, a speaker, an author. You are on a mission. You know, you're a purpose-driven entrepreneur, purpose-driven business owner and you need to get your message out to more people, I help you do that and grow your business with video. So I'm always looking at things through the lens of video. But of course, I recognize that video does cross over into some other forms of marketing as well, and even into some other types of products that you might sell. So today we're talking online courses. Let me know what your questions are about online courses specific to videos in the comments, if you're comments or chat, depending on where you're watching this from. And I'd be happy to answer. What I'm going to do today is paint a picture of the options that you have in order to produce videos for an online course. So this is applicable to you if you already maybe are in the process of working on a course. I know a few people come to mind who are working on courses right now. If you are someone who aspires to have a course and you plan to do that in 2021, then this is for you. If you maybe want to redo your videos, you don't love the videos that are there and you want to redo them. I'm going to paint a picture for you today of how you would go about that, or at least how I would suggest that you go about creating those videos. Okay, fair, cool. Before we get started, I just want you to know as well, our January registration is open for the Go Live Challenge. If you don't know, we conduct every month trainings What's that? Training? Well, there's parts of training, of course, as well. But every month we do a livestream challenge to support you to start taking action, get the momentum that you need to start making those videos and getting that social media content out there. It's called the Go Live Challenge. We do it every single month. Don't wait till March. Do the January one, even if you're afraid, even if you're scared. The time is now. 2021 is a new year. Clean slate. Let's forget 2020 and start off with a bang. So if you're interested, leave a comment. You can even text— actually, you could even— you could actually email community@cherylplouffe.com. That's one place that you can get information on joining that, or you can just text me directly at 226-917-2038, and then I can send you the direction of where the links are to register. You get some free bonus trainings and stuff, but but we also send you prompts every day of the challenge. I know many of you who are probably watching have done the challenge. Even if you've done it before and weren't able to accomplish it or to finish it, or you had good intentions when you began but then life got in the way, you know how that works, do it again. We have had many people who've done it multiple times, and sometimes you have to do it multiple times in order to build that muscle to be able to get into that habit, okay? So, reach out by text, Again, email us if you're interested and we can send you the appropriate links. And just a reminder too, if you know anyone who should be on these trainings, live.cachingoncamera.com. It's a new URL for 2021. Free weekly live trainings. You can register there or send that link to people in your community. Okay, so let's, um, let's get started. I'm gonna just preface this by saying that, you know, when it comes to video for online courses, the first thing you really have to consider is what is my online course platform? Like, do you have a platform where you're going to host this course? Like, where is the course going to live? Right. So let's say you have that dialed in and now you're at the part where you're like, OK, great. I got to create the content that's going to go into the course. Let's talk about video. So there are 3 different, you know, the first thing you have to do is produce the video. And the first step in producing the video is you gotta record it. In, in a course format, you're not going to utilize live video. The only place where you might utilize live video as it pertains to a course would be if you are doing a hybrid type of offer where part of it is self-study and then part of it is you interactively working with people live. The only other place you do this live would be if you are doing a beta launch of your program. So I do a lot of beta launches. I'm in one now. I did one in the fall. Those are conducted live. But what I'm talking about here are self-study recorded videos. And for those of you who have like, aspire to have passive income and want to be able to sell something that is a product per se. Okay. So really 3 ways that you can go about recording this content. Interestingly enough, you can use Zoom. You know, you can utilize Zoom to do that. I'm just actually going to check in on my Zoom folks here and make sure that I copy this over. I'm just going to send this to you, Christine, just so that if you see people who join in the Zoom, that you can send them to the right link. There we go. So 3 ways that you can record it. Interestingly enough, yeah, you can use Zoom, and Zoom has obviously become very, very popular. A lot of people now are more accustomed to using Zoom for meetings. So what you can do is you can actually create your own, your own meeting on Zoom, and you can use the screen share function and share your screen. Maybe it's slides that you've created or however it is that you're going to teach the material that you're teaching. And you can record that screen. You can record that meeting. And then create videos from that. So you can use Zoom as your camera to record the videos for your course. The only thing I would caution you on is depending on the length of your course, the recording capability is only so much. I know what I have found is that I've had to upgrade. I think it's an extra $40 a month or something like that to get more, more storage capacity to be able to hold more recordings. So that is a consideration for you. So definitely want to be looking, looking at that. So Zoom is an option for you to be able to record your videos. The second place and second tool would be to use a desktop screen capture software. Camtasia is the one I've been using for years. It's the one that I recommend. You might have heard of ScreenFlow. That's also very popular and works great. I just happen to gravitate, have gravitated to Camtasia and been using it for years. So a screen capture software does something similar to what Zoom does. But the advantage of using that tool is, and it's a paid tool, you do have to pay to get that desktop editor, is that you're able now to, to screen record and do the editing in the same tool. The problem that you might run into with Zoom is, yes, you can record the videos in Zoom, but you're going to have to download that and, and then edit it. Well, where are you going to edit it? You— so you're going to need Camtasia anyway, right? So I want you to be thinking about this too from the perspective of cost. Yes, there's a cost for Camtasia. However, think of it as, OK, well, I'm making a course. Let's say you intend to create a course that you're going to sell for $497. And Camtasia costs— I don't even know what it costs right now— $300 or something. You sell one course and it makes up for the investment in that one tool. Plus you have the ability to make as many videos as you want. Right. So, so sometimes people get a little bit put off by, well, gee, Camtasia costs a few hundred dollars. Well, yeah, but it also opens up a whole world of opportunity for you to create tons of content, not just for your course, but for your content marketing in general. So Zoom is an option. Camtasia is an option. One of my favorites. And the last one is your phone, your mobile device, an iPad, an iPhone. You can use your phone to record your content. And maybe that's just you speaking to the camera. You can definitely do that on the phone, the speaking portions. I would recommend that you have a lightweight tripod such as the one that you can get on Amazon. You might already have a tripod. What I would do is put my tripod— where's mine? Right over here. You can see it. And there's a little bracket there.. And you can put your phone on the bracket, make sure it's horizontal because most of the hosting platforms for courses are going to require video to be in this format, not in vertical but in horizontal. So you're going to want to put your phone in horizontal format to record and you can just speak into the camera. Again, you will need a way to edit that video and to trim it or to do some fancy, some more editing that could be in Camtasia and you can wirelessly transfer that content from your phone directly into Camtasia using their Fuse app, or you could edit it directly with an editing app on your phone. So 3 different ways you can go about this for recording: Zoom, Camtasia, or phone, I think, would— or mobile device, I should say— would be great, great ways to do that. So let's, let me just go in here and just share. Let me see if I can share this screen here. I just made some notes, very rudimentary notes here. Yeah. So Recording a video on Zoom, Camtasia, or your mobile device. Then you need to edit. And like I said, editing, you could edit this on Camtasia. I should have added this, or you could edit on a mobile, on an app. So I'll just make that note there. Yeah. Now, let's say after that you are, you're good, right? You're like, OK, great. I've got the video recorded. I've edited the video. Now, what do I do? Well, depending on your hosting platform. So, for example, I use Kajabi to host my entire business. So if you have a platform like Kajabi, what you can do is you can go into the course that you're creating and you can upload the video directly from your computer into Kajabi, and it will host that video for you. I think their backend is a tool called Wistia, which I'll mention in a moment. So you can upload that content directly into the course. Depending on what the situation is and which one you're using, you may find that you have to either have that video hosted somewhere else and embed the video into your course platform, or, and that could be done by an embed code or by a URL. So it really depends on which one you're using. I use Kajabi, so that's the one I can speak to. And in that case, you could upload your content directly into the course and it will host it for you. If you are in a situation where you're not able to have it hosted on your course platform and you've got to— you're responsible to find where this thing's going to live and exist, then you really have two options. One could be a free host like YouTube. You can use YouTube and upload your content to YouTube, to your YouTube channel, and then you would set it to unlisted.. And if you set it to unlisted, you're still going to get a link to share it. You're also still going to get an embed code to share it. And then you could bring that content into your course platform that way. Another option, and that's the free option. The paid option would be to use something like a Vimeo, which I don't use, but I'm more familiar with Wistia. And you could use a Wistia, which is a paid platform, and upload your content into Wistia. Same thing, you get a URL to share, you get an embed code, and a whole bunch of other ways that you can share that content. And you get more marketing capability with it. So you're able to create turnstile features such as, you know, making the video play to a certain point and then have a pop-up box that says enter your email to access the rest of the content. There's some other features that you get for your paid enrollment in in Wistia from a video perspective. So really, those are, those are your options, right? That's how you would go about doing that. So I'm going to be ready. I know this is really quick, but I'm going to take some questions from you. Just make sure that I'm— I don't know if I'm sharing my screen right now or not, but nonetheless, there we go. So you want to host your video on YouTube or Wistia if you can't bring it directly into your your course platform. And the one that I use is Kajabi. Okay. So if you're interested in this, you know, just, I could even, I could probably even copy this over. Could I copy this? Sure. Of course I can. Let me put this in the paste. Let's see if that comes through. Okay. Let's try that. So we have 20 people on the line live. So great to have you here. Sheryl Plouffe here, video strategist. We're talking about course videos, online course video creation. What are your questions? Happy to answer. Oh, Keith, I'm so glad that you're watching on YouTube now. Thank you. Thank you for bearing with us through a little bit of the ups and downs as we transition from using, you know, Zoom and then going over into the Restream platform. So I really appreciate you figuring that out. That's awesome. Good, good, good. So happy to answer your questions. What are your questions about courses, course videos in particular. I'm happy to answer any of those questions that you may have. All good, thanks Keith, that's great. And just a reminder too, as you're contemplating questions and posting those, if I don't see them here in Restream, I'll go back into the platform. So we're using Restream today, and actually, if you want to— if you're interested to try Restream, this is the partner link. It's restream.io restream.com/join/cioc, which stands for Cash In On Camera. And Restream is the tool that allows you to go live to 30, up to 30 platforms at the same time. So today we're going live to YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn Live, Periscope, all at the same time. And it's an amazing platform. So if you're interested to try it, that's where you'd go. If you have any questions about how else we can help you in 2021, other services, other free tools, you can go to community@sherylplouffe.com and we'd be happy to help and direct you into that area of whatever it is that you need depending on your, your business and the stage of business that you're at. So, okay, you watched on Facebook. Okay, great. Good, good, good. So questions, anything that you want to ask about what are some cautions to be aware of when creating an online course? Well, I mean, many, right? You have to— my belief is that it's best not to create an online course until you've done a beta run, until you've actually sold the course to someone, hopefully maybe several people, before you put in all the effort and time and energy that it requires to create the course itself. I know that sounds contrary to what you might believe. It's like, well, don't I just create the course and then sell it? It's actually better to sell the course first and then you create it. And it's interesting because I was just on one of my mentorship calls this morning with, um, a group of women that I've been with for years now. And, um, and she took that advice and has been doing really well with it. So you want to sell your course first And then, you know, you train and coach and you learn through the process and then you create your course. But I'm just taking, I'm just going from the perspective of you're at that point. You've done your beta run. You have sold it. You know there's a market for it. You know there's an appetite for it. You've done the work to tweak and now you're ready to do the bona fide recording and make it more scalable and more self-study perhaps, or more a little bit more passive in that sense. Oh, no problem. I don't mind. So those are definitely the things to be careful of. You know, you want to make sure that you're creating your course at the right stage of the development of the course. What happens a lot of times is people, they get this idea of passive income, and of course, who doesn't want passive income? But you make the course and then there's crickets. And people wonder why, is because you likely haven't done enough to really figure out where are the weaker parts. Like, what do I need to fix? Can I do it? Is there a market for this? What are the pros and cons of using StreamYard versus Restream? Well, I personally, and I'm a little bit familiar with the StreamYard because I've actually been interviewed several times through StreamYard on other platforms. But for me, I like the interface here more. I really do. I think this is more for— this is upleveling. This is definitely upleveling. And the background, sort of the interface of how this is done, like, you know, these little things, this little thing, it just adds to the production value, in my opinion. The thing with Restream as well is just the number of platforms that you can go live to at the same time. Um, and it seems to go smoothly, in my opinion, you know, more smoothly. That's just, that's just how I feel about it. Yeah, yeah. I think that from a production standpoint, this is, uh, and you can't see it right now because you're just seeing my broadcast, but one of these days I'll, I'll do a video and I'll show you the back end of this, like the graphics, the setup, the captions, and everything else. And you'll be like, wow, it's pretty cool. It's got like countdown clocks, backgrounds. I'm just looking through my list here. I can't show it to you right now. Different captions that I can put on the screen. I've got the chat function. So yeah, there's a lot that you can do with it. All right, so I don't know if we have any other questions. Um, how many of you have a course? Put it in the comments or in the chat depending on where you're watching. Do you have a course? Yes or no? Or maybe you want to have a course, you can put that in the chat as well. Here's my experience with courses. I have one course that I sell for $597. It's called Uncover the Expert in You, and I need to update it. Actually, it needs some updating. But that course teaches how to create videos on your phone and on your desktop. And the thing with that course is that the videos that are in it were all created with Camtasia. They were all created with Camtasia. A lot of screen recording. And then what I would do if I wanted to add myself on the video, what I would do is record myself speaking to my webcam. Then I would merge that and edit it with the screen-captured computer footage of what it was I was showing, i.e., slides. And then at the end, I would come back in on camera. Another thing that I did in my own course from a video perspective is I added a little introduction, like a little, I think maybe 5 or 6 seconds long that I created interestingly enough with an app on my phone. I think I used the, the Quik app by GoPro to create that little intro and then I imported it into Camtasia. So then I have a little, little introduction with like moving motion graphics and all that. And then it's me on camera and then to the screen capture and then me on camera periodically through the lesson, showing my screen, and then the little intro at the end says go to the next lesson. So there's— you can, you can definitely get as fancy as you want with this, or you can just keep it simple. You really can keep it simple. It could just be you on camera if it's your first course, and you could just be on camera speaking and just sharing your expertise and not do any of the screen sharing, just talking to the camera and sharing what you know with the people who have purchased your course, or ideally have already purchased your course before you create it. All right. Yes, you use StreamYard, but you're thinking, yeah, I mean, you know, hey, try it, try it and see which one you like better. Absolutely. Working on one, but following your lead, trying to pre-sell. So, you know, Keith, it's interesting because that pre-selling piece, and this comes right back full circle, to, you know, when you want to grow your business with video or grow your business in general, the thing is that because we live in the attention economy and we know that content is the currency, and if you're having trouble selling that course or pre-selling it, you have to look at what am I doing from a marketing perspective to let people know that I exist and who I am. You know, looking at your sales processes, and saying, okay, well, how am I trying to sell this course? You know, what happens a lot of times is people get on social media and they have a course that they want to sell or pre-sell, and they get on there and they just do promotional content. Hey, I've got a course, come and buy it! Hey, did you know I have a course, come and buy it! And people are like, not interested. They're not interested because what have you provided to them to build that relationship before you ask them to buy the thing? So it always comes back to content. What are you creating? Um, how much content are you creating? What kind of free content, like a live training, like what I'm doing today, or, you know, my YouTube video that's coming up tomorrow? You know, what is it that you're doing to foster those relationships and affording yourself the opportunity to be able to have a conversation with someone about the course? You know, um, getting away from promotional content. People are people know you're trying to sell them stuff and they're going to run in the other direction, right? Um, yes, we just so— just sold it. Like, sold a course. That's great. Good, good, good. Um, I have several courses on Teachable. Yes, I've heard good things about Teachable. Yes, I have. I don't use it personally, but I've heard good things about that. That's great. I'm trying to figure out that video, Sting Interstitial. Do you have a YouTube on that? I don't think I've made one yet, Keith, on the intro piece. I'm trying to think. I have it included in my course as a bonus training, but it's not been publicly available. No. I sold one spot. I wasn't trying hard, so I was quite surprised when it sold. Oh, good for you. Keith says, about to launch webinars to illustrate and sell. Yeah, you know what? I personally, webinars, I haven't been as successful. I feel like this is more my jam. I would prefer to come on and do a live training and teach you something valuable and periodically remind you that we have, you know, our Go Live Challenge is starting in January, or that we have free trainings we do every Wednesday and you can invite your friends and colleagues to it. Um, that I do a free video every, every Thursday on YouTube that you can subscribe to. That's just what works better for me. But you know what, you have to find what works for you. So that's great. Keith says more interactive, demonstrating value. Agree with what you're saying. Thank you. No problem. Promotion. Good point on the content beforehand, relationship building. No doubt. This is, you know, and that may be content for another day. Then maybe that would be a great topic for another time. In fact, I'd love to know from you, what is— let me know in the comment or chat. What would you like me to do a training on next week? Let me know if there's— what is the thing that's like really either bothering you or frustrating you right now, or you find challenging, and I'll make note of it. Yeah, webinars are tricky unless you're really, really skilled at it. And I don't know, it doesn't feel natural to me to be so formulaic. I think that's the problem for me. Webinars are very strategic. It's like hitting certain points at certain times, and it's very, um, strategic and formulaic. And I'm just— I'm not as much into the formulaic thing. Like, I like more kind of going with the flow, extemporaneous, in-the-moment type of stuff. And I think I do better there. So I think— but, but there are people who do really, really well with webinars. There are people who do really, really well with webinars. I guess one could argue that a live training is a form of webinar because I'm teaching something. I'm not necessarily going in for a hard sell here at the end of it or anything. I'm saying to you, 'Hey, we've got other things. We've got other ways we can support you. Reach out to us if you're interested.' But I think each of us needs to find our own path. At the end of the day, I mean, we're all selling something, right? We're all selling something. It's just more of a choice of how are you going about doing it. Maybe you are creating the course. Maybe you are doing a coaching program, you know, whatever that looks like for you. I've done both and have done well at both of them. So, okay, so if you want to, you know, if you have anything kind of on your mind, or hey Cheryl, maybe it's after this training today and you think, oh, you know what, I've got an idea, I would love to know how to do blank. You think of something, text that number, that number, that number right there. Um, text this number: 226-917-2038. And just let me know, just say, hey, Cheryl was on your training today, I'd love to hear you talk about blank. And then I'll make a note of that. I've got a little special system where I can keep track of that, and I'd love to hear from you. So I hope that today's discussion is helpful for you. You know, to get out there and start creating your videos for your online courses. If you're at that stage, if you're ready to scale, but don't do it before you're ready, you know, definitely don't want to be going out there and creating courses before, you know, you've sold it. But if you're at that point and you're like, I've sold it, I know that, you know, I have a proof of concept and it's solid and I'm ready to start recording the videos. That's how I would go about this. I would do I would do it on Zoom, preferably on Camtasia. That'd probably be my number one choice, or on the phone. And then I would look at that editing piece. How am I editing it? Is the question I would ask. Then I would say, okay, now do I have to host it or is it being hosted on my course platform? And then you're going to either upload it or you're going to embed it by an embed or a URL in order to get it in your course platform. You are welcome. Thank you so much for being here with me today. And next week we'll do another training right here on Restream. I hope that you'll join us. Again, go to live.cashinoncamera.com in order to register. Let me see, where are we here? Where are we? Here we go. Live. live.cashinoncamera.com for our free weekly live trainings. What we do is we send out free— we send out friendly reminders every week with the link, the topic, and you get an opportunity to, of course, ask us questions in advance. So we hope to see you there. If you know anyone who should be here, please invite them. We really appreciate it. Thank you so much. Have a great rest of your day and watch out for the YouTube video coming out on my channel tomorrow. If you're not already subscribed, go over to Sheryl Plouffe on YouTube and subscribe. New videos every Thursday to help you, the offline authority, build your business online with video. Have a great one and I'll see you next time.