Introduction

All successful online courses start with a great idea. So many topics deserve an online course, but how do you know which is the right one? How do you know who the course should be tailored to? In this blog post, we will go over how to select the perfect course topic, and how to reach your target audience.

You Gotta Start Somewhere

All online courses start at the beginning. Before you can structure the course, you need to first decide what you would like to teach. What pain point are you trying to solve for consumers? Figuring out a problem that you would like to solve will greatly impact your success. People are looking for answers to very specific problems they are facing, so a course tailored for those problems will be successful. Starting off with a broader topic (i.e. marketing, technology, etc) and branching off into various different topics within the one broad topic will provide you with multiple options (i.e how to promote your business online, how to use artificial intelligence programs online, etc). 

Who Are You Selling To?

Once you have decided on a topic, the next step is to determine who the course is for. Who are you hoping to provide this knowledge to? A great way to figure this out is to write down the topic you are looking to teach, and all the different groups of people who could benefit from this topic. For example, if you are looking to teach about how streaming has affected the music industry, who would be interested to learn about this? Artists who create music, record label executives, managers, A&R reps, and more could all benefit from learning about the ins and outs of streaming music. Once you have your target audience, you are more than able to tailor the course to suit that group of potential consumers.

Problem-Solving One Course At a Time

A major error people make when creating courses is that they create a course based on what they would like to educate people on rather than solving their problems. Looking for the pain points that consumers are currently facing will be a much better area to start rather than starting with an interesting topic & trying to solve the problems later. The best way to figure out what issues potential consumers are currently facing is to:

• Look at your current industry market: The best place to start is to look at your current industry and think of issues that currently affect your or fellow individuals in your industry (i.e. Helping virtual assistants get fully booked)
• Engage in different communities: Joining and becoming involved in different online communities will greatly increase your chances of finding the problems that need to be solved from the sources themselves (i.e. Joining different Facebook groups, having a look at Reddit forums, following certain accounts on IG, etc)
• Collect data: Creating a form or survey is a very good way to get concrete data on what exactly people need to be solved in their lives as it’s coming directly from the source.

Mapping Out The Content

You have brainstormed ideas for your course, you’ve figured out who your target audience is, and you’ve done your research on how to solve consumer problems – what’s next? Putting all your ideas together in one place is the best way to properly formulate this course. Setting up a spreadsheet or document where all this information is stored will provide you with a mind map of what your course is about, who it’s for, what problems you are solving, and what knowledge you are providing. Once you have a visual tool to show all your ideas together, you can then take these documents and officially start the outline of your course!

Conclusion

Online course creation is a time-consuming process. It takes time to conduct market research, collect data, brainstorm, and strategize. Throughout this process, take your time. Offering a quality product is way more valuable to consumers than providing a number of products. Be patient, apply these tools to your process, and watch how your small idea will blossom into a full blown online course.