Want to launch your own educational course? Avoid these mistakes!

Russian text here: https://t.me/semworkchannel/39

Online education is great and awesome. In its variety of forms and directions, it is very successful and expanding, but not perfect at all. The larger the market = the more competition.

Competition leads to the fact that courses and webinars need to be improved, and for beginners in general it seems that it is time to reinvent the wheel. But there is nothing supernatural here: the attention of your target audience can be attracted simply by avoiding the frequent mistakes of most coaches and specialists.

If you already have a course or only plan to make it, pay attention to these things:

1) Large lecture for 1 hour or more is obvious evil. Only a few people will be able to watch your static lecture for so long without stopping: they will be added to "Favorites" or in “Watch later”, then they will forget. Divide your videos into small pieces, create a playlist and provide a link: this will make the material more effective for understanding.

2) Don't mention what you can not mention in the video. Watching videos takes time and concentration, which simple people often lack. Better to compose a PDF file or typeset a short landing page with the main course materials that learners can study on their own later. Or they will open it in the next tab, it will also be great.

3) Don't ignore the audio format. There are more and more podcast users, so it would be cool to offer people an alternative learning format (unless, of course, your topic requires visualization). There are a lot of podcaster platforms now – choose any.

Pay special attention to podcast audio and video: people will often watch your courses in public transport.

4) Don't forget about tests! Attach a short test for each user at the end of each lesson. For passing, you will need to provide a link to the next lecture or micro-discounts for your other courses or products.

This is both feedback and interaction for the participants.

5) A separate landing page for your course is completely optional. Maybe it lends seriousness to your intentions, but it takes a lot of time and effort. The best presentation of your course: a demo lesson and your professional awards.

6) Course emails are great, but who's watching them? Try chatbots on Viber or Telegram, people will see your reminders more often.

7) "Guarantee of employment", "international certification" – these things don't work anymore. It is better to focus on the usefulness and ease of perception of your materials, as well as develop a case that can be shown to the employer or boss.

8) People can generate various suggestions and questions during the training: they should not be ignored. Perhaps it makes sense to create a platform with the proposed questions and theses. If thousands of them accumulate, then the most interesting ones can be highlighted by the system of likes and passed on to the “teacher”. Save time and effort, and satisfy your audience's primary interest.

9) You need to stage a speech! Even if you consider yourself a super cool specialist with 20 years of experience and so on, then your "eeee" and "mmmm" are disgusting to listen to. This seems to be an obvious fact, but many don't really care.

10) All questions are only at the end! It is advisable to leave an open form, collect them during the lecture and give answers at the end.

11) Online courses live or recorded? It can be combined, but practice shows that the recording can be better directed, trimmed and cut – it will be easier for people to watch it. Also, you don't have to look for time, so that "everyone can visit our broadcast". It won't be interactive, but you can collect questions within the first week after the publication of the video, then send a selection of answers to all participants by email.

12) Certificates for completing courses are the most controversial point. If you have one course, then certificates can be issued. If there are several and you are counting on remarketing, then it is better to just pat the user on the back.

People will understand that certificates don't meet their expectations at LinkedIn or at work, they will get upset and will not return to you.

Of course, all these questions take time and effort, but they significantly increase the value of your material, its versatility and ease of study.