Learning lights my fire. Inspires me. Moves me forward. And keeps me constantly thinking. So, to ignite the learning fire for students and deliver results as a core objective, I knew I HAD to build an inspiring online blogging course offering for creating or updating your professional business blog!
A Blogging Couse
Course-building takes you on many twists and turns, and a lot of thought and testing goes into the final product. But beyond thinking, an online course to inspire action, so students make real progress and not just act as bystanders, is the holy grail goal for course creators.
Now that Business Blogging eCourse, How to Bling Your Blog & Feed That Hog, is NOW LIVE at a SPECIAL BIG TIME DEAL in the AppSumo Marketplace, I’m celebrating more of a chance to inspire action and learning! An online course is an opportunity to ignite the learning fire and help others grow and improve their blogs at the same time. Win-win!
But, despite my spirit soaring, at times, the big question of whether I can do this in a way that makes a difference for people haunts me. I must inspire learning, push blogs higher, and help students earn more business! In essence, your job as an online course creator is to act as a conduit for learning.
So you see, it’s essential to create something that matters!
Making an impact, providing value, and transforming students in some way with your online course is a tall order. says @SueAnnBubacz
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Designing a Blogging Course for You
Designing a course representing a journey seems like a perfect way to reflect the transformation to your blog, and ultimately, to your business—so that’s the goal in mind.
But, constructing a course blueprint that’s original, unique, and seamless for a fun course process, but with real-life progress for students built-in demands careful and intentional precision.
Besides the course design and content itself, many inconsequentials pop up, and some smack you right in the nose! Figuring out things like pay gateways, checkout or dashboard pages, understanding the LMS’s (learning management system) intricacies, connecting the technologies, creating a new website, crafting marketing plans, sales systems, and more keeps it challenging. And also, never quite done!
With so many moving parts beyond my initial expectations, the course creation process gets more complicated. These logistics and others play a more significant part than I first understood and are key to creating a good user experience.
Adopting a theme to offer a tone, some distinction, and a hint of a creative flair makes your #onlinecourse more engaging. via @SueAnnBubacz
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Themes Add Meaning to Your Online Course
The main idea, of course, is to create powerful sections that are digestible, manageable, and useful for a student’s progress. In the first edition of How to Bling Your Blog, the importance of to-the-point actionable steps emerged.
Honing in on best practices and industry standards delivers the information for sure. But applying it to specific student blogs and businesses in a way that uniquely fits them takes the theories further, ending in action and work completed. Yay.
I don’t know about you, but in my digital life, questions are unending. One leads to another, and so on. However, the one thing not to question is me. At least not in this case, because I know I’m bringing the goods! This is my topic for businesses of all types, and my clients rely on my expertise. I know this stuff inside and out.
Therefore, the bigger question is how to deliver a fantastic product to drop the goods on you, dear bloggers and small business owners!
And so, having a course theme and not merely a topic was integral to the concept from day one. Finding the blog bling on the ©Blog Transformation Highway offers students a participatory role.
How do I make people want to show up and participate until course completion? How do I find the right students who will benefit the most? Well, simply stated, I decided to make it fun, but get things done!
If you already know me, you know I’m big on creativity in business, so adopting a theme to offer a tone, some distinction, and a hint of a creative flair, makes sense.
Using a Theme Sparks Creative Fire in a Learn to Blog Course
A hot course theme ignites interest and incites recognition. A memorable theme (blog bling, blog hog?) helps turn a spark into a fire! (Hopefully, lol) But, the actual fire blazes with student interaction and questions answered via the content, plus LIVE WorkShops to work together.
Since I’m not a not-fully-bloomed producer, some of my big theme and design ideals are beyond for now. But remember, especially in the digital space, things evolve quickly for continual improvement. And, powerful results for people’s blogs are the top priority, above all else.
Even though in my heart of hearts, I know I need the Walt Disney Studios to produce what I imagine and conjure in my mind for my unique course production. At this point, I’m producing away as best as possible, understanding each step is a step forward for a digital product, especially with an ongoing future.
And folks, you’ve heard this before, but the content matters over the production. Delivering the content people need to know is everything. If you have a blog, this course is overflowing with what you need to know!
When you think of your online course as a product, you start to focus on genuinely helping students to create something of lasting value. When done well, this value goes to happy students but enhances your business, too.
When you think of your #onlinecourse as a product, you start to focus on genuinely helping students to create something of lasting value. via @SueAnnBubacz
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Working the Learning Parts of an Online Course
There’re other ways people offer and present online courses, like using Facebook as your central course hub or placing them on course selling sites like Udemy. There are plenty of Learning Management Systems (LMS) out there, ranging from WordPress plugins to full-blown platforms like Kajabi or others.
As with any “borrowed” platform on the internet, loss of control, regular fees or charges, and a chance of losing your work entirely are real reasons to do your due diligence to find a choice that’s right for you.
I’m thrilled with my selection of LifterLMS and continue to learn more about its growing functionality and features. But, perhaps the best thing Lifter gives you is complete control of course creation, pay gateway functions, student management, and more.
Lifter integrates with your WordPress.org site giving you course creation options within an easy-to-use framework.
I’m working with Beaver Builder, a page builder, to customize the look and feel for the BizShops WorkShops site. I’m likely adding a can of worms to the operation, but I’m definitely anal enough not to want the shared “stock” look of using LifterLMS raw.
If you’re thinking about learning more about an LMS for your business, try it out for yourself with the FREE version until you’re ready to go bigger.
I’ve spent a lot of time on the FREE version learning the software a little before taking the next step. Plus, Chris Badgett and crew over at Lifter are super cool. And very helpful. Lifter gives me ownership, flexibility, options, and confidence for course success.
No matter which way you decide to go, how you deliver your course impacts its success.
Content to Connect in This Learn To Blog Course
The lessons in a section or module need to entail “sticky content.” This is about engaging course content.
First, “sticky content” happens on purpose. Not only is it about providing content students can put into action, but it’s even better if it becomes memorable somehow.
Dr. Kelly Edmunds taught me a couple of critical things about creating lessons that stick. Giving each lesson a unique purpose is helpful. And, it’s as easy as stating something like, “In this lesson, you’ll learn xxx,” or “After completing this lesson, you’ll know how to xxxx,” for example.
Another important insight she stresses is NOT to overwhelm students but instead break things into simple, usable steps and concepts. Make them make progress!
Mixing how you deliver course information allows flexibility for student-learners with potentially different learning styles. It also helps to alleviate monotony and instead keeps content fresh and exciting.
But, it means a lot of production work needs doing. I’m still figuring out processes and creating action stacks to streamline production work of different types. I have a long way to go in video production, sadly. But embracing the challenges and having fun wallowing in creative processes only leads to improvements with video content creation and other tech challenges.
LIVE presentation scares me to pieces, yet I understand why it’s so crucial to interactivity and offers people an opportunity to ask questions. There’s nothing more important than input or answers when you pay for a course, and it’s frustrating when you can’t get anything answered or any feedback.
Although I’ve been practicing some, you can bet I plan to improve on each LIVE session. I honestly do love the element of interaction the LIVE sessions provide.
Mixing how you deliver course information allows flexibility for student-learners with potentially different #learning styles. via @SueAnnBubacz
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Content That Delivers Learning
Making an impact, providing value, and transforming students in some way with your online course is a tall order.
But, if you break down the ingredients and carefully consider the design as a way to add value, deliver a state of change, and inspire progress in your students, then you’re on the right track for learning.
Creating an online course allows you a distinct opportunity to share a collection of focused ideas on a specific topic to help other people.
What’s not to feel excited about? We’d love to know more of your thoughts in the comments below! Are you ready to light the learning fire for your blogging course?
