What if you could take your blog content and transform it into an online course that you can sell, profit from, or use to satisfy your audiences? Well, you can, and today, we’re going to talk about how.
You’ve spent a lot of time on your blog content. You’ve poured your heart and soul into it, as well as a ton of your personal experience and knowledge to educate and inspire all who read it. As a business, blog, or website owner, during the time you’ve been writing your content, then chances are you’ve thought about creating an online course with all this information.
Don’t worry, it’s a great idea, and an amazingly popular form of content right now. Here’s a quick guide to transforming blog content into an online course.
1. Choose a Specific Topic
“You can’t just take your existing blog content and stick a price tag on it. That’s bad business. Instead, you’ll want to go through your website and blog content and pick a certain topic you want to focus on. Choose a problem your audience deals with, and then create the course surrounding this topic and addressing this problem,” shares Lisa Meanne, a marketing blogger at Draft Beyond and Researchpapersuk.
In other words, with a specific topic, you’ll easily be able to pull the content you need for your course, and it will give your course direction. Don’t worry if you have lots of ideas and topics you want to cover. You’ll just have the opportunity to make more online courses.
2. Create Course Subjects and Topics
Nick Turner, a writer at Last Minute Writing and Writinity, shares:
“When you have your problem or topic, break this down into subtopics. Kind of like subheadings in your blog content.” Let’s say you’re creating a course on blog post writing. Instead of just talking about blog post writing, create direction using topics like:
• Developing your idea
• Researching the subject
• The First Draft
• Editing
• Further editing
• Headline crafting
• Image selection
• Proofreading
• Promotion
These headlines are just examples. Similarly, you could do a whole online course on just one part of that course. Remember, people are looking at your course because they want the detail and they want to learn everything, so this is what you need to give them.
3. Pull Content from All Sources
In addition to your blog content, what other content do you have access to that you can use in your online course content? Have you hosted webinars or presentations in the past, or have you offered online coaching and have resources from your meetings? If you do, bring this content together and use it in your course.
4. Choosing the Right Course Approach
Some courses work best when it’s simply text on a screen that people can read through at their own pace. Other courses will work better and will reach a wider audience if they’re recorded in video format. Of course, this takes time and effort to record, so make sure you choose the right format for the type of course you want to create.
5. Test Your Course Content
Throughout the process of putting your course together, it can pay off to have outsiders look into your course to see what they think. Is the content right? Does it resonate with them? Is it presented in a way that’s easy to understand and makes them want to keep learning?
Asking these questions ensures that every part of your course is made to purpose. You will also minimize the risk of having to go back and make major edits that will cost you both time and money.
6. Hosting Your Course in the Right Place
After you put the course together, you’re going to want to think about where you’re hosting your course. As well as how people are going to access it and which audience it is for. For example, are you going to host the course on your website and allow people to download all the content?
On the other hand, maybe you want to host an online course marketplace where there’s already an audience who can find your course. If you opt for the former, you’ll need to market your course yourself, which will cost money. All in all, take time to think about the best approach for you.
