8 Steps to Rapidly Build Online Course Content

One of the biggest challenges that course creators face is content creation itself. Single-handedly the most time-consuming aspect, online course creators need the utmost care and dedication of resources such as time, money, patience, and commitment. However, several hacks exist that one can use to quickly build high-quality content without breaking the bank. So here’s our list of 8 steps to rapidly build online course content.

First things first.

Before you can begin creating content for your online course, there are two important things that you need to look into.

- Get an all-in-one platform for your online course

Selling online class courses need various solutions, such as a website, a course builder tool to build and host your content, a payment gateway, payment collection options, social media integrations, customer service tools, an email automation tool, and more. However, if you host your online course on Knorish, an all-in-one platform, you get all these tools, solutions, and anything else that you need for building a great online education. By choosing Knorish, you can run an entire academy all by yourself since most of the logistics are taken care of.

Sell 5X more with a purpose-built website for your online course.

Building a website from scratch can be quite challenging, especially if you want to build a website that caters specifically to the needs of online knowledge businesses. Knorish helps you to build your website quickly. Simply choose a ready-to-use theme from any of the Knorish templates, change the content, and connect the call-to-action buttons to the pages you want, and your website will be ready in no time. Hundreds of publishers have already built some very amazing sites using our themes in a matter of a few hours.

Steps to rapidly build online course content

Now that your website and platform woes are taken care of, here are some quick ways of building a content marketing strategy rapidly for your online course :

Choose a profitable topic: Choosing the right topic is crucial. Make sure you have enough demand for the course. A topic based on the questions people have asked you or want your advice on. You could also look at social media and find out the problems that people have. Then, you can create online course topics that solve those problems.

Don’t start “from scratch”: If you’ve chosen the right topic, you would already have relevant content or sources to get it from. So, refine that exclusive content and repurpose it. Don’t duplicate the content; enhance it.

Make It Visual: Videos, PDFs, PPTs, webinars…so many formats exist. Liven up your online course with interactive sessions, quizzes, worksheets, templates, video tutorials, slideshows, PDFs, PPTs and more.

Share the load, Seek Experts: Add more diverse experience in the course with additional experts. You could do one-on-one interviews, collaborate to create content for your courses, or just have the experts answer a set of questions. It increases engagement and is of great value add for the students.

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Less is more, and keep it uncluttered: Not a cliche but rather valuable advice. First-time course publishers believe they must add as much value as possible. Which is always great, but it shouldn’t be at the cost of the learners. Less is always more. Giveaway additional learning material as free downloads for reading later. This way, you keep the information structured and enable a better learning experience.

Monitor Performance: Once the course has been launched, review learner feedback. Based on the feedback, rework your content to ensure a high completion rate and a great learning experience

Keep The Learning Modules Short: Don’t overdo it; choose your content wisely and only keep what you believe is necessary. If need be, break up the course into – basic and advanced. However, always make sure the content is as per the various learners and, as such, do not overload them with information.

Use Videos and other content as well: Videos have the highest engagement. But don’t just do videos; add other content types to make sure you have got all corners covered.

Recommended read article: How to create content for your online course – A step-by-step guide

TYPES OF CONTENT YOU CAN USE TO BUILD ONLINE COURSE CONTENT RAPIDLY

Videos, by far, are the most viewed content on the Internet. Research shows that courses that have videos have higher success than the ones without. However, it’s always good to ensure that there is a healthy mix of various content types combined with the videos. This ensures higher engagement, and potential students benefit from the various content provided as additional learning material.

Here’s how:

Videos

You should record professional-quality HD videos for online courses. Ensure that the videos are crisp and clear. Use a good-quality mic to record, as people don’t like to hear distorted audio. Afterwards, there are mainly two types of videos, such as Short videos, i.e. under 15 Minutes, and long videos, such as webinars, interviews, and screencast videos. You could also create videos using PowerPoint presentations and the in-built narration feature.

Read more about: how to make engaging videos for online courses

Podcasts

Although not as highly watched as a video, a new trend that you could use for your benefit would be podcasts. Now if you don’t have a podcast, there are several podcast apps that allow you to create your own for free. All you need is a Smartphone with the App and a nice headset that is great at background noise cancellation. This is more or less a standard feature in most mid-range to high-end smartphones. Additionally, you could also purchase a headset that is great for background noise cancellation.

Bonus Hack: All zoom sessions that you do – Meetings, Webinars or masterclasses, now come with the audio files separately downloaded.

Post basic audio editing; you have a ready podcast audio file available.

Documents

Once again, creating documents has now become super simple with canvas and Word. Use the built-in templates and themes to quickly copy and paste the content and save the file in the format you need. Canva Slides are another great way of building awesome PPTs with a very high engagement factor. And since all documents are on the cloud, you can simply download and add the files to your course.

Similarly, you could also look at creating content such as

Ebooks
Templates
Cheatsheets
Lists
Infographics
How-Tos
Case Studies
Mindmaps
Timelines
Slideshare
And more.

Assessments

Assessments are a great way to learn about your batch of students and check for their understanding. Knorish’s assessment tool allows you to conduct quizzes with a variety of questions, such as single-choice and multiple-choice questions. You can even increase the difficulty level by adding images or videos for context, among other things.

And there are literally many more. All you need to do is figure out which ones will get the best engagement and will add the most value. Videos, by far, have the most recall value; however, do make sure to use a wide variety of content in the online course to make it a success.