Online Course Creator Advice From Top YouTubers

It’s Monday morning and we’re gonna go through some of the things I learned on YouTube on the weekend, technically last week.

The reason I’m doing this is because I have a huge, huge addiction to YouTube right now as part of our marketing strategy, part of the content marketing strategy we’re using.

I’m always learning stuff on YouTube and trying to apply it to creating online courses, So I was thinking about wha the things that content creators are doing, well-respected, successful content creators who are creating content for YouTube.

How can we hack what it is they’re they’re doing when we create courses? And what are some of the things that we can learn as course creator? From content creators on YouTube. Cuz you have to remember, you know, creating a video for YouTube is not the same as creating an online course. But there’s lots of great stuff that we can learn from people who are creating great videos on YouTube.

So that’s what we’re gonna do today. I watched video. I think it was actually on the weekend and it was it was from the crew at Think Media. And what they had is they had the best advice from 10 of the people, I guess, that they interviewed or were available on one of their live events that they had.

So they went through some some of the clips. Of the best tips that they got, like things from Mr. Mr. Beast to people who some of the names you know, people that you see or probably see on your feet on a regular basis on YouTube. So they’re talking about what makes ’em successful on YouTube.

What I want to do is I want to take the point that they made and I want to apply it to courses. So we’ll go through them, pretty quickly. The one thing that stood out to me was the very, very first one where Mr. Beast was talking said ‘talk to me after you’ve made 101 videos”. So he was talking about the fact that most people, when they’re starting out, it’s like they make.

One or two videos and they think that they’re supposed to be successful or go viral or something. Or they get dejected or bummed out. Cause hey, You might be saying people aren’t watching my videos. The one piece of advice that he said right from the start was, don’t talk to me. Don’t ask me questions, don’t do anything until after you’ve made a hundred videos.

So how does this apply to us as course creators? Well, just think about it. Most people who are making courses, they’ll often create one course. or they only have one course, may have a couple videos in it, but they just think that, oh, I made a course. It’s supposed to sell. Marketing a course is not easy, and creating courses is not easy.

It teams takes time and expertise over and above you just being a, an expert in what it is you’re trying to teach. So the whole point that I think is important here is we think of one course I have to create a. My suggestion and what I’m taking from this and what we’ve been doing, and I’ve been doing.

Is create courses. You’ve gotta create a ton of courses. Whether those courses are two videos, three videos, four videos, or one structured video in the way that it’s teaching a specific outcome that you’re you know, that you’re focusing on. But create multiple courses. Don’t just create one course and don’t just focus on one course that’s not going to get you success according to Mr.

Beast and these content creators, people. Are, are doing really successful on YouTube, just creating standalone videos right now. So that’s the best advice there. The second one was fix something new. Each video. If you’re gonna do a hundred videos, the first one isn’t gonna be perfect, and the hundredth isn’t gonna be perfect.

So the suggestion was every time you do a video, every single time you’re doing a video fix something. One thing at a time. So whether it be things like making sure that the lighting is right, which is something I struggle with personally here is is making sure the lighting is right, making sure the background is right one time, making sure that the audio sounds properly.

Just pick one thing and focus on it. You’re not gonna be Hollywood cinematographer. The very first time you create a course, you’ve gotta learn as you go. And that’s why it’s important to make multiple videos and not just go, oh great, I can’t make a course cuz I don’t know how to make a video yet. So start making videos.

Fix one thing at a time and learn something new each time that you’re creating a lesson or a kind of video for your course. Just one thing at a time, but make sure that you get started. So yeah, and it doesn’t have to be perfect. That was the other thing that you know, I hear a lot from people creating courses is they’re hesitant to actually make a course or be on video because.

They haven’t done it before. So, you know, start making them. The first ones aren’t gonna be perfect. Get them up, show them people, put them on YouTube and I’ll explain why in, in a minute. And start to learn your craft in terms of how you present on the camera, how you teach on the camera, what other pieces that you use for content on the camera, whether it’s a talking head or screen captures or PowerPoint presentations, or.

[00:05:19] audio only are all sorts of different pieces there. So get started and fix something new each time. One of the, kind of the, the next thing that was, On. And in terms of, you know, ideas that really caught my eye is again, about being perfect. And the first courses, or the first lessons, or the first videos that you do in a course, they’re not gonna be perfect, but that means don’t start.

The example was used that you know, if someone is a painter and they can’t paint, Perfect picture. Does that mean they don’t even bother start painting? And a lot of course creators will do that. You know, they may have, you know, they may be a live presenter. There may be someone that’s done live training in person.

There may be a keynote speaker. They may be someone that just likes to do something. They’re passionate about a ho hobby, and they don’t even start because they’re afraid to be perfect. So you have to work at your craft. And the craft in this case is creating online courses, not only. doing what it is that you’re passionate about and what you’re an expert about and what you wanna share and teach.

This whole piece of creating online courses and teaching online, it’s something that you have to develop and you have to start. So start right away when you’re not great at it. Don’t be afraid. You’re gonna feel a little bit personally. You know, sometimes people, you know that they’re hesitant, that they’re anxious, they don’t want to show their can’t face on camera.

Their think they sound funny when they listen to the. Just get started, you’ll get used to it. So make sure that you can at least you know, pick up the brush. If you’re a writer, pick up the pen. Start writing. If you’re a videographer or someone doing courses, start doing your courses now. One of the other ones that came up was views.

And once you start putting videos up, one of the things that is really frustrating, especially for people who are doing this or just starting, is you put a video up on YouTube and you go, oh, seven people watched it. , you do your second video. Oh, four people watched it and you do your eighth video.

Oh, 12 people watched it. This is one of the reasons he said, do a hundred videos. Not only are they gonna get better, but you’re gonna be exposed to more people. But the point that was made was don’t get hung up on views. It’s not only about views and views and being going viral on YouTube is, has nothing to do.

Teaching online and the course you are creating. So even though you’re on YouTube, you’re creating content for YouTube, you’re using in a content marketing strategy. The point that they were trying to make was, is don’t get hung up on the number of views that you have. The thing that’s important that they.

We’re focusing on was the engagement of the people that are watching. And if you can find a way to make sure that you’re engaging people as an instructor or someone teaching, that is far more important than getting someone just to look at the start of a video. That whole idea of engagement, getting people the average watch.

Getting them to actually watch a series of videos or a playlist. Think of a course. If you can get people and worry about that and focus on how do I do that at the start, you’re gonna be far better off than being looking at, oh, I only had four people. Oh geez, I only had six people. I’m not doing something right.

You got a hundred videos to do. Don’t focus on the views at the start. Focus on the engagement. So it’s all about the length of watch. The other thing that they came across was the calls to action. When you’re an instructor or someone who’s teaching something or a course, the call to action that we focus on most times is an exercise or a task that we taught.

They suggested that a really good idea in this best advice from the top U2 creators is to try and make sure that you give people some call to action that maybe isn’t necessarily about the content of the course. Now, two examples they gave is one I’ll give right now. If you’re getting value from these live streams or you wanna see some of the other videos that we’ve got available, make sure to hit the subscribe button.

And like this video, you can also visit teach online.io, our free community, where we have hundreds more videos to show you how to start, build and grow your own training business and education business. So there’s a call to action that’s one that they suggested to put in the first. Of what you’re doing on your videos, and the one at the end that was interesting to me was this whole idea of doing what’s a curiosity loop and what that is is leaving the end of your video.

With the opportunity or the enticement to watch another video of yours. So this fits into this whole idea of making sure that you have that average watch time and that engagement. So giving people tasks about the course content, but also giving them tasks. Over and above or being engaged in your course or the materials, and that can be stuff to download.

That download, pardon me. Those can be quizzes, surveys, those are can be all sorts of additional resources for people, but make sure that you give call to action in your course content. Oh. What was the other one that was kind of neat too. Yeah, ideas. Some of the advice that they gave was about a breakdown and they called it a hundred ten one.

So right now, for example we use a piece of software called Teamwork as our project management software that manages our business on the agency side. , which is training sites.io, but we use teamwork, and right now I think I have 280 or 300 ideas that are there for video tutorials or courses. The one thing that they said is when they’re putting together their video content for YouTube, what they do is they look at a hundred ideas.

They either boil it down or consolidate it into 10 and they end up usually doing one video from it. So what does that mean to us as course creators? It means that it’s not just about. Dumping a course, a single course. Think and break it down for the ideas in the course and allow yourself to pick or fine tune or streamline or condense what you’re doing when you put it into online courses.

Some of the things that happen a lot of times if you’ve done live training before or you’re a speaker and you have a morning session, for example, is you’ve got three hours of. It’s all valuable content, but there’s a whole bunch of ideas in there. And if you’re gonna be doing online training or teaching online, people aren’t gonna sit in front of the computer for three hours.

So how do you structure that content or bring those ideas that you have into, into chunks that are appropriate for teaching online? They’re talking about this when it comes to ideas for individual videos. If you are teaching something, you’ve gotta condense. Dramatically condense what you did. Live in person with people teaching online, having a course what you did you know, traditionally it’s gotta be condensed greatly.

So still write your ideas down, but look at the ones that you have and say, which ones are the ones, do I really need? For an online course for the videos in my online course to teach it. And if I have them, how can I condense them and make them simple and easy to consume so that it can keep people engaged.

The other one that came up was one called Trend hacking or Authority Hacking. And this is something that YouTubers do on a regular basis. I’m, I’m not entirely sure if we can apply this for teaching, however, I think there’s some value in it in terms of getting people engaged. And this is what I mean.

They, they called something trend hacking and they had something called authority hacking. So right now trend hacking is, if you go on YouTube right now, you’re gonna see all this stuff about chat gtp, artificial intelligence. and almost every video that shows up on your stream now has got something about chat GTP in it.

So if you’re a YouTube video content creator, you’re hacking or trying to put that in your title, trying to talk about it, and you’re focusing on it because people are searching for it. It’s really important right now. There’s a trend on it, and the more that you can surf the trend or ride the. The more the better off you’re gonna be in terms of building your content, building your engagement, and o of course, I’m expecting or assuming that you have great content, but you’re trying to make sure that you can take advantage of that particular trend.

The other one is authority hacking. They talked about, and authority hacking is kind of with chat gtp, for example, if you know, for example, if you’re doing something on running shoes or sports, you can do something on archery or you can do something. on F NFL football right now. The fact that there’s a lot more authority or a lot more interest in N F L football or Red Bull or games or you know fitness challenges, something like that.

If you can get in and take advantage of the name of these additional things that are trending, you’re gonna be far better off cuz people know it already and they’re looking. So when you’re creating a course, how can you do how can you take advantage of trend hacking and authority hacking? And the thing is that if you’re gonna do multiple courses, You have a whole bunch of courses that you know you want to teach, which are the ones that you should focus on at the start, and I’m gonna suggest that the ones you wanna look at are the ones that are most popular, that people are looking for.

Now, I’ve done some other videos, for example, on how to use Answer the Public when you’re creating course content about, you know, that they provide what people are searching for, the questions they’re asking in terms of search. So if you’re creating. Course content and you’re creating multiple videos for your course content.

Answer the questions that more people are asking. Don’t start at the bottom. Hack the trends on the searches. Find out what people wanna learn and answer those questions first. And again, if you can take advantage of becoming an authority by mentioning other people or other resources or services that are associated with what you’re teaching, you can take advantage of that as.

I don’t think I’m gonna talk about shorts. They talked about shorts, but for course, well, actually, let me, let me do that cuz shorts are a result on YouTube that came from TikTok and this whole idea of doing a vertical mobile friendly content for for smartphones. And of course YouTube had to have an answer for that.

So they have YouTube shorts right now, 60. And the shorts for us as course creators. Don’t be afraid of them, and I’m gonna tell you why. Whenever. We help people who are marketing their courses. So it’s not enough just to create a course. You actually have to, you know, have a place to put the course.

You need to have the course technology in place. You need to organize the course. You need to capture and create the course, but you also have to market your course and shorts are a great way to market your course. If you have your short set up to actually market your course, it’s, it’s not enough just to take clips of a course.

What you want to be able to do is give little pieces or slices or those tiny lessons. that are part of your bigger course that refer to the bigger course. Cuz we want to sell the course, we want to get paid for it in, in 99% of the time. So at least those are the people we wanted to, they want to sell their course.

So you, you have to be in a position where you can create these shorts that focus on getting people to purchase the course, but you want to give teasers that still have valuable content in it. And the thing that. Talked about in the shorts was the use of B rolls, but also some cuts or making sure that they’re edited.

And what I mean by cuts is when they’re doing shorts, they had every six or seven seconds they had a change in the actual screen. Of what was being seen in the video, and whether that be you as a headshot or a cut or a b roll to something other than you talking, they found that that was far more successful.

So if you’re gonna, if you’re gonna do shorts, normally what happens is people take a longer video and they repurpose it and turn it into a, a formatted one for mobile, which is narrow by cutting off the sides of the video. Now, is that enough to do for a short. , it’s certainly a way to do it, but their suggestion was to actually, you know, work on the B-roll and editing.

So that’s something you have to test yourself. The point that I want to get across here is don’t forget about shorts. I know that if we look at our stats right now, I think there’s 50 or 60% of the traffic we’re getting is from shorts, not from traditional long form videos that are on YouTube.

[00:18:42] We’re getting about 50% is coming from shorts, and these are ones that are done just as a repurpose. What would that be if we’re actually editing those and doing cuts and B-roll, that kind of thing on the shorts. So think about that as well as you’re creating your YouTube videos and your content. Think about that as well.

The last piece that they had was Be Patient, please be patient at the start. I said a hundred different videos, then talked. be patient. It doesn’t happen right away. And you know, that’s often hard when you’re a course creator or you’re an expert on something and you wanna share it. It’s like you think, oh my God, I’m just gonna dump it out and it’s gonna be perfect.

Everyone’s gonna love me, everyone’s gonna want it. People are gonna buy my course. Doesn’t happen that way. Just be patient. It takes time. And when you’re thinking about taking time or being patient, and about views and this whole idea of creating content on YouTube. Remember, there’s a purpose for it.

The purpose for us as content marketers, we want people to buy our course. We’re not necessarily gonna put the entire course up on YouTube. If we want to get if we want to actually have it as a course and not a video or tutorial that’s on YouTube. We have to make sure that we you know, that we’re patient, that we have it focused on how are we going to actually market our big course with it, you’re gonna have to be patient and this is a content marketing strategy.

It’s something that allows us to clarify while we’re creating the content, what is important to people in the public, or potential potential customers. So it allows us to clarify what content we should be actually putting in the course. So don’t be afraid to put your ideas in YouTube videos that show up on Facebook or LinkedIn or YouTube.

Start creating content. Focus it on supporting that theme or the big story that you have as a course creator. Remember, I always talk about Hub and spoke. If you got this, you know, this idea for courses and the outcome that you’re passionate about, that you wanna share in a course format. All of these tiny spokes are ways for people for you to touch people who are potential customers.

And it’s not only about content marketing for a course, and here’s why. I talked, I have a video actually on money Spokes where I was talking about, remember, a course is only one of the money spokes that you have as a, a content expert. Whether it be coaching or consulting, affiliate products, there’s all sorts of speaking engagements.

So there’s all sort merchandise. There’s all sorts of other ways to generate income if you are marketing on YouTube and creating content on YouTube as a strategy. To build and grow your business. Okay, so think about these. I’ll, I’ll try and put these in as a list just to give you an idea and also put the list to the video from Think Media at the start that I got these ideas from.

There’s a ton of great information on YouTube, for YouTube content creators and what I’ve been doing and what we’re gonna continue to do is take a look at what do I learn or what can I learn on YouTube from YouTube content creators and apply it to course creators. Works in both places. Just has to be applied a little bit differently.

The one thing I just wanna leave you with is when we’re doing this, Just be patient, please be patient and please start creating videos. You know, my challenge to you is to go out, create a ton of videos, make sure they’re you know, posted, they’re public. Don’t get hung up on how perfect they are at the start.

And don’t get hung up on how you look or how you sound. If you feel funny or comfortable doing it, there’s a huge opportunity for you to share your expertise and actually build an education business. That can be a bit entertaining if you, if you want, but it can be about sharing your passion and, and just teaching people what it is that you already know and do.

And if you get the opportunity to earn income from that, whether it be directly from a course or building an education business I think that’s a huge opportunity. So I wanna thank you for tuning in this morning. I’m gonna try to do this every couple mornings we’ve got. Wednesday afternoons, we’ve got the open classroom.

If you have questions, make sure to visit teach online.io and sign up for our free community, and you’ll be able to put your questions in and I’ll answer them directly. And we cover, we cover four. Actually we use a, a campus map as, as a blueprint that we put together for all the different pieces of building an education business.

So we take a look. Setting up your actual business structure and, and what you want to do with your education business. We take a look at how to create courses and what you need for courses, how to deliver courses, and then how to market your courses. So there’s a whole gamut of pieces there that you have to look at for an education business.

We cover those on Teach online. That’s our education site. And then we have training sites.io, which is our agency where we actually do the work for you. If you just don’t have time where you don’t wanna learn yourself how to do all of this part. So both of them are available to you and open classrooms.

Wednesday at one o’clock Eastern, you’re welcome to join in Tune in. It’s a live webcast. We pick one of the areas of that particular. Campus map that I just discussed, those four kind of key areas, and we’ll talk about those, but you can put your questions in, we’ll answer them directly. So this is James Ook speaking.

I hope you enjoyed this and we’ll be back again tomorrow with things I learned on YouTube about building an education business.