Ever wonder what it actually looks like to create and launch a course from step 1 to step done?
If so, then stick around, cause that’s why I’m writing The Fire Path Project series: to give you an inside look at how I went from answering an email to creating an online course – step by step.
In my intro post to The Fire Path Project, I outlined the 9 steps that I took in order to go from no idea to launching a course.
Step 1 was: Listen to your audience.
Step 2 is: Create content.
So what does that mean exactly, how can you do it in your business, and why is it important? Let’s take a look…
How to create content
Now that you’ve listened to your audience in order to discover any recurring themes, struggles or pain points they’re coming to you with, it’s time to create some type of content that can help them solve whatever it is they’re struggling with.
Listen to your audience
In our last post, we talked about creating content and then requesting a response from your audience: Was the content helpful for them? If not, what was it missing? What questions do they still have?
We also talked about the possibility of you reaching out to your email list and simply asking them: “What are you struggling with right now in your business?”, or reaching out to the online communities you’re engaging in and asking the same question there.
Create content that will help solve the pain point
Once you have a recurring theme or struggle or pain point in mind, the next step is to create some type of content to help solve it. That might be a blog post, a Podcast episode, a video, a guide, a cheat sheet, or what’s sometimes referred to as a “quick win”.
In my case, the recurring theme I had in mind from listening to my audience was that several members of Fire Nation were struggling with building the foundation of their business and knowing what steps to take next.
Because they were emailing us with these question, I thought the best way to respond would be to create an email series – the same medium they were using to reach out to me with these struggles was going to be the same medium I used to answer them.
So instead of continuing to respond to every email one-off, I started mapping out an email sequence that would guide our readers down a path to building a solid foundation for their business. That way, any time someone came to us with a struggle related to building the foundation of their business, we could send them a link to opt in to our free campaign versus responding to another single email.
Much more scalable, right?
And at the same time, it was my way of giving our audience a solution to the struggles and pain points they were experiencing.
Why it’s important to create content
Until you start giving your audience something of value that can help them, they’re not going to have any reason to come to you. And you’re not going to have something of value to share that can help them until you start giving them some type of content to react to.
Whether it be responding to a single email and going back and forth with someone a few times to get a better idea of exactly what it is that will help them, or creating a video tutorial that walks through the step by step of one of the most commonly asked questions you get, the importance of creating this content is unmeasurable.
Knowing you’re on the right track
Until you start creating content, your audience will have no reason to come to you, and nothing to react to in order to let you know whether or not you’re on the right track.
Once I created The Fire Path campaign, which again, started out as an outline of topics, and then each week me sitting down and writing on whatever topic was next, I was able to discover whether or not that content was actually helping our audience.
How to discover whether or not your content is helpful
1. When people emailed me a question and I sent them the link to opt in to the sequence, they were really excited about it – and they actually opted in
2. Each week when another topic would go out to those who were opted in, we’d get responses saying “This is exactly what I needed to hear!”, or “Thank you so much for breaking this down!”
3. Our audience started making suggestions – telling us what would make this content even better, and how this content could better serve them.
One example: we started getting requests for this content to be “bundled”: “How can I received all of these emails in one?”
Just because listening to your audience was Step 1 doesn’t mean that it stops when you move to Step 2. You should always be listening to your audience every single step of the way, especially in response to the content you’re creating.
I’ll be talking about the impact of creating content and listening to my audience in the next step on The Fire Path Project – Step 3: Repurposing your content.
