In this Part we’ll take expert educational content to the next logical step: structured series and courses.

Let’s get started

Course Compilations

If your educational content is proving to be popular and (more importantly) bringing traffic to your products and services then you may want to formalise it into series and courses.

Series (or playlists) are basically lists of videos that people can work through. They can be structured - as in video 1, video 2, video 3 etc. Or they can be unstructured and merely revolve around a topic.

Courses are basically more of the same with supplementary content and are normally hosted on a course platform like Circle, Skool, Kajabi or similar.

Either way these can be build from your everyday educational expert content. Let’s explore how.

Start with the end in mind

We can create our everyday content with series and course creation in mind.

Basically we plan content with our series as the end goal.

Here’s a very basic example series

Link

This particular series follows my RISEN^TM framework. But we can generally apply this concept with any topic.

To begin to construct a series like this use this prompt below your core message from previous Parts:

Act as a content strategist

Construct a series of content from this core message

The series should be 5 short videos of 1-2 minutes each

When I use this with the information about not being overly polite to ChatGPT I’m given multiple short videos like so:

and video 2

and so on…up to 5 videos in this case.

Basically we can expand a topic out to multiple content pieces, all in a sequence.

Importantly we’ll post each of these videos as normal - not as part of a series. They should also work as standalone videos.

And when they are all published we loop back and connect them all up into a series.

This allow us to not only consistently publish but also to later create something more comprehensive by pulling them all into a series.

Structured vs. unstructured

Using the prompt above we end up with a structured series, each content piece going into more or revealing the next step.

We can also have much less structured series like this one I have called “ChatGPT Tips”

Link

That’s literally a compilation of ChatGPT advice. In no particular order. Just themed around the same topic.

For this we’d look to our content pillars - the broad “buckets” of content you talk about on social media to build an audience.

Mine for example are ChatGPT tips, AI News and Entrepreneurial Advice.

Not sure what your content pillars are yet? Pay attention to the themes that do well when you post and build your pillars around this - listen to your audience rather than assume!

Once you’ve identified a content pillar let’s use this prompt

Act as a content strategist

Suggest video ideas around the topic of [content pillar topic]

Give me 10 ideas for 1-2 minute videos on this topic

Feed these back into your potential guide topics (as we covered in Part 2) knowing that they will later be put together into a playlist or series.

Locking off series

If you have a series that is particularly popular you have additional options.

For example, if you are on TikTok you can make specific subscription only videos. You can use this to “lock” off content so that it’s only available for a fee.

Alternatively you can convert popular series into lead magnets which are given away in exchange for an email. This can be done in a number of ways:

• embed all of the videos in a free Gumroad product which requires email to access.

• convert the content into a drip fed email course where sign ups are sent one part per day

• move the content into a proper course software (more on this shortly)

The series thus becomes a lead magnet asset or even a product you charge for.

If a lead magnet then it’s OK to also have the content freely available on your social media or blog. The lead magnet is just packaging it up nicely for them.

If charging for access then it’s recommended you remove the free versions of the content.

Build up to a course

A step beyond simple series and playlists is a full course.

It’s a difference of scale and complexity more than anything.

I’ve written a whole Playbook on course creation available here on the subject.

The basic idea here is to simply sketch out your course content up front (use that Playbook to get the basic structure and lessons) and then produce all the content for social media first.

You’ll create the course content on the fly, in public. If a content piece flops you do it again. Until you know it’s engaging. And you carry on in this fashion putting each piece of the course together openly.

But won’t people “steal” the content and get it for free? Yes! But it’s going to be disjointed - they’ll get all the pieces but not the full picture.

Also remember that only you know all the content you are putting up and in what order. Most people will never see it all. And if they do they’ll see it in such a random order (based on the algorithm not publish date) that they won’t be able to piece it together.

When you’re close to completion you can un-publish the public content and port it into your course structure. In its proper order. With additional top and tail content and resources to flesh it out.

Or alternatively you leave your content up and instead re-record everything “clean” - using the first public videos as drafts that have let you perfect how to deliver the topic.

However we choose to compile the course we use public feedback and engagement to refine our educational content and make the end result far more valuable.

Bringing to the sale

We are not just educators. We are running a business.

Remember that the purpose of this expert educational content is to bring people down our audience and sales funnels by providing value.

Educating our customers builds up trust. And trust leads to sales.

The sale is bottom of the funnel content that works after a prospect has followed and consumed our work for a period of time.

Sometimes this is fast. Sometimes it takes months. But as long as you are continuing to put out educational expert content and building up trust you will eventually get them to that sale.

Keep prompting,

Kyle