I sat down by one of our office windows for natural lighting, clipped on a borrowed lapel mic, faced the camera and started speaking - this is how I recorded my first marketing video.

With the recent changes in the economy and the 180-degree change in our workplaces changing from open-area offices to sitting resolutely by ourselves at home in front of video conference calls, we are seeing drastic changes in human behavior.

EXPONENTIAL GROWTH IN ONLINE COURSES

Internet time is up 70%, live streaming online is up 12% as reported last week; people are investing time in online learning, and a recent online digital marketing learning platform I subscribed to announced some surprising numbers today – 61,469 people had signed up with them for a free trial in the past 2-3 weeks.

In the past week alone, the online course industry has grown by 200% and there has been a 190% increase in entrepreneurs and businesses creating online courses.

Insights on course creation by industry and business type:

• Over the past week, some of the industries that saw the most increase in online course creation on Thinkific were Health & Fitness (up 279%), Art & Entertainment (up 334%), and Education (up 494%).

• In-person teachers and trainers like coaches, music and fitness instructors, are now moving their training online (up 372%).

• Over the last week, there has been a shift in larger organizations moving to online courses (up 260%).

 Insights on Course Creation by Geo-location:

• UK (up 228%),

• United States (up 140%),

• Italy (up 275%),

• Canada (up 168%)

SHARING YOUR EXPERTISE

How many have recorded videos, long or short, to share insights on your area of expertise? Let us introduce you to Thinkific.

Thinkific is an educational platform for educators, entrepreneurs, and creators to create their own customized video courses, and this platform can be the next step for your business.

The platform provides a full suite of tools to get you up and running, from building your course, customizing the various design aspects of your course landing page, uploading and previewing your course content, and taking payment for your courses. Knowing that it may be some users’ first time putting together online courses, Thinkific provides guidelines on how to set pricing for your offering as well.

5 STEPS TO GET YOU STARTED ON CREATING YOUR ONLINE COURSE

If your objection is that you do not have the tools required for recording, there are various easy options to get started. Do you have a mobile phone? Hold that up, switch the camera towards yourself, press record and start talking. Don’t let excuses get in the way of what could be your next big opportunity. The need for online learning is unlikely to curb anytime soon, with people who are working from home looking for various ways to learn more and stay productive. 

1.     Choose an online course platform to host your content on. We tried out Thinkific and it’s intuitive and easy to use. You can try things out on their free plan.

2.     Decide on the transformation you will deliver. How will students be transformed from taking your course? The most successful courses move students to their desired outcome as fast as possible.

3.     Map out the content required to deliver on your promise.

4.     Create your content. Now you know who you are creating the course for, you know what you have to build from scratch and what to repurpose. If you have previous blogs, presentations, podcasts, you can easily upload all these files right into Thinkific to fit your course outline.

5.     Build a successful learning experience. The most successful courses involve active participation from the instructors and students. On Thinkific, you can easily add interactive components like group discussions, quizzes, surveys, and certificates to create in-person touchpoints.

WHY WE ARE SHARING

We created Pendulum as a venue to share the stories of artists, entrepreneurs, creators, and anyone else who we observe are crafting their own lives in ways that our readers would aspire to. When we came across Thinkific, we thought it would be a great tool for the various people and businesses we have featured to take their expertise online, and hopefully generate a new revenue stream for them to keep their business alive.

Businesses are trying to figure out new ways to move forward because the current environment calls for significantly different measures. We are left with few ways to engage in social interactions, and sales and marketing definitely lacks a human component when handshakes are discouraged. Here at Pendulum, we want to use our platform to share such effective and efficient tools we discover, Thinkific is one of these tools we hope will benefit you, our readers, as an alternative way to boost your business.