In this episode, Tara recaps day 1 of Gamify My Course Camp. When you are building your online course, one of the key factors is how to add in more engagement and participation to retain your customers. Learn about the Course Compass Map™ to help guide you on this journey.
Join us this week at camp! https://www.taralbryan.com/GAMIFY
About Me:
Hey, it’s your host, Tara Bryan. And I am on a mission to help more business owners learn to infinitely scale their businesses by leveraging the power of online without sacrificing the customer experience or results.
I like to geek out on all things business strategy, marketing, interactive digital and user experience. This podcast is all about what is working, lessons learned and actionable tips to create and grow a thriving online business.
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Mentioned in this episode:
https://taralbryan.com/step/15-learn-to-scale-call
0:03
Good morning course creators, welcome to the course-building secrets podcast. This week we are doing gamify my course camp, which is a super fun week of all sorts of different camp activities. We're mapping the terrain, doing a tug of war, doing archery practice, talking about the obstacle course, that your learners are going through doing a scavenger hunt, where we're going to look at the wheel of engagement. And then we're going to talk about how to take action, how to take it beyond the workshop week of Themify, my course camp. So if you haven't joined us, if you haven't signed up, for sure, sign up, Tara l brian.com. Forward slash gamify. love to have you join us this week. It is literally every day this week. So come and join us. All right, so for today's episode, I want to just give you a little bit of a taste of what is happening this week in the camp. We have tons of energy, tons of awesome examples and tactics, and all sorts of things that you can apply. So I want to just cover one today, which is our course compass map. So the course compass map gives you a sense of direction for how you should be focused on building out your online program. Because here's the thing is that when you are creating an online course or an online program, or whatever you want to call it, there are various things that you need to keep in mind, as you're creating your course, it's not just about throwing a bunch of information or content out and packaging it and putting it online, it's really looking at the experience that you want to create for your learner's so they can get from point A to point B. So as we're talking about that, this week, we're talking about how to gamify or how to add increased engagement, fun, and participation into your course. So people not only buy it, but they continue to participate, to get the results that you are promising. So on the back end, you're able to keep them as customers as send them to your next offer and get awesome testimonials and referrals. So people come back over and over and over again. Alright, so when we look at creating a course, we're looking to look at them if you think of a compass, you've got north, south, west, and east, right? So as you look at that, there is various sort of points on the compass to think about as you're building your course, the first one is north. And that's really where you want to narrow your focus. You want to narrow what you're trying to teach. So often as experts, we just want to give all of the information we want to help people become experts like we are. But the challenge is that they really only need part of your expertise. They just need that part that allows them to solve that first problem that they have in order to keep going. And they're coming to you as an expert, to get the answers that they need to be able to do that. Right. It's not like let me just show you all of the things. It's just like, what's that slice that they need right now to keep moving forward? So that's north, then we look at East and East is eliminating obstacles. So how do we help people eliminate the obstacles that they're going to have along their path to learning? And this is a really key component, because again, so often we just think about the information that we want to teach. Or if you've narrowed your focus and you have a specific path, we think about the path, but we don't necessarily think about what are the challenges that people are going to have as they go through the process? And so IE is East is eliminating obstacles? How do we help them eliminate obstacles when they come up at the right time, then south is that we're going to create clear steps that allow us to have the learner hit the bullseye. Right? So what's the actual target that we want somebody to be able to hit? And so we're going to look at that and really focus on what is the target, right?
4:30
What is that finish line that we want somebody to get to? And then what are the steps that help them go from where they are today to where they are wanting to go? Okay, and then last is West, and that's celebrating wins. So how do we celebrate the progress that people are making as they're going through the online course experience? And that's really where that gamification comes in. And where we really are talking a lot about that this week. How do you create that experience to be able to celebrate wins, celebrate progress, and help people kind of stay on the path, right? And the reason for that is that there really eight core drives that, that, that sort of help people get things done, if you will. One is the search for meaning. So people have the desire to feel that their actions have a purpose, then there's the sense of accomplishment, people want to achieve and overcome challenges right there. There's a sense of accomplishment when you get to a certain milestone when you can keep moving forward, and you see some progress happening. Number three is empowerment, how it's the desire for someone to be able to choose their own direction and try a variety of solutions to fix a problem. And they feel empowered. What that means from a course perspective is they have a sense of personal responsibility, right? They're put in a driver's seat, and they're the ones who are controlling their journey through the online course experience. And that's just giving them that sense of control. How are they going to go through how are they going to, you know, real progress through it's not passive, it's active, we need to put them in that active place where they're taking control of their own direction as they're going through it. That doesn't mean they're gonna go through willy nilly, and take the course however they want to, it just means that they're in the driver's seat as they're going and you're guiding them towards that solution. Okay, number four is ownership. They have the desire to own things and have possession. So the example for this that I always love is like, you win. If you have a peloton, right? So I have a peloton. So, for sure, like if you have a peloton, make sure that you find me out there. But if you're a peloton, you get to 100 rides, and you get a t-shirt, right? Like, that's, that's the desire to own things, right? Like you keep going. So you can have that the thing or the desire that you get to gain something from it. Okay, so number five is social influence. You have the drive to interact, help learn from and compete with others. And so how can you create some sort of connection or community within your online program that allows people to learn from each other, to interact with each other to help and sometimes compete? And, and in this one tends to be one that people get stuck on. So I don't want people to compete in my course. But consider that they're competing with themselves. They're competing with a clock, they're competing with an activity or something like that doesn't have to be against other people. But how are you sort of creating that energy of a competition, where there's a little bit of skin in the game, so somebody has to do something in order to, to feel like they're, they have some sort of something happening within the online program. Okay, then next is scarcity. So this is, you know, like it or not, this is reality is that people want what they can't have, right? They want to participate more, they want to have something more when it's something that's just out of their reach, something that they they can't have or somebody else has that they don't have, right. It's just human nature. It's one of the core drives. So as you're planning your online course, that's one of the things to think about is what does that level of scarcity look like? And building that in? Okay. And then unpredictability, this one is one of my favorites because people, adults like to know what's coming, right? And so they want to know what's going to happen. They want the big picture. They want to know what's going to happen next. They want to keep going, keep going and keep going. And so they want to know how to
9:23
how to go about doing things. But being rewarded, being surprised being not quite knowing exactly what's around the next corner, really helps people gain that level of curiosity to keep moving because we want to have an open loop. We want to have that curiosity factor to keep moving through and being interested in coming back because we want to have something that's meaningful and it has, has a sense for moving people forward. Okay, and then last avoidance, people tend to drive to avoid pain or negative consequences. So how can you add in some factors of avoidance into your online program? So these eight universal core drives help you really think about from a strategic standpoint, like how can you add these into your online program to increase the amount of participation and interest to be honest, in what it is that you have, because people want to get from point A to point B, right? Like they're coming to you, they're buying your, your thing, because they have a problem that they want solved. But there's a huge gap between wanting to solve the problem and actually doing the work that it requires to actually solve the problem. And so our job as course creators is not only to give them that fastest path, but it's also to help them along the way. So they can stay engaged, they can get through some maybe those harder times where it's a little painful, or it's more difficult to learn something and apply it than just sort of passively watching it right. Like think about the last thing that you learned is that you actually have, you know, it's like a little uncomfortable, right, you had to actually do something. And so our job is to help them do that. So these core drives help you to really think about not only what you can include, but when you would want to include it. Alright, so that's just a taste for what we've been going through this week in camp. And, and so, you know, use these couple of tips that I've given you today to really start thinking about how do you shift your focus from just sort of blasting information, to creating an experience that allows people to actually get the transformation or results that you're that you are promising them, and, and helping them get there, because most often, people have access to as much information as they could ever dream of right? Like, all you have to do is go to Google, and you have everything that you could ever imagine. And so there's a difference between having the information and applying the information. And when you think about how to help people apply what you're teaching, that's where the power of your course comes into play. That's where the, the, it starts to change from a transactional, you know, sort of event you're doing for people to something that's actually creating an impact, and getting the results that you are wanting to get for your people. And and so this starts that conversation. All right, there you go. That is my course building secret for today. And again, go out to Terrell brown.com, forward slash gamify anytime this week, and jump in to this training because it's going to transform your ability to fulfill and retain your customers which if you haven't been listening to the last couple of episodes, it's a huge game changer in terms of not only being able to build your business but grow your business to the next level because it is much more expensive to keep going out and finding new people versus just keeping and ascending and retaining the ones that you have. So use this and start building those raving fans. All right. Have a good day.