The Art of Online Course Creation | Helping Experts Build Impactful Courses That Get Real Results
The Art of Online Course Creation is the podcast for experts, coaches, and entrepreneurs who are ready to build a high-quality online course: not just a course that exists, but one that actually gets results.
If you have real expertise that you want to turn into an online course your students will finish, rave about, and get real results from, you're in the right place.
If you want to create an online course that does more of the heavy lifting for you in your coaching business so that you can spend more of your 1:1 time with clients actually coaching, personalizing, and troubleshooting, you're in the right place.
Your host, Shannon Boyer, brings a master's degree in education and 25+ years of experience as an award-winning curriculum and course designer. She takes the guesswork out of online course creation by breaking down the strategies, frameworks, and design decisions that separate courses people complete and implement from courses people abandon.
Each episode covers the real work of building a course that delivers: validating your idea, designing for transformation, choosing the right platform, building your audience, and creating an offer that sells because it actually works.
Subscribe to The Art of Online Course Creation and start building the course your expertise deserves.
The Art of Online Course Creation | Helping Experts Build Impactful Courses That Get Real Results
#54 Stop Using Free Facebook Groups: Skool’s Better Lead Magnet for Online Course Creators
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If your current audience-building plan still starts with “I’ll just open a free Facebook group,” this episode offers a thoughtful pause and a practical alternative.
Shannon Boyer breaks down why the free Facebook group model has lost much of its effectiveness, what’s shifted in the online landscape, and why more course creators are moving toward an ecosystem-based approach that reduces friction for both you and your students. You’ll also hear why Shannon—who resisted Skool for a long time—changed her mind after experiencing it from the student side, and how that experience reshaped how she thinks about lead magnets, community, and course delivery.
Rather than treating “community” as a separate add-on you have to constantly coax people into, this conversation explores a model where the community is the front door—and the course content lives right beside it.
In this conversation, you’ll hear Shannon unpack:
- What changed with Facebook groups, and why “dead group” fatigue is becoming the norm
- The hidden cost of building on rented land, especially when your business relies on consistent visibility and engagement
- Why the biggest issue is not reach, but friction (and how friction quietly kills follow-through)
- How Skool flips the traditional course platform model by making community the main dashboard and coursework the adjacent layer
- The freemium concept as a cleaner “front door” into paid programs, without pulling people across multiple platforms
- The specific features that make Skool feel more like a business hub than a content warehouse (including events, reminders, native video, and member-to-member interaction)
- The tradeoffs worth knowing before you switch platforms, including the limitations that may matter depending on how you sell
The Build Lab (Skool community)
Shannon’s community for course creators who want to build high-quality, high-impact courses that deliver real results.
You can start for $12/year, which includes:
- Access to the Validate Your Best Course mini-course
- A full year inside the Build Lab community
- The option to upgrade later if you want deeper support
Skool free trial + affiliate link
If you want to explore Skool for your own offers, you can access a 14-day free trial here.
If you’ve been questioning where to host your course, how to build community without burning yourself out, or how to replace the old free Facebook group strategy with something more sustainable, this episode will give you a clearer framework for what to do next.
Get started on your own course creation journey or learn how to make your existing course even better at The "Your Best Course" Build Lab, my interactive and supportive online community.
To get started creating your own online course, check out my new freebie that will take you through the steps of choosing a topic that will be profitable for YOU.
To book a call to discuss your options and see if working together makes sense. Click here. 😊
