This article is Part 5 of my series on Customer Education from scratch. You can find the others here: Overview / Part 1 / Part 2 / Part 3 / Part 4
The biggest bottleneck, and the biggest cost in education is often content creation. Many teams spend months producing a "perfect" course, only for it to be outdated on arrival or ignored by learners. Consider the production costs not just money, but in wasted time, missed opportunities, or the competitive cost of having outdated information. To be effective, modern education teams must operate with focus and agility.
With your learning journey mapped, the task is now to populate it efficiently. This requires more than just creating content; it demands a strategic approach to sourcing, developing, validating, and maintaining your assets. This article provides a comprehensive framework for doing just that.
What do I mean by “High-Impact Content”? Its simple - High-impact content is not just accurate; it is content that measurably improves learner performance and drives key business outcomes.
Step 1: The Content Strategy Framework: Create, Curate, or Collaborate?
An efficient strategy involves making smart decisions about where to invest your energy. Before building anything, determine the best sourcing method for each piece of your learning journey.
Create When It's Your Core IPYou should only create new content from scratch when the knowledge is highly specific to your product, proprietary processes, or unique point of view. If it's your core intellectual property and competitive differentiator, you must own its creation to ensure its quality and accuracy.
Curate When It's a CommodityIf a topic is a general industry skill (e.g., basic project management or an introduction to APIs), curate it from external experts. There is no business value in reinventing the wheel. Curation involves identifying the best existing resources—articles, videos, or open-source documentation—and integrating them into your learning journeys. Always ensure you have the right to use the content and provide clear attribution. Consider brand alignment, production quality, and the absence of competing messages before you use any external content.
Collaborate to Leverage Internal ExpertiseDon't forget the wealth of material that already exists internally. However, simply "repurposing" is not enough. The key is to collaborate.
With Subject Matter Experts (SMEs): Your internal experts are your greatest asset. Schedule brief, focused interviews to extract their knowledge. Record these sessions (with permission) and use them as the foundation for articles or scripts. This respects their time while capturing their expertise. You will likely face a struggle to get SMEs due to their own priorities and workloads. Think about incentivising in some way - recognition, or the WIIFM often helps. Show them how it might help them be more successful.`
With Other Teams: Your support team's knowledgebase, your marketing team's webinars, and your product team's documentation are valuable resources. Collaborate with these teams to adapt their content for an educational context, ensuring it is framed for learning outcomes, not lead generation or ticket resolution.
Step 2: A Pragmatic Approach to AI in Content Creation
Generative AI is a powerful tool, but it's often misunderstood. The danger lies in using it as a shortcut to produce generic content that lacks the specific context of your business and learners' needs. The goal is not more content; it's the right content.
Use AI as an Accelerator, Not an Author. Think of AI as a smart assistant that can handle the heavy lifting, while a human expert provides the critical context, examples, and proprietary knowledge.
Practical Use Cases for AI:
Drafting & Outlining: Use it to create a first draft of an article or a video script based on your detailed notes.
Creating Learning Aids: Ask it to generate assessment questions, practice exercises, or a summary of a complex topic.
Content Variation: Use it to rephrase a single concept for different audiences (e.g., one explanation for a technical user, another for a business user).
Step 3: The Agile Development Loop: Prototype, Test, and Iterate
Never build a polished piece of content without validating it first. Use a rapid feedback loop to iterate and improve before you invest heavily in production.
Build a Low-Fidelity Prototype: Start with the simplest possible version. Instead of a fully produced video, create an informal screen recording or a simple text-based guide with screenshots.
Test with a Purposeful Cohort: Share the prototype with a small, representative group of learners. Don't just pick "friendly users." Test with:
A Novice: To see if your explanation is clear and your assumptions are correct.
An Expert: To check for technical accuracy and nuances you may have missed.
Ask Diagnostic Questions: Go beyond "Did you like it?" to gather actionable feedback. Ask:
"After reviewing this, what is the very next action you feel you should take?" (Tests if it's actionable).
"Who do you think this content is for, and what problem does it solve for them?" (Tests if it's relevant).
"Was there any point where you felt confused or lost?" (Identifies clarity issues).
Step 4: The Quality & Maintenance Framework
An asset is only valuable if it is effective and trustworthy. All content, regardless of its source, must meet a clear standard of quality and have a plan for its ongoing maintenance.
The Expanded Quality Checklist: Use this checklist to evaluate your content. Effective content must be:
Actionable: Does it clearly instruct the learner on what to do?
Relevant: Does it directly address the specific skill gap and matter to the learner's immediate goals?
Outcome-Focused: Is it explicitly tied to a learning objective within the journey?
Accurate: Is the information technically correct and up-to-date?
Engaging: Is the content presented in a clear, compelling, and interesting way?
Accessible: Can the content be used by people with disabilities? (e.g., videos have captions, text has sufficient contrast).
The Content Lifecycle: Review, Refresh, or Retire: Great content can become a liability if it grows stale. Assign a "review by" date to every piece of content you publish. When the date arrives, make a decision:
Review: The content is still accurate and relevant. Simply update the review date.
Refresh: The core information is sound, but some details (e.g., UI elements, version numbers) need updating.
Retire: The content is no longer accurate or relevant to the product or business goals. Archive it to avoid confusing users. Don’t forget to check for links to the content elsewhere. Broken links are incredibly annoying to end users.
Your Challenge this week:
Look at the first step of the learning journey you mapped in the last article.
Choose Your Method: Look at your options. Decide if you will Create, Curate, or Collaborate to source the content for that step.
Define a Prototype: What is the simplest possible version you can build to test your idea?
Set a Review Date: When you notionally "publish" this piece, what date will you set for its first quality and accuracy review?