Wrapping up our content methodology series on a high note with Ryan McBride, Global Head of Content at Fuse.
It’s been a whirlwind journey getting to know Ryan and his team of animators and videographers, and in a short space of time, they’ve completely lifted the lid on how to create the most engaging corporate learning content that can be consumed in the flow of work.
Their 12 Commandments of Content in the Fuse Content Strategy is based on over eight years of experience in capturing knowledge and creating engaging content that supports higher performance, and throughout our series, we’ve focused on three commandments in each part.
In part I, we learned how to create content that people love, capturing tacit knowledge from experts across businesses in formats that learners love. In part II, we learned about the Fuse ‘digital first’ content capture method that Ryan says usually ends up taking only 5% of subject matter expert’s time, as opposed to lengthy SCORM course production. And in part III, we learned about Ryan’s real passion in the Fuse journalistic approach to content capture, which is resonating a real emotional connection with audiences and portraying authenticity through and through.
Today, we’re wrapping up with the last three commandments which are dedicated to making content universally consumable, and strategically delivered and easy to find. And while it may be the end of this series, we’ll continue to report back with news from Ryan and his team as they continue on the cutting edge of content that is inspiring active engagement and driving higher performance.
10. Watch the Jargon, Thanks
Imagine you’re making a video with a scientist about prescription drugs, and the scientist wants to make one video for fellow scientists, and another for the general public.
The jargon and the language used for the scientists is surely going to be a lot different than what the general public will understand. They understand that Sildenafil is what the public knows as Viagra, and that Alprazolam is the actual name of the Xanax sometimes used for flight anxiety. In the scientific video, it makes sense to use the clinical names, but in the video for the public, it makes a lot more sense to use the brand names that many people are already familiar with.
It’s all about making your content consumable to your audience. On that point, it’s also useful to explain how Fuse thinks about audiences, or ‘communities’ as we like to call them.
Communities may be focused around job roles, teams, or departments. We teach our customers how to curate content and map it to communities, so that certain bits of content are only visible to certain communities.
It means that amongst a national chain of hotels, the food and beverage community can view all the content dedicated to cocktail mixology and omelette making mastery, without having to wade through the boiler maintenance strategy that the facilities community may want to consume, or the health and safety videos specifically for the building maintenance community.
The end result is that users feel they have a highly personalised learning environment that speaks directly to them, and not a broad ecosystem of unrelated roles or departments.
11. Title, Time,Thumbnail...Clickbait
The penultimate commandment: publish your content in the correct way. The rules of YouTube and Facebook also apply to corporate learning. When content is published, it just won’t do to have a bunch of metadata showing in text, and a video in an unflattering frame.
What learners really want is an engaging title, good tags, the date of the video and a cool image for a thumbnail that makes them want to click on it.
And don’t be scared of a little clickbait while you’re at it. Some of Ryan’s most viewed videos have featured tongue in cheeky titles like ‘I regretfully inform you...’
12. Delivery is Everything
Ryan explains that no effective content strategy is complete without a clear and defined way of making sure content gets into the hands (and minds) of learners without barriers, or friction. It’s not just a ‘build it and they will come situation,’ and with bite sized learning, Fuse has broken down the massive barriers that exist when knowledge lives within cumbersome and time consuming courses.
Without these barriers, learners can ‘learn in the flow of work’ - ie, we want you to learn as you go, and get your knowledge at the point of need. We can’t claim it’s an original theory I’m afraid - Josh Bersin and Marc Zao-Sanders have done a lot of research on it and do a great job of explaining it in this article in the Harvard Business Review.
What it goes to show however is that we’re in good company when we say we are dedicated to delivering knowledge at the point of need. So, if you need to understand, for example, how to make an anchored link in HTML, we don’t expect you to drop everything and take an HTML 101 course. We want you to view a 1 minute video on Fuse that shows you exactly how to do it, so that you can execute on the task and get on with your day. And if you happen to be on a bus while this happens, the mobile first commandment means that you can consume as you go, even on the move.
Secondly, we’ve also fine tuned our search functionality to be highly precise, because we don’t want the time spent searching for knowledge to be a barrier, or to outweigh the time spent learning.
With AI and Machine Learning, Fuse is ‘learning’ more about each individual learner every day, and it’s predicting what learners may need to know even before they need it. This predictive functionality is helping to make knowledge as easily available as possible, removing all barriers and friction.
If Your Content Isn’t Driving Higher Performance…..
We hope you’ve enjoyed the series and getting the inside scoop from Ryan and his team on the difference between good content that may be compelling, and great content that is actively engaging and improving company performance.
From content capture to delivery, Ryan and his team are happy to discuss strategy with you at any time, either as producers, or as coaches if you feel your team could benefit from their content strategy and production workshops. Click here to get in touch and stay tuned for more to come from the content team as they continue to visualise and create learning masterpieces while also inspiring subject matter experts to create content that learners love.
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