The Transfer of Knowledge: Customization of Content Counts

Netflix knows your name and what episode of The Good Wife you’re on. Your Pandora station knows that your party mix isn’t complete without Katy Perry. Facebook shows you the photos that your friends have taken at the restaurant you’re dining at right now. (Don’t miss the guac!) Complex algorithms watch our activity, understand what interests us, and place engaging content in the forefront. We’ve come to expect customization and personalization from all of our media, and work media is no exception.

It’s time to take this new expectation in content consumption and apply it to smarter training materials in the workplace. The right technology lets you transfer valuable knowledge from the C-suite to front-facing employees who need to access it on a daily basis, and it takes into account how those employees access the content most effectively.

Use customization as a means of transferring knowledge more effectively.

Information has no value if it isn’t available to the right people at the right time. Find out what information your team needs to access regularly by conducting dialogues, surveys, or checking out analytics, and provide customized content to meet their needs.

Using the latest in content creation technology lets your company translate high-level knowledge into an easy-to-consume format for sales teams and customer service reps who need support when it comes to product knowledge, branding, and company policy.

This also lets you customize which information is available to which users, effectively personalizing the learning experience. There’s no sense in showing all 500 pages of the manual to your sales fleet when they only need access to the product information, scripts, and sales guides.

Transferring knowledge effectively through multiple elements.

Using a single form of media for knowledge transfer is no longer enough. Employees, partners, and customers learn effectively in different ways, so it’s vital to create content that covers all of the bases and feels customized to their individual learning styles.

Some people learn best from auditory content, some prefer traditional text, and yet others learn best from interaction. Most people, however, benefit from a combination of different approaches, so variety may be the key to your training success. Communicate with your team and learn what approach they’d find the most engaging so that you can provide a tailored experience.

Elements that you should consider including in your training content are:

• Video and audio, including text narration, or standalone video.
• Dynamic elements, such as interactive quizzes.
• Visual content, such as infographics and flowcharts.
• Traditional text, which you should present as short bursts of information (e.g., bullet points, short lists) to make it highly accessible to even the shortest attention spans.

Learn from your smart content.

Your job isn’t done once you’ve created content, curated supplemental elements, and published the content for use. Now it’s time to evaluate what you’ve done and whether it’s successful. If you’ve chosen a dynamic content platform for creation and publication of this content, then you have access to real-time analytics at your fingertips, perfect for analyzing and further customizing your content for the audience.

By utilizing such a platform, you’ll have the ability to:

• View analytics via the software’s dashboard, and download data for further processing if you have more complex analytics in mind.
• Review user activity for a top view of how content is being consumed.
• Understand how your content performs on every level, from time spent per page to percentage of users who interact with a particular dynamic element.
• Deliver updates instantly through cloud-based content, allowing your team to access the latest info, and ensure that even customized content keeps everyone on the same page.  

Your metrics of interest depend on your goals, so consider whether you’re hitting those goals, and be comfortable with going back to the drawing board if it turns out that your training regimen needs some tweaking to realize its full potential. With some careful planning and smart use of analytics, you can make great use of quality training content that’s as customized as your employees’ daily social media experience.