Second in the series: Six characteristics of compelling content
First you need a compelling concept
Yes, you probably got it - they’re talking about the same subject. One person’s boring compliance course is another person’s hot topic. If you approach the development of learning material as a tedious chore, that’s how it will come over to your audience. Your job is to engage your learner and that starts with a compelling concept.
In our leisure time, we might choose to consume content, such as TV shows, novels and music, for the entertainment value alone. The content is an end in itself. At work, things are different. We are not interested in content in its own right; we’re interested in solving problems. We want information that will help us to meet a current work challenge or provide us with a competitive personal advantage.
So, your job is to position your content in such a way that the learner can clearly see what’s in it for them (as opposed to you, their employer, a vendor or anyone else who’s sponsoring the content). They won’t want to dig deep to find the benefits - they’ll want them to be absolutely obvious. Benefits are critical to motivation because a person won’t put effort in when they can’t see what’s in it for them.
Motivation also has a second dimension. Not only do the benefits need to be desirable to your learner, they also need to be readily attainable. A prize of £1m is going to be desirable to most people, but not if it means swimming the English Channel. In the context of learning content, attainable means not too complex and not too lengthy; the path to the benefit should be short and clear of obstacles.
Compelling concepts:
- provide clear benefits (avoiding risk, solving a problem, explaining a tricky concept, showing you how to do something);
- can be articulated in an eye-catching title (so ‘Five closing techniques used by the masters’ or ‘Quantitative easing explained in two minutes’);
- provide the benefit with the minimum hassle (so not ’Fifty ways to close a sale’ or ‘Quantitative easing - a new 13-part series’).
Creating a concept might seem like a creative exercise but it actually requires some in-depth analysis. To provide relevance you need to understand your audience well. In particular you need to understand how content can in some way enhance their working lives. What do they most need to know, to be able to do, to feel? That means getting out there and meeting your audience. Relevance cannot be contrived in an ivory tower. And relevance drives out resistance.
Then you need a compelling structure
There’s more work to do before you type a single word, draw your first picture or shoot your first scene. You need at very least an outline of how your content will be structured. As the picture above shows, structures clearly affect how compelling your content can be.
Whatever the type of content you are designing, your first goal is to engage the elephant ...
In Switch – How to Change Things When Change is Hard, by Chip and Dan Heath, the authors make a key distinction between what we think consciously and what our more primitive, emotional system will have us do. They liken the emotional system to an elephant and the intellect to the rider of the elephant. As you can imagine, when you’re trying hard to resist that bar of chocolate or force yourself up out of bed on a cold morning, the rider has a heck of a job keeping the elephant under control and can easily become exhausted in the process.
While the rider may be engaged by the long-term benefits of a learning activity or an intellectual curiosity, the elephant is much more interested in what’s in it for him right now. The prospect of a solution to a real, current problem will definitely do the job. The elephant may also be motivated by a challenge - perhaps a game which involves some form of competition. Humour may also do the trick, or just plain novelty.
Once you have the learner engaged emotionally, you should spell out clearly what your content is going to cover and how. Not only are you aiming to reassure the learner that those benefits are going to be readily attainable, you want to provide them with an advance organiser that helps them prepare for what will follow.
A compelling structure includes the following:
- a start that engages the learner emotionally;
- a clear overview of what is to follow;
- a sequence that aligns with your chosen learning strategy;
- clear signposting for the learner in terms of where they are, how far they’ve gone, how far there is to go, how they’re progressing;
- a call to action (what you suggest the learner does next, links to related content, people to talk to, etc.);
- and, if your content forms part of a series, a teaser for what comes next (think soaps).
At this stage, you may be concerned that you still have nothing on the screen to show for your efforts. Don’t worry, because in the next post we’re talking images, speech, music, animation, video and perhaps even some text - the basic media elements. You’ll discover how to manipulate these elements like a true media chemist.
Coming next: Compelling content requires some media chemistry
In case you missed it: Six characteristics of compelling content - an introduction
The six characteristics of compelling content: It's time to begin your Skills Journey
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