The Climb to Content Maturity

Let’s talk about how content gets made.

No team feels like they have enough content. It’s a constant point that gets brought up in meetings, on project timelines, as blockers before some other work can begin. I mean, we’ve all heard that content is king, clearly we can’t get enough of it… right?

But many times, the problem is not “we don’t have enough content,” the problem is that your content is stale, disorganized, scattered across dozens of systems, sitting in someone else’s Google Drive or Box folder, or some combination thereof. Most companies don’t have a lack of content, they have a lack of content management.

If you want to create a lasting and valuable content function… whether for marketing, customer success, education, product, or any other function, you need to understand the stages of content growth. Thankfully, the Steve Karam School of Making Awesome Content and Keeping That Content Alive and Fresh and Doing Good Things has you covered.

Let’s dive in!

React

Look, we’ve all been there. At this stage, you’re just fighting to keep up. Maybe you’re creating a new pitch for every single opportunity, or throwing slides together in PowerPoint for an impromptu training for a new customer. Either way, you’re winging it on the content and hoping you can make an impact without the polish.

Build

We’ve identified there’s a need for better content. Sadly, at least three departments at your company have identified that need at the same time. Everyone starts building, creating content that they use, share with a few folks, throw on Slack or as an email attachment, and repositories of content start forming everywhere. Confluence, Asana, email, Google Drive, and everywhere else content can live.

Thankfully, you’re reading The Why so you obviously will have the most winning strategy. You’re going to start thinking proactively about creating resources that you know will be used repeatedly. Just don’t lose track of where you put it. And be careful, this is the time most creators run into the Spider-Man Dilemma:

Structure

Now we’re getting somewhere. Hopefully “somewhere” is in the realm of standardizing your content, arranging it into the appropriate flow, and keeping track of where the content is kept. It’s definitely possible during this stage to run off track a bit; namely, by overengineering. During this stage, your focus should be on establishing content workflows and reviews, training schedules, a communication process, and starting to look for opportunities to reuse content.

This is not, and I’m speaking from experience here, time to try creating some huge taxonomy and ontology for a comprehensive content empire. You’ve got bigger fish to fry.

Curate

If you’ve made it this far, you’re taking content seriously. Most organizations stay at the Build phase for a long long time; sadly, by the time they reach Curate they have so much content in so many places they need an army of librarians to Dewey Decimal the whole thing tout suite.

But it’s never too late to curate. You can start to tag your content, keep track of it, so you know when content can be reused, built upon, bolted on. One great example of this is internal training content, which is also useful for partner ecosystems, which is also useful for customers. Obviously there may be additions or subtractions for each audience, but the point is that you should be looking for every possible chance to use existing content and curate for additional audiences.

This is also the time, if you haven’t already, to start a feedback and data analysis process. Gather feedback from people who have to use the content every day (e.g. AEs with sales decks or case studies), and begin looking for opportunities to reach goals using your impressive content library. Whether ticket deflection, proactive enablement for new products or features, faster time to value, expanding existing clients… there’s a lot of opportunities to be data-driven. You’ll need that if you ever want to get to the next stage.

Welcome to Value Land!

You finally made it. The content you’re generating, and the process you’re using to keep track of it, is now a valuable strategic asset to the organization. Now you can begin truly integrating your processes into the broader business and tracking metrics that tie into corporate goals. This means you can tie the content you’re creating to ROI.

If you’re using a tool like Seismic for sales, keep track of which content is being used on which deals, and whether they have an impact on close rates or AE feedback. Keep track of knowledge articles that may have reduced tickets. With tools like Gainsight, determine whether customers that take your training content are more likely to renew and expand, and bake it into the customer health score. Check customer usage through your product’s telemetry and look for opportunities to get training in front of the customer before they need it.

The point is, the best content creation team is one that has not only mastered creating content, but identifying the right content for the right audience at the right time — and ensuring that they don’t have to reinvent or retell anything to make it happen.

Beyond

There are levels of efficiency and impact beyond Value. Some are discovered as you go along, and others we just haven’t gotten to yet. I think AI will be a BIG catalyst towards the content development of the future. If you haven’t read it yet, check out my article on Personalized Learning with AI.

In the end, the biggest areas of growth, value, and impact will depend on your goals, your company’s goals, and your customers’ goals. It’s so important that you map these goals so they become one and the same, and continue with a laser focus on alignment towards customer outcomes.

I hope you’re liking The Why! Please subscribe if you haven’t already, and follow me on LinkedIn. If you ever want to chat about how I can help you strengthen and evolve your enablement or content-heavy team, don’t hesitate to reach out.