If you’re like most associations, you’ve got content everywhere. Articles, webinars, conference recordings, research reports, certification prep materials, member resources – all built to support your industry and your members’ learning journeys.
But learning has evolved dramatically over the past few years. Learners have come to expect:
- Real-time personalized content recommendations
- Microlearning and microcredentials
- Badging and other types of learning gamification
- Dynamic learning paths that suit individuals’ specific needs
- Centralized systems that organize knowledge for ease of observability
And none of this is feasible without knowledge management.
What is knowledge management?
Knowledge management is the practice of organizing company or association concepts, techniques, skills, and other types of knowledge so that they are visible, measurable, and actionable.
For many organizations, though, true knowledge management remains out of reach — not because the concept is flawed, but because the foundation isn’t in place yet.
Before we can truly understand knowledge management, we must think about content management.
What is content management?
Content management is any practice that organizes disparate content files – documents, images, and other types of assets that contain information.
Here are some of the tenets of good content management:
- Discoverable: Content lives together in one highly transparent location with search and metadata filtering
- Enriched: Content is labeled with metadata and, where applicable, mapped to a defined taxonomy or shared vocabulary
- Maintainable: Content can be easily created, edited, uploaded, or deleted
- Verifiable: Content has version tracking and is uniquely identifiable
Each of these qualities plays a direct role in making knowledge management possible. Here’s how.
Discoverable content
Discoverable content helps us see exactly what we have at our disposal.
Let’s say we’re considering the development of a new module on project management. With all content in one place, we might discover we already have three modules on project management before commissioning a fourth.
Discoverability also sharpens your content strategy. You may find that what you actually need isn’t a new module at all, but a smarter way to market and distribute what you already have.
Once you can see what you have, the next step is to make sure that content can be found, filtered, and understood. That’s where enrichment comes in.
Enriched content
Enriched content is smart content. It contains the filterable facets required for a content-discoverable system.
Let’s say we need to identify all content that is 1) a course or module, 2) related to project management, and 3) geared towards beginner project managers. With proper enrichment, we can do this!
This also allows us to observe trends in particular subject areas. Do we have too much content in one area, and not enough in another? We can make these types of decisions when content is data rich.
But knowing what you have and being able to filter it is only valuable if you can act on it quickly. That requires maintainability.
Maintainable content
Maintainable content goes hand in hand with discoverable content. Without a frictionless way to create, update, and retire content, keeping pace with learner needs becomes nearly impossible.
Every industry has its own pace of change, and your content needs to match it — from annual updates to real-time policy shifts. For example, if there is a new project management framework for PMs, we should be able to drop it into an existing module and publish, or create a new module as needed. To keep learners up to date, this level of maintainability allows for nimble learning systems that adapt when the market demands it.
The final piece of the puzzle is making sure you can trust your content data over time. That’s where verifiability comes in.
Verifiable content
Verifiable content is almost always a standard feature in content management systems. Most content management systems offer auto-generated IDs and content versioning that allow you to cycle back on previous iterations if the latest published version has issues.
But verifiable content is also essential for tracking content data.
Unique identifiers are required for understanding the lifespan and impact of a given piece of content. Let’s say we have a quiz on project management, and most learners answer Question 1 correctly and Question 2 incorrectly. Now skip ahead six months, and we’ve changed the order of the questions in that quiz. If we are only tracking responses against quiz order and not unique identifiers, then unfortunately the previous results for “Question 1” are going to be compared against the wrong question! A unique identifier ensures that wherever the question is asked, we can track its performance.
And with version control, we know which version of Question 1 was seen by learners at a given point in time. This is crucial when trying to make strategic decisions about how to address inclusion or substance of a particular item when planning future quizzes.
Together, these four qualities — discoverability, enrichment, maintainability, and verifiability — form the backbone of a content management strategy that can power knowledge management at scale.
Achieving great content management
These ideas only scratch the surface of what’s possible when your content can easily be converted into knowledge.
How do you achieve great content management? Stay tuned for the second article in this series on picking the right systems for the job!
And to be clear, building the right content management strategy takes time and expertise. If your organization is struggling to get there, Holmes Corporation can help. There’s nothing we love more than helping associations unlock the full potential of their content — and their members’ learning experience. Reach out at [email protected] to connect with us.
