Plan Your Enablement Site Content Strategy
Learning Objectives
After completing this unit, you’ll be able to:
- Identify what content does and doesn’t belong on an enablement site.
- Explain why content strategy is important.
- Explain what it means to be in learn mode.
- Define your audience.
The Right Content Types for an Enablement Site
In Enablement Site Basics, you learned how an enablement site provides a fun and engaging experience for your company’s skilling and enablement initiatives. You saw how the Pure Aloe company, which produces moisturizers and creams made from aloe vera, plans to provide content to help its employees develop their talent as the company grows.
Then, in Enablement Site Configuration, you saw how the Salesforce admin at Pure Aloe, Joseph, kept busy with setting up the company’s enablement site. You learned how Joseph implemented permissions for different roles, created the company’s subdomain where content will be published, and set up content collections for different groups of learners.
Now the Pure Aloe content creators can get to work. But, where do they start? What content makes sense for an enablement site, versus other channels and platforms? An enablement site is the right place for:
- Product knowledge
- Best practices
- Real-world use cases
- Business strategies
- Marketing tools
- Onboarding and training
In contrast, an enablement site isn’t:
- A knowledge base
- Reference documentation
- An FAQ
- Implementation guidelines, or any set of steps that are "one and done"
- A wiki
- A blog
- An e-book
Simply put, an enablement site lends itself to an interactive, gamified learning experience that’s casual, accessible, and relevant. Examples of good enablement site content include:
- Learning how to do something, like interpreting a compensation plan
- Learning how something works, like how to use a product or service
- Learning how to message something, like position your company’s latest product
- Learning how to use Salesforce for your organization
Characteristics of Great Enablement Content
Your enablement site experience should always include relevant topics or skills that are in demand. Here’s another way to think about it: Let’s say Pure Aloe’s marketing team is hosting a series of events showcasing a new moisturizer product. They want sales reps to be informed and ready to speak to any potential new customers or vendors they find. This is a good opportunity for their team to craft a sales enablement trail to help reps understand the new moisturizer and guide a valuable discussion about it with customers and vendors.
Also, an enablement site provides a gamified experience with trails that guide learners through topics in a particular order. Let’s say Pure Aloe is creating a new trail that teaches learners how to log expense reports with a new internal app. They want the trail to first explain what expense reports are, and then walk learners through the steps to submit an expense report. A trail can cover those learning topics in the appropriate order.
Lastly, an enablement site content needs ongoing maintenance, which means it’s up to content creators and release managers to make sure all the information they publish is current, accurate, and complete. Regular maintenance is key to maintaining trust with learners. At Salesforce, we update our content each time we release a new version of our software.
Develop Your Strategy
Is your brain buzzing with all the awesome ideas you have for putting an enablement site to work for your company? We think it’s pretty cool, too, and we’re eager for you to get started. There’s some important work that we recommend you do before you turn your content creators loose: Develop a content strategy.
Strategy sounds like a fancy corporate buzzword, we know, but we only bring it up because we think it’ll make your content development job easier.
A content strategy determines how you plan, create, and maintain content so that it supports your company’s mission and remains relevant, reliable, and high-quality. We think this is the most important first step to designing a top-notch enablement site experience because when your audience doesn’t get what they want from content, they get bored, confused, or frustrated.
Whose job is it to develop a content strategy? Anyone who’s passionate about enabling others and wants their peers and partners to succeed is helpful, but if you have the resources for formal content development, lean on them! Pure Aloe has some awesome people on their team to help with this task. Romina, a content creator who specializes in enablement strategy, previously collaborated with Joseph to help set up the different content collections for different groups of learners. She already has some ideas about content strategy, and getting the right content to the right people. There’s also Cindy, a content creator who specializes in writing, who knows a thing or two about content.
Speaking of the audience, let’s talk about that next.
Know Your Audience
Your audience should guide your content strategy. While Romina and Cindy are working on their content strategy, they’re trying to make sure that the right people can access the right content at the right time. They put their heads together and realize that identifying these important points helps them better know their audience and refine their content strategy.
- Determine which users they’re writing for: all internal employees, some specific business units, or even some external users such as partners or customers.
- Understand those learners’ pain points.
- Assess those learners’ goals.
- Identify those learners’ expertise and responsibilities.
The topic itself always determines the tone you use to address your audience. Are you teaching new employees about your corporate social network? You want a fun, inviting tone. Anti-harassment training for employees? Strictly business, skip the humor.
You can also support multiple unique audiences from your enablement site, each with access to their own specialized content, by publishing content in different content collections and giving different users permission to access those different collections. To learn more, check out Enablement Site Configuration.
Content à la Mode
To help explain content strategy, let’s look at a relatable metaphor: an ice-cream cone.
Content strategy comprises three common user mindsets, or modes: learn, do, and update. The learn mode does similar work as the cone: provides a foundation for a satisfying experience. This module focuses on the learn mode because learning is what most people come to Trailhead for, and what most of your learners will come to your enablement site for. Heck, you’re in learn mode right now: You’re learning about the fundamentals of content strategy so that when it comes time to implement your strategy, you’re ready to go.
Generally, people are in learn mode when they’re taking time out of their day to enhance their knowledge and skills. Learn-mode content isn’t meant to be used as an instant job aid. It’s for users who want to improve their job performance or get the lowdown on a feature that they haven’t used before.
When you develop a content strategy, think about when your audience is in each of these modes. They won’t always be learning. Sometimes learners want to build a foundation of knowledge about a business model (learn). Other times they want to know how to submit a request for time off (do). And sometimes they want to know what’s changed in their benefits package (update). Consider these modes when planning what types of content you’ll create.
Romina and Cindy plan to use learn mode as a springboard for users. They know that when users are in learn mode, they’re looking for a jumping-off point that engages and guides them. Learners want to quickly master the basics before challenging themselves with more advanced content.
Content Strategy Checklist
You’re now ready to get started crafting your own content strategy. Use these guidelines to outline your content goals.
- Define your target audience. Are you writing for beginners or experts? Are they marketers or admins? Are they looking for soft skills or core skills?
- Audit what’s already out there. Do any resources already exist for your topic? How are people currently learning this information?
- Decide content structure. Do you need one module or four? A trail? Multiple trails? Multiple content collections for different audiences, each with their own trails and modules?
- Identify stakeholders. Who are the key players involved in creating and approving the content?
- Plan for content localization. Do you want to translate your content for any of the languages that an enablement site supports?
- Maintain your content. How will you ensure your content remains accurate and relevant?
