5 Copywriting And Content Marketing Lessons For L&D Pros

There are some great things L&D pros can learn from copywriters…

And some absolutely amazing things L&D pros do that content marketers need to do more.

I know because I’ve had a foot in both worlds for the last four years.

And I was given the opportunity to talk through them both on Sarah Cannistra ’s wonderful podcast - The Overnight Trainer.

So, I thought I’d share some of the big lessons with you in this issue of How People Learn Now.

1. Get off the content hamster wheel

Is another piece of content really the answer? Or the best use of your time?

One of the biggest content marketing pitfalls is ending up in the cycle of churning out more and more content. Wrapping up one thing, moving onto the next - repeat.

And it stops us from doing a few things: Distributing, repurposing, optimising and updating.

I see L&D falling into the same traps pretty often.

But think about the nature of the 80/20 rule. It’s likely that the majority of your content views and impact will come from a minority of content.

So if you spent time maybe optimising that content, so it was more applicable to the context or building it up based on feedback that people gave you, you would probably have more impact than if you simply went back on the hamster wheel of creating again.?

2. L&D does this one thing far better than most marketers...

It’s knowing when you’re not the expert and bringing in someone who is.

Our bread and butter is that we're good at content writing or we're good at L&D, but we also have to try to be experts in all these other things…

And what L&D pros do better than most content marketers is accept when they’re not an expert in something and speak to an expert instead.

Most content marketers and copywriters just go full steam ahead, blag it, and pretend they know about X, Y or Z.

And it means they create a lot of content that adds little value but contributes to a lot of noise.

So, this is the biggest thing I’ve taken from L&D and please keep doing it!

Learn how to scale L&D with marketing in our free WTF Bootcamp.

3. Good content adds value, bad content hides or misses out the value

This is the simplest way I can put it - when people come to content, they have some goal, question or problem they need your help with.

A good piece of content makes the value clear, signposting it, and making the content easy to navigate.

A bad piece of content either doesn’t meet their intent or makes it hard to find what they need.

• Use subheadings.
• Use short sentences so they can skim.
• Add the value up front.

These simple rules will help! And so will writing content outside of its final form or location.

Write it in a Google Doc, edit it and then bring it over - I guarantee this will stop you brain dumping into your content.?

4. Done is better than perfect when it comes to content

I used to be a perfectionist… Until I realised perfectionism with content meant:?

?? Delays in knowing what works and what doesn’t.

?? Missed opportunities for things that are time sensitive.

?? And a loss of much needed momentum.

Yes, we can spend months on a super polished video, bringing in an animator.

But what if we recorded a Loom video instead? Done in two minutes, uploaded in five and ready to make a difference for our current problems…

Do the former and it might be four months before we add it to our YouTube channel, learning space or support centre.?

But that's four months of people not being able to solve problems.?

So done is better than perfect is a mindset that works - IF we set ourself minimum quality standards.

Ultimately, if it's going to solve a problem that we're facing right now, creating it quicker will be more helpful than delaying it and going through red tape to make sure it's meeting all of these arbitrary requirements.?

5. Most content titles suck! Here’s how to fix them

I don’t like to be that blunt but I'm doing it because I care!

Loads of good content never gets found because the title is an afterthought.

Here’s a simple framework I learned from the book The Art Of The Click by Glenn Fisher.

The Four U’s: Unique, Ultra-Specific, Useful and Urgent (or think of it as time sensitive).

And the goal isn’t to shoehorn all of them in, but to use enough of the elements to make the value clear to a potential user or reader.

The more you do this, the more it will become instinct, and the less you’ll need the framework.

But I’ve absolutely seen non-copywriters benefit from using The Four U’s - and ultimately, it’ll help content be found and used, meaning you have more impact.

Want to check out the full episode?

We discussed loads more in the episode too.

From why the academic writing approach is bad for us day to day, how to bake in content writing opportunities, and much more.

Listen on Sarah’s website.

Find it on Spotify.

Check it out on Apple Podcasts.