Tomorrow’s training departments will be content factories, and trainers will be media curators and creators. The first article in this series suggested that the training profession can learn a few tricks from the broadcast and newspaper industries. The second article recommended three ways a training department can adopt professional newsroom practices to become a content factory. This article explores the first way: professionalizing digital learning content in the training department by establishing editorial standards and developing a production discipline.

A lot of trainers think that making media is about dropping slide decks into a software program and adding a voice-over, or adding zoom effects to still images and then calling it video. But we’re talking about content produced almost at the quality of a TV or radio segment or text written like published articles. It takes professionalism to consistently create such content, but it’s this level of professionalism that leads people to consume content.

Editorial Standards for Learning Content

People don’t buy their favorite magazine because they like the paper it’s printed on. They buy it for its journalism, editorial philosophy and voice. Turn on the TV, and you’ll know within a few seconds if you’re watching CNN, HGTV or the Food Network. Each program on the channel has a consistent style.

How would learners in your organization describe the voice and style of your digital learning content? Is it immediately recognizable because it follows a consistent style and level of quality?

Editorial standards ensure your content has a consistent voice and standard of quality and help build your training department’s brand in the organization. Here are three steps you can take to establish robust editorial standards for your learning content.

1. Develop an editorial guide. The BBC has a thick book called the BBC Editorial Guidelines. Some employees have called it “The Brick” because the book was very thick. You probably don’t need a brick, but you should at least have a document describing minimum standards for accuracy, decency, ethics, sourcing content from external organizations, sharing content across borders and learning principles.For example: How many times should content be checked before being published? Does certain content need to reference peer-reviewed journals? How do you distinguish opinions from facts? Is there a standard that curated content needs to meet before you share it? And how do you link to it? How does curated content affect legal policies in your organization? How do you ensure content created in North America is culturally and linguistically accessible to learners in Asia or Europe?
2. Create a style guide. Following a style guide and sticking to it matters more than which style guide you follow. Traditional style guides describe conventions for everything from writing headlines and developing a story structure to how to use certain words.In multi-modal, multi-platform training departments, the style guide needs to go beyond words. It should include grammatical conventions for video, audio and graphics. What font should captions use? Where should they appear on the screen, and for how long? Should the logo appear for a few moments or be displayed throughout a video? What’s the optimum length for content? Is there a standard “intro” and “outro” for podcasts? Is a particular piece of music required? What story structure should you follow? How do you highlight key learning points?
3. Build a review process. Editorial guidelines and style guides are useless if they’re not followed. Consider creating a review process to ensure each piece of content is reviewed before it is published. Create a checklist, and consider appointing someone to review all content. If you prefer a more informal approach, have peers review each other’s work against the checklist.

Developing Production Discipline

Ensuring digital learning content look professional requires production discipline. Here are three ways to develop production discipline.

1. Make planning compulsory. Planning will probably make the most difference in consistently producing better content and doing it more quickly. It reduces mistakes and saves time, because there are fewer mistakes to correct. It also ensures editorial consistency by making key decisions early. But planning is often the first thing we skip. Develop a culture where “winging it” when creating media content is seen as unprofessional.
2. Buy the right equipment. A lot of organizations overspend or underspend on equipment. Few find the sweet spot in the middle. Avoid decking out your department with expensive cameras, audio recorders and editing software sold to you on the premise of offering a huge range of functions. Bells and whistles don’t make quality content; people do. Also avoid buying equipment with auto-functions. Manual functions may seem difficult at first, but they are easy to learn and practice, and they give you control over your content.
3. Develop production skills. Make sure trainers learn to use cameras, microphones and software properly. The number of skills to learn can feel overwhelming at first, but practice makes good habits. Ensure trainers also learn how to set editorial objectives, plan content and review it. Later in this series, we’ll explore the key competencies trainers should develop to produce professional content.

Professionalizing digital learning content by establishing clear editorial standards and developing the right production disciplines will help your training department become a digital media powerhouse. It will ensure the content is top quality, and it will speed up the production process.

Of course, professionalization isn’t the only thing to speed up production and ensure consistently high quality. Professionalism goes hand-in-hand with workflow. The next article in this series will explore how a good workflow keeps professionalism on track.