You’ve probably heard a lot about instructional designers lately — they’re the folks responsible for creating online learning modules, applications for learning, data visualizations, games, stories, which are all intended to produce an interactive and memorable experience for the audience.
But did you know that the skills that instructional designers bring to the table can be leveraged to greatly enhance your content marketing efforts?
We live in a day and age where content marketing is helping the consumer learn through informational pieces, not branding messages. In fact, business-to-business customers “are usually 60% of the way through the buying process before they ever contact a sales person.”
Instructional designers can help increase your content marketing efforts by educating your audience through engaging media.
Want to find out more? Here are three ways you can use instructional design to supercharge your content marketing efforts.
Instructional designers understand how people learn
Instructional designers are well versed in learning models and theories such as humanism, constructivism and behaviorism cognitivism. As such, instructional designers are experienced in applying these models and theories and craft content that is memorable, informative, engaging and effective calls to action.
Instructional design firms and designers also understand learning strategies that are effective for a specific audience. They use this expertise to help in designing robust learning programs for niche audiences.
For example, some training consultants use their instructional design skills to ensure the right content, interactivity level and technology fit for the specific audience you are targeting.
Instructional designers know how to engage audiences
The main role of an instructional designer is “to take the most important information about a particular topic and package it in a way that will engage the intended audience and make the information memorable.”
So, how do instructional designers make content engaging?
Instructional design firms and designers understand the computer and human interaction more than most people. They’re familiar with even the simplest of details that make reading and viewing content on a device screen different from viewing content in books or on paper.
According to digitalwits.com, instructional designers know how we best interact with computers and develop content marketing and engagement strategies around them.
These habits include how much we comprehend while reading on a screen as oppose to hard copy, what the most believable typeface is (Baskerville) and what side of the screen we spend the most time reading on (65% on the left, 25% on the right).
Instructional designers provide insight into how cognitive overload on the web can be avoided by balancing interactivity of content, with the right text and proper design elements. Instructional designers use these nuances in human-computer interaction to create digital content that will make the most impact on the mind of the reader.
Also, consider this scenario — while creating content for a client that deals with tornado relief, instructional designers come up with interactive graphics allowing users to change specific variables like wind speed, wind shear, temperature or humidity within the lower or upper atmosphere, in turn changing the resultant intensity of a tornado along with safety tips when a specific tornado is headed your way.
Changes incorporated by the use on the given graphic will change the result and it does not really end there. Instructional designers then write the most compelling storylines to ensure the cool graphics done are well understood.
Lastly, adding interactive elements inside a customer experience helps ensure that the audience finds your content engaging and valuable. Interactive courses online ensure that customers are drawn into some experience as you converse with them to guarantee the information has been well understood. Furthermore, the importance of visual information is vital to content marketing and engaging your audience.
Consider these stats from Wishpond:
Instructional designers help save marketing dollars
Instructional design firms and designers are not just serving those with big budgets and big requests. They also create very professional content using e-learning methods, infographics, animations and video for businesses with low budgets.
With instructional design, you’re only putting out the best and most engaging content, so there isn’t any waste and a great return on investment (ROI).
Instructional designers are very resourceful and highly creative and the content created, such as interactive videos, rival any done by the most expensive equipment. No matter what kind of a budget a business has, these creative individuals will come up with very creative content.
Remember lots of brands have already incorporated instructional design strategies and seeing very effective content for their marketing as a result. Don’t be left behind, particularly if you are serious about ensuring your audience is well educated.
