Do you sometimes feel like you’re publishing content without a clear plan? Do you have content providers who provide content but you never know when its arriving or what content it is about to arrive?
You’re not alone. Many organisations, particularly in Learning and Development (L&D), face this challenge.
But that’s where a content roadmap comes in. You need to consider the development of an elearning content roadmap.
Take a look at these stats:
- Market Growth: The elearning market is projected to reach $400 billion by 2026—that’s a lot of growth, reflecting the rising demand for online training programs. (Source: elearningindustry.com)
- Corporate Adoption: Over 90% of corporations use elearning for employee training, underscoring its effectiveness for professional development. (Source: elearningindustry.com)
- Learning Efficiency: elearning can cut learning time by 40% to 60% compared to traditional classroom training. (Source: elearningindustry.com)
A content roadmap is more than just a schedule or a list of courses. It’s a way to ensure your content matches your organisational goals.
Whether you’re creating it in-house or sourcing externally, having a roadmap helps everything stay on track.
Why is a Content Roadmap Important?
A content roadmap connects your content to your organisation’s goals.
By understanding your strategic objectives and skill gaps, you can plan content that addresses them. You don’t need to invest in complex dashboard software. The roadmap can be something that you develop and manage in Google Sheets or Excel.
The important part is that you’ve got visibility on the content that you are planning to publish across the organisation. The use of a roadmap will help you understand when you are publishing, to who, what and what’s missing.
The roadmap ensures content is relevant, aligns with business priorities, and helps manage budgets and resources.
It also promotes transparency.
When you share the roadmap with stakeholders like IT, Marketing, and Leadership, everyone knows what’s coming, who’s responsible, and how it supports the business.
Your roadmap can include all of the communication that you are going to share, this can be email newsletters, courses, whitepapers, video and animation – this will help you analyse whether you are pushing out too much information. You’ll want to avoid information overload.
Communicate the Content Roadmap to Stakeholders
Once the roadmap is defined, it’s vital to communicate it with all key stakeholders.
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- L&D Teams: Aligning the roadmap with L&D helps them prepare resources, plan training sessions, and roll out materials. It also enables them to spot gaps in skills or content coverage.
- Marketing Teams: Marketing is essential for promoting content to the right audience. By sharing the roadmap with marketing, they’re ready to create internal communications, newsletters, or campaigns that amplify your content’s reach. This consistency across communication channels keeps the message consistent.
- Executive Teams: With executive buy-in, content priorities align with broader business goals. It also gives leadership visibility into progress and helps allocate resources.
- IT: Ensure that IT knows if new content needs to be uploaded or pushed out. You don’t want to miss a key deadline.
Regular updates to the roadmap and clear communication are key to keeping everyone aligned and engaged with the content strategy.
Listen to the feedback that you get from your teams. Don’t try to do too much.
Key Components of an Elearning Content Roadmap
A solid content roadmap includes several key elements:
- Objectives: Clearly defined learning goals that guide content development or procurement.
- Content Types: This includes materials like videos, animation, Email newsletters, simulations, and PDF/Whitepapers, tailored to learning goals and audience needs. Microlearning can also be part of this, providing flexible, bite-sized content.
- Delivery Methods: Combe online and in-person.
- Timelines: Clear milestones and deadlines for content creation and rollout.
- Stakeholders: Everyone involved in the process, from subject matter experts to IT support.
- Assessment Strategies: How are you measuring? You might start LMS completion rates or email open rates.
- Feedback Mechanisms: Opportunities for learners to provide input, think about user survey.
Scott Hewitt shares his experience “ensure that you align elearning content with business goals, real needs, and stakeholder input, avoid assumptions.”
Defining Your Strategic Goals
The first thing you need to do when creating your content roadmap is make sure everything is aligned with your organisation’s strategic goals.
This means understanding the skills your teams need, identifying the gaps, and figuring out how your content can support business objectives.
What are the key priorities for the organisation this year? What skills will help drive success? Once you’ve got clarity on that, you can start figuring out what content is needed to fill those gaps.
The goal is to ensure that your content roadmap isn’t based on assumptions, but directly supports the organisation’s needs. To do this you’ll need to get out into the business and speak to people.
It’s also vital to keep the conversation going with the relevant stakeholders—L&D, HR, marketing, and executive teams.
The clearer you are on these strategic priorities, the easier it will be to develop content that aligns with the organisation’s goals.
Share the document. Don’t create it and never use it again!
Scott Hewitt shared, “An elearning content roadmap should include dates, stakeholders, content types, locations, and the skills needed. The content should align with the organisation’s goals, focusing on what’s actually required, not just assumptions.”
Target Audience and Distribution Channels
Once your content is ready, it’s time to define your target audience.
You might be working for a multinational company. Are you targeting specific departments, companies, locations, or roles?
Defining this ensures your content is tailored and impactful.
You might want to think about the type of content that you want to deliver. For example microlearning.
Microlearning is great for mobile-based training, with 70% of learners preferring it (Forbes).
Distribution is just as important—how will you deliver the content? Via email, an LMS, or third-party platforms?
You’ll also need to set clear delivery dates, this helps keep everything moving forward.
Scott Hewitt’s Insight:
“How do you define your target audience effectively? Have you identified key user groups within your business, and how will you ensure that your content resonates with them? Are you targeting the right locations, departments, or roles with specific learning needs?”
When you start it can feel that there is a lot to define and capture. If you feel like this, work at a high level before you get into the details.
Managing Content and Identifying Gaps
Your content roadmap is a living document that needs to be actively managed.
Categorising content by business units or themes helps you spot gaps.
You can track performance metrics such as email open rates or LMS completion rates to measure effectiveness and make adjustments as needed. This comes after you’ve started deploying content, but it can be helpful to think about how you can measure impact.
For example, if engagement drops or learners disengage halfway through a course, this could point to technical or usability issues.
Using insights from your LMS data can help identify problems and make adjustments.
You don’t need complex tools—Google Sheets or Excel are great for tracking simple metrics like activity and drop-off points.
Scott Hewitt’s Insight:
“How do you track your content’s effectiveness? Are you using data to identify engagement or drop-off points, and do you have the right stakeholders involved to ensure the right content is being created?”
Collaboration and Timelines
Collaboration with stakeholders across marketing, sales, product, customer support, and L&D teams is crucial.
Set realistic timelines to avoid delays and make sure content is delivered on time.
The roadmap should be shared regularly, ensuring everyone stays aligned and knows when content will be released.
Transparency helps all teams understand the broader strategy and their role in it.
Get Started Now
A content roadmap is more than a schedule—it’s a strategic tool that you can be using and sharing with colleagues.
You’ll get feedback when you share the document, and this might be challenging, but you use the feedback positively. It will help with deployment, delivery and getting the right content out into the organisation.
By defining clear objectives, targeting the right audience, and setting realistic timelines, you can ensure your content strategy remains impactful.
If you don’t have a roadmap then start today.
What content do you need to meet your business goals? You can even start using it today. Don’t spend months building a roadmap before you use it, you’ll probably be changing and adapting the roadmap as you use it.
Think about how you will deliver the roadmap, how will you measure its success?
By answering these questions and using data-driven insights, you’ll be well on your way to building a content strategy that works for your organisation.
You’ll read posts on LinkedIn and Industry websites about content and content marketing that there is too much content. A content roadmap will help you deliver the right content to the right audience.
Whether you’re focusing on traditional content formats or embracing innovative solutions like microlearning, your roadmap will help guide the way forward, keeping your training aligned with modern business needs.
This includes considering both internal content development and external publishers to ensure all options are explored.
Questions
Q: What is a learning roadmap?
A: A learning roadmap is a strategic plan that outlines the learning objectives, content, and delivery methods over time. It helps organisations map out the skills and knowledge they want to develop and ensures the right resources are in place to meet these goals.
Q: What are the 4 stages of eLearning?
A: The 4 stages of eLearning typically include:
- Designing: Planning and structuring the course content.
- Development: Creating the actual learning materials.
- Delivery: Deploying the course to learners.
- Evaluation: Assessing learning outcomes and gathering feedback for improvements.
Q: What is elearning content?
A: Elearning content refers to educational materials delivered online. This includes videos, quizzes, off the shelf courses, custom courses, microlearning, simulations, and interactive exercises. It’s designed to engage learners and provide knowledge through digital platforms like Learning Management Systems (LMS).
Q: How do you write eLearning content?
A: Writing elearning content involves:
- Defining clear learning objectives.
- Structuring content to meet those objectives.
- Ensuring content is interactive and engaging.
- Using multimedia elements like images, videos, and quizzes.
- Keeping the language clear, concise, and learner-friendly.
