It’s very important to give your audience a context for your content so they can actually use your information. The definition of a context is a set of circumstances, facts, definitions that surrounds the particular event, situation or a set of information that gives it meaning.

I learned this the hard way several years ago when I led my first workshop. I began the training and realized half the audience didn’t even know what I was talking about, eyes began to glaze over. They did not have the context for the content I was presenting. I spent all the breaks teaching them the definitions of what they needed to know to make my information usable and relevant. It was exhausting and those people were overwhelmed with information.

By giving your audience the context for your information, which is your content, you’re really making it user friendly. You want people to use your information or it’s really useless as a product. Later on they might even buy more products from you, but they can’t continue to learn from you if they weren’t able to use the first product.

The word context comes from the Latin word ‘contextus’, which means to join together, to give a structure or a framework upon which to hang your information. It gives your content the necessary background information for it to be used. Think of it as connecting the dots for your audience, rather than having a bunch of disconnected information.

It’s important to remember that people can get easily bored, distracted and, most of all, easily discouraged. You’ve got to get your audience on the same page, so they have the basic foundation to use your information product. This reduces boredom and discouragement at the first sign of not knowing what you’re talking about.

It’s your job to help people use your content and to engage them. You must step out of your own head, out of your own experience and look at your information from the eyes of a brand new person to your information, from the perspective of a newbie.

A good exercise when beginning to create a product is write down all the definitions, facts, circumstances and frameworks surrounding your information that somebody brand new to it needs to actually use it. When you start this exercise really step back to before you knew the information yourself and become the observer.

“Information is a source of learning. But unless it is organized, processed, and available to the right people in a format for decision making, it is a burden, not a benefit.” – William Pollard