Where do you start with developing a content strategy? This 16-module programme led by Tracy Playle takes you step by step through the process of designing a content strategy for your school, college or university. Whether you’re about to embark on a website redevelopment, or just want a more strategic approach to content, this course is for you.

Led by Tracy Playle

How do you build an email strategy that reaches your audience with the right information at the right time? Delivered by co-author of “Mailed It”, this course offers a step by step approach to building your email messaging strategy, from identifying your audience timeline and needs, to writing emails that convert.

Led by Day Kibilds

How do you take the principles of content strategy and make them work for social media engagement? While social media might be just another channel, it also carries with it some unique challenges. This course shows how to take the approach to developing a content strategy and make it work for social media engagement.

Led by Mikki Collins

Humans love and thrive on stories. From the dawn of time we have connected as communities because of our ability to tell great stories. In this course we explore the power and neuroscience of storytelling, storytelling structures and techniques, and show examples of outstanding storytelling from the education sector and beyond.  

Led by John Hill and Tracy Playle

Is your organisation adopting content design? This user-focused approach helps education and skills organisations better serve their audiences by meeting them where they’re at. This course is your starting point, whether you’re curious about content design, want to apply its principles to your work, or aim to become a content creator. Learn how to get started with confidence.

Led by Dana Rock

Take your content design skills to the next level with this intermediate course. Explore deeper user research, inclusive design, visual design impact, content crits and stakeholder collaboration. Learn how to apply more advanced content design techniques to improve user experience and organisational effectiveness, ensuring your content truly meets audience needs.

Led by Dana Rock

Take your content design expertise further with this advanced course. Explore experience design, AI’s role in content creation, and how to apply mental models for deeper user engagement. With a focus on community-driven learning and hands-on activities, you’ll gain the tools to create meaningful, effective content that truly resonates with your audience.

Led by Dana Rock

Effective stakeholder engagement is key to aligning content strategy with institutional goals and securing buy-in. This course covers stakeholder mapping, prioritisation and engagement techniques, plus strategies for maintaining strong relationships. You’ll also learn how to navigate difficult conversations with confidence, ensuring productive and positive outcomes.

Led by Tracy Playle

Understanding your audience is key to creating user-centred content and effective strategies. This course introduces audience research essentials, covering methods like surveys, focus groups and interviews. Learn how to plan research, follow data guidelines and communicate its value to stakeholders - ensuring your content is based on real insights, not assumptions.

Led by Dr Florence Largilliere

Take your audience research skills further by exploring methods tailored to your content goals. This course covers snapshot studies, deep dives, discovery research and evaluations, helping you adapt approaches to your needs and resources. Learn how to break silos, support institutional strategy and apply ethnographic techniques to gain deeper audience insights.

Led by Dr Florence Largilliere

Understanding your audience is key to content strategy, but how do you turn insights into action? This course explores journey and empathy mapping - helping you visualise audience needs, behaviours and experiences. Learn how to create useful, impactful maps that drive engagement, support decision-making and ensure your content meets users where they are.

Led by Robert Perry

Content governance is key to planning, producing and maintaining content effectively. Strong governance enables strategic decision-making, optimises resources and ensures content stays accurate and up to date. This course covers governance essentials - people, processes, policies and platforms - helping you create smoother, more effective content operations.

Led by Tracy Playle

How do you build the right content team for your organisation? This course helps you assess team size, roles, structures and skills while involving team members in the process. Learn how to evaluate resources, identify skill gaps and make strategic decisions that ensure your content team is set up for success - delivering impact while feeling empowered and supported to thrive.

Led by Robert Perry

Content can be chaotic at scale, leading to issues with consistency, accuracy and efficiency. Structured content offers a way forward, enabling better management, engagement and impact. This course introduces the principles of structured content, showing how to rethink content as reusable “chunks” rather than pages to improve strategy, UX and SEO.

Led by Tracy Playle

Learn how to structure content for flexibility and sustainability with this introduction to content modelling. This course covers domain mapping, content types and building a content model, equipping you to design, implement and evolve structured content in your organisation. Gain practical skills to create content that is organised, scalable and machine-readable.

Led by Tracy Playle

Learn how to design and maintain taxonomies that improve content organisation and discoverability. This course covers taxonomy fundamentals, research, governance and maintenance, equipping you with scalable, flexible strategies aligned with user needs and business goals. Through hands-on activities, gain practical skills to create structured, effective classification systems.

Led by Dana Rock

Creating great content is just the first step - how do you know if it’s working? This course covers content measurement essentials, from defining success and valuable metrics to setting benchmarks and refining over time. Learn how to align content with strategic goals, create usable reports and make data-driven improvements to ensure your content delivers impact.

Led by Robert Perry

A 5-week programme launching on 3 March 2025 with a new module each week. Join us for the highly practical and hands-on programme that every education and skills organisation needs right now. Achieve greater marketing impact with limited resource. Reverse the market downturn for your organisation. Develop institutional courage to make your brand stand out.

Led by Tracy Playle with guest tutors

Join a guest leader from across the education sector and content industry every month for a 2-hour long deep dive skills workshop. Keep your CPD topped up, stay on top of latest trends and transformational thinking. Missed a session? Catch up on sessions you’ve missed in our on-demand archive.

Join a different speaker every month for a 1-hour long live skills session to bring you up to date on existing skills, and help you to develop new ones. Our webinar format is designed just for premium members to learn and get questions answered. Missed a session? Catch up on sessions you’ve missed in our on-demand archive.

Unsure what skills you need to develop next? Don’t know what you don’t know? Our skills assessment tool has been designed for content, marketing and communications professionals to be able to self-assess their current knowledge and use the personalised report to help inform your CPD plan for the next steps in your growth.

Working on developing your content strategy and plan? Or designing a new content marketing campaign? We offer a wide range of downloadable templates for you to use - or adapt to your own use - as you build and develop your own content strategies and plans. Many accompany our training too.

Our ever-growing case studies library features examples of best practice - including a range of ContentEd award winning entries - from across the education and related sectors. From large content marketing campaigns, to small but meaningful changes that created an impact. Learn from others in the sector and share your own.

We’re constantly on the look out for additional learning resources, case studies and sources of inspiration that are relevant to our members. From content marketing to AI, email marketing to content strategy. Learn from the podcasts, books and resources that we recommend to you in our recommended resources library.

Every month we host a live problem solving discussion. We don’t record this conversations, so you can feel secure in showing up and really sharing what’s on your mind. Troubleshoot solutions with peers across the sector, get creative together in co-creating new ideas, and share what’s working and not working for you.

From the flagship ContentEd conference, to our special online conferences and events. From coaching programmes to specialist live training programmes. Join in with all other ContentEd events and activities and receive an additional premium members exclusive discount with every booking that you make.