Article

Workshops, tutorials, lessons, and posts. Naming things is hard.

Joel Hooks
Joel Hooks ยท 29 August, 2024

We use some internal definitions for various content containers in our information architecture, and I wanted to jot them down here just so we are on the same page because the words are common and carry different meanings:

  • workshop: these are paywalled offerings. they can be live or self-paced. often they start as live and are then produced as self-paced, but that is not required.
  • tutorial: self-paced and free, but shaped like a workshop otherwise
  • lesson: tutorials and workshops are containers lessons. we often use "triplets" for lessons, so they are a "problem" video, an "exercise" for the learner to do, and a "solution" video demonstrating how the teacher would solve it
  • post: article or one off video (like you'd post to youtube)

posts are the great because they are lower effort and are highly shareable while boosting SEO. there can't be too many quality posts in our opinion. https://www.totaltypescript.com/articles - these are all written, but I see stand alone videos as very similar. the platform can accept either

tutorials are excellent "lead magnets" and require more effort basically being a series of related "posts" or "lessons". Tutorials help build up your email list, which is where the vast majority of sales come from. https://www.totaltypescript.com/tutorials - these are contextually related to the subject matter and often "intro" level

workshops are the product, both in the live and self-paced formats. In most cases we are "bundling" several self-paced workshops into the product we are selling, but that isn't required.

here's some lower level back-story to our IA approach with some interesting research of you like to nerd-out like that https://badass.dev/information-architecture

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