Microcontent: Saving You Time

Derek Nichols

Microcontent is here and today we’re taking a look at what it is and how it can add some efficiency to your help search.Time. We’re always short on it, right? We understand your time is valuable and sometimes sifting through pages and pages of help content to find that specific thing you’re looking for can be a drag. Thankfully, we may have a solution for you. Microcontent.

In fact, some of you may have been seeing it lately in the help files without even known what it was. So, let’s start at the beginning here and introduce you to our continually expanding initiative.

What is Microcontent?
Before we show it off and get to the whys and hows of Microcontent, we should first explain what it is in a broad sense.

In basic terms, microcontent can be anything in written/video/image form that can be consumed very quickly. We’re talking like 10-30 seconds quickly. With the average attention span getting less and less, it’s becoming more important to get to the point. Think of Google’s snippets, but only less.

Through Microcontent, we can convey key/important details not only in a much more concise way, but you can get to it faster, have an easier time sharing it out, and even find an accompanying link to take you to the corresponding page for more details if you want it.

How does this apply to Blackbaud’s Education management help?
So, now that you have an understanding of Microcontent, how have we started integrating it into the Help Center? Some of you may have already seen it in action. Now, keep in mind that we’re continually rolling out new instances of Microcontent. So, while it may be limited now, keep an eye out as we continue to expand our offerings.

Many of the products already have a handful of Microcontent offerings and can be found by using Search within the Online Help Center. So, for this demo, let’s focus in on Enrollment management. Let’s say you’re searching for documentation on the Committee Review feature.
This is what you’ll now see as the first thing in the search results:



This Microcontent intends to give you a snapshot of what it is without needing to click into anything first. Need a quick answer? Microcontent has your back. In this case, if you want to know more, the link is there to take you to the full topic.

In closing…
As great as Microcontent can be, it isn’t the end all, be all of our help center. Yes, Microcontent can help you get quick answers to basic questions, but it won’t give you all the details or provide step by step instructions on how to do something. Thankfully, Microcontent works hand in hand with our existing help files, so whether you need a quick answer or want something more long form, we have you covered.

We hope you enjoyed this behind the scenes look and that it comes in handy for you. In fact, let us know what potential topics you feel would benefit from having Microcontent added.