I Came, I Saw, I Learned...

Collaborative Learning: Strengthen Your Team

by AJ George

 

A group of your team members has just wrapped up some training. Now that the learning is finished, it's time to get right to work, right? Wrong! The training itself is just the first step. Read on for what to do after the formal training to ensure that the real learning begins.

 

If You're in Management

 

While it can be a distraction when your employees are busy "Liking" Lady Gaga, now is not necessarily the time to crack down on social media at work. Instead, consider embracing social media to see what it can do for you and your team. Use SharePoint. Use Google Docs. Use wikis. Use Facebook. Use LinkedIn. Use something that allows your team to congregate and collaborate.

According to July's T+D magazine, Millennials will make up more than half of the workforce in the next five years. Increasingly, not only will access to collaborative learning strengthen your team, but those Millennials who will be taking over your workforce, they'll expect it. To illustrate this, below is a chart outlining the respondents who answered "high" or "very high" when asked to what extent social media tools helped them to achieve tasks at work (you can click the image for a larger view).

Image source: www.astd.org.

If You're the Trainee

Have a question? Ask it! Know an answer? Share it! Many students rely on their instructor after the class if they need more assistance, but don't seem to take into account that the instructor is just one person. Why rely on just that one person if there is an entire network of people who could help you? Knowledge is one of the few assets that people are willing to pass along to other people, not only willingly, but happily. If you took your training class with fellow team members, hopefully you have some sort of shared workspace at your office where you can collaborate freely. If not, all is not lost. Ask your instructor how you can connect with fellow students after the class. Often training companies have Facebook or Twitter networks that they would love for you to join and add to the conversation. If not a network, perhaps your instructor maintains a blog with archived articles that you could search. Don't forget to check the blog comments for helpful feedback from people in your same situation.

If You're the Trainer

Don't let the training be the end of the communication with your students. Follow-up with students and outline exactly what they should have learned from the course. Believe me, if your students feel they didn't learn it all, they'll let you know.

Provide a link to your blog and make sure you are diligent about responding to your blog comments. Invite students to become a fan on Facebook, but be sure not to drop the ball. Respond to any questions thoroughly and promptly to foster a reciprocal community. Direct students to your Twitter account so you can keep them updated with all things related to the field and pass along useful information.

As your class wraps up, this is not the time to bombard your students with sales pitches. However, if you offer additional learning in the field (an advanced class perhaps), make sure students know about it.

Still not convinced that collaborative learning could make your team all that and a bag of chips? Check out this list of 44 Benefits of Collaborative Learning from the Global Development Research Centre. I'd love to hear how you are using collaborative learning, please leave your comments below.

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About the author: AJ George is IconLogic's lead Technical Writer and author of both "PowerPoint 2007: The Essentials" and "PowerPoint 2008 for the Macintosh: The Essentials." You can follow AJ on Twitter at http://twitter.com/andrayajgeorge.

More Social Media Marketing Tips

by AJ George

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about an excellent online Social Media Marketing course I took. Since then my interest has really been piqued (and my number of Twitter followers has jumped from just 5 to more than 100). I thought I might share a few more of the social media marketing tactics I'd learned through my Twitter connections.

Become a Yahoo Answers Source of Knowledge

Often when I have a question, I'll run a Google search on my query and one of the top results will typically be someone else with the same question on Yahoo Answers. If you are knowledgeable in your field, why not be the one answering the questions on topics that matter to you? Doing so will help improve back-links to your site and increase your Google SEO. For more tips on building traffic with Yahoo Answers, click here.

Track your Website Strength and Social Media Presence

If you're going to be doing marketing online you're going to want to know how well your hard work is paying off and how far-reaching your online presence is. Luckily there are some great free tools to help you do this. During the early stages of your social media marketing plan, use a website SEO grader like this one to see how your website stacks up and what you can do to improve its ranking. Also check out this site to analyze your social media presence. Check back to these sites often to see your progress as you expand your brand.

Target your Twitter Audience Using Advanced Google Searching

If you're just starting out in the Twitterverse (or are looking to expand your reach quickly) finding followers who are in your niche market, and who will actually care what you have to tweet about, can be a daunting task. Twitter's basic search feature often won't prove all that helpful.

 

Say you want to find and follow eLearning developers. Doing a search for eLearning will turn up results for everyone who mentioned eLearning in a tweet. Using advanced Google searching can quickly turn up the exact results you want. If you use the links in this article, you won't even have to type in those long, pesky Google search phrases yourself. You can just plug in the search terms that apply to you and you're set. Zing!

Get Creative with Branding

Viral marketing is a fun and exciting way to get your brand noticed. An obvious choice is YouTube videos. StickyBits, which recently launched at this year's SXSW, could be another fun way to market your brand. StickyBits allows you to scan any barcode (those pre-existing on products, or your own that you can create online). Anyone who downloads the free app could then use an iPhone or Android phone to scan your barcode and view whatever you've attached. You could, for example, attach a barcode to the back of your business card that links to your website. If you hand out products at trade shows or conventions you could attach barcodes to your products that link to your website or blog, or maybe even to an eLearning video of how to use the product. What's more is that anyone who scans the barcode can then add to the content. Think of it as an Easter egg hunt that could make your money.

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About the author: AJ George is IconLogic's lead Technical Writer and author of the book "PowerPoint 2007: The Essentials" and the just-released "PowerPoint 2008 for the Macintosh: The Essentials." You can follow AJ on Twitter at http://twitter.com/andrayajgeorge.

Social Media: Pain Points and Online Marketing

by Mary Gillen 

 

A direct marketer named Victor O. Schwab (who wrote the famous body-builder Charles Atlas ads and went on to help create the giant Book-of-the-Month Club) penned a list of what he called "pain points," spelling out the reasons why people buy what they don't necessarily need but feel they want. The main reason people purchase memberships, products and services: they want to save work, money and time.

 

EXAMPLE: An association in Washington DC created an audio podcast of its monthly printed newsletter, and placed it on its web site as a test to see if their members would download it. It proved to be very popular, as it solved a pain point for their members. Most had no time to read the printed newsletter, but had time to listen to it while stuck in Washington DC rush hour traffic.

 

Want to learn more about Social Media? Join Mary later this month for a virtual class on "Using Social Media for Online Marketing." Click here for more details.

 

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About the Author: Mary Gillen is a writer, teacher, Web developer, marketer and tech geek... all under one hood. She has owned her own business since 1981, and has more than 13 years experience developing Web applications that serve.