Are you looking forward to enhancing your training skills and reaching out to more people and growing your training business?
Can you do that without Social Media?
Managing the Speed of Change is a challenge for today’s youth. Things have always changed, but not as rapidly as they do today.
Internet and telecom put together, is the most significant revolution after the discovery of fire and the wheel.
Bill Gates said in the early 80s, in his book, “Business at the speed of Thought,” said that in 10 years’ time, a business without the internet will not be able to survive. I think it did not even take 10 years to become a reality.
The bandwidth of the entire Internet about 10 years ago was a fraction of what YouTube or Facebook individually are today.
Social Media has emerged as the most powerful tool today. I wonder if anyone can do without it, be it organizations like Railways, Government offices, Panchayats, educational institutions, NGOs, or businesses. Beyond websites and blogs now they also have a Facebook Page. Once considered a social platform for staying connected with family and friends, Facebook Pages have turned out to be strong marketing platforms. Facebook is now an effective, probably the best, marketing platform.
The Prime Minister of India launched his Digital India campaign on 1 July 2015. The excitement got louder when he attended a Townhall Meeting with Mark Zuckerberg on Sep 27, 2015. The series of events that followed only contributed to the growth of digital media in India. It has been a phenomenal growth since then.
And then came the mega announcement of Demonetisation which shook the country. There was a pack of inconveniences, apprehensions, and controversies. Yet the move is a sure step towards and a boon for digital media. People with innovative ideas even with limited funds flourished because they leveraged the power of emerging trends in digital and social media. For example, Paytm saw 435% growth in traffic within hours of the PM’s announcement, and plastic transactions have jumped 25% a month in India since November 8. The search term ‘McDonald’s online order’ increased by 90% during this time. Digital transformation is growing phenomenally and trainers cannot ignore this aspect. Digital marketing is one of the most in-demand skills for 2017
Trainers, as leaders, movers, and shakers of society, are expected not only to keep abreast of the latest happenings but to hand-hold others to understand, analyze and act in a world that is changing every second. This being the case, it becomes imperative for trainers to factor in the role of social media in their training philosophy, strategy, and execution. There are two distinct areas of social media that trainers must harness.
a. Content
b. Marketing
a. Content.
The conventional content development processes and tools are being replaced with new ones. Before you can master one, another better one with new features appears in the market. It is high time that we use our innovations and use the following platforms for content creation and its movement in order to engage target audiences.
- Facebook Live has emerged as a powerful tool to have your ideas and content go viral (or super viral) with lesser effort in lesser time and with negligible cost. If you don’t grab the opportunity, chances are that you may lose the competitive advantage of your smarter competitors.
- Ideation. Want new ideas? Ask engaging questions to your target audience on your timeline and generate content with their ideas.
- Have you experienced the potential of a Whatsappinar?
- I make a group of my participants (corporate or schools/colleges) and do some pre and post-work. Create a hype, get people to introduce themselves, and get to know their expectations and aspirations – all before the programme. It is interesting, engages them, and saves time. It adds value and earns you the reputation of an innovative trainer.
- Writing and reading your subject-related articles on LinkedIn is a focused approach to building your content. It’s economical in terms of time.
- Joining subject or profession-specific groups adds a lot to your content creation and refinement.
YouTube
- A powerful visual tool both for acquiring content as well as disseminating it to your desired audience.
- Live streaming is a feature that adds another interesting and powerful dimension.
Quora
- Not a very popular platform but can do wonders in content creation.
- It’s a Q&A-specific site. Ask questions and get ideas or clarifications. Or answer questions and establish credibility.
These are just a few examples. There are many, many more. One needs to be alert to find. Join groups where trainers exchange ideas. WhatsApp and LinkedIn are good at this.
b. Marketing
Social Media is the single route today that ensures maximum reach (target market and secondary market) in the least time at a minimal cost. This is an established fact.
Marketing is all about creating content (text, audio, video, images, infographics, etc.) and its movement. Either the content moves to your target audience or the audience is attracted to your content. This is termed traffic. There are a large number of platforms and each of them has a specialized role in marketing. You need to pick the right ones. Some that trainers can use effectively are listed below:
- Facebook. Once a social platform, Facebook is today one of the most effective platforms. It helps you reach your specific client. It gives you high-quality analytics. With images, videos, text (fairly large space,) live streaming, etc. it has become a popular means of extending reach. The best part is that while platforms like Twitter remain the same as before, Facebook brings out new features very frequently. Merging with Instagram has strengthened its content and widened its reach. Its feature of adding pages and other factors has given it wide acceptability and usage.
- LinkedIn. A very professional, business-like platform. It is more formal and focussed. The professional groups, and profile format, recommendations (testimonials) provide great value to the user.
- Twitter. Twitter will not generate direct sales but is powerful for the movement of content.
- Instagram and Pinterest. These are good for businesses where the products can be best projected with images
This short article projects the importance of Social Media and its powers which must be leveraged to avail the advantages it provides in the professional and personal development of an individual and organization.
Having attended Digital Marketing and Social Media training by international trainers like Mark Shafer, Allison Shreeve, Blair Singer, and Alex Mandossian, I feel it is my dharma to share this knowledge and experience with my fellow trainers.
For more on the subject come and join my one-day workshop #SMBT (Social Media for Business of Trainers.) http://socialmediabybsb.gr8.com
