Title: Five Ways to Use Social Media for Staff Training : Sudakshina Bhattacharjee

Social Media comes via many platforms to which people and businesses have taken to quiet dearly, to say the least.

In fact, it would be safe to say that countries (especially the emerging economies like the BRIC group) are seizing the potential theses platforms bring to promote their corporate identities globally.

For keeping in touch with the near and the far, to cultivating communities of consumers, the dynamism which social media is displaying is phenomenal. So why not use it to help with training your staff?

Here are 5 ways you can do just that:

1)    Are your key members of staff on LinkedIn?

Lots and lots of companies have jumped on to the strictly professional social network called Linkedin.

If yours has not, do not fret, because you can get yourself and your company on there in no time at all. In fact, not being on LinkedIn nowadays reduces credibility to the potential out there- be it your target market, or talent acquisitions.

If you are on LinkedIn already, then bravo!

You can now create company pages and groups (and set them as either ‘private’ or ‘public’ depending on your requirements) where you can broadcast training initiatives and set up marketers to eye up rivals on what they are up to.

2)    Tweet It Out!

Have your staff or a staff member performed brilliantly as a result of achieving targets or making progress in an in-house training programme?

Why not announce it to the world via your company’s Twitter account and let your followers know how much you care and value your employees!

3)    Broadcast new training demos on YouTube.

Has your company changed their bespoke, in- house training packages? Asides from the onsite training you will provide to your staff, why not record a demo session on video and upload it on to YouTube?

Remember, you always have the option to keep your video private on YouTube. All your staff would need is the URL too the video and the login details.

In this way, your staff can have something to refer to after the training – as well as privacy staying intact.

4)    Use Google Plus to share training resources

If you have a company page on Google Plus and have asked your staff to circle themselves in ( using their work e- mail addresses of course), then you can post links to training manuals, score sheets, YouTube video links and reports, with the option of keeping circles private too.

5)    Make your training documentation Social Media friendly

Asides from facebook which is good for promoting businesses but  not relevant for corporate training, you have four valuable social networking media to help you make staff training initiatives more colourful and less daunting.

You would be surprised as to see the level of enthusiasm grow when staff sees that their training material is accessible on social media- which is becoming more and more central to both professional and personal aspects of our lives.

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