How social media can improve the learning culture in your organization

When I talk with professionals about the use of Social Media, I often get the feeling they don't know what to say ; should they embrace it ? should they ban it ? They often don't have the answer and it feels like a love / hate relationship.

Over the past years many organizations carefully started using Social Media in marketing to communicate with customers, in employer branding to build up an image to attract new talent or in providing information about products and services.

Only very few organizations embraced Social Media to improve learning in their organization. Why ? There are probably a wide variety of reasons. Studies showed a number of obstacles to use Social Media in learning :

1. Perceived lack of value
2. Not enough impact on content generated
3. Fear for sharing business information to the world
4. Lack of expertise on how and when to use Social Media in learning
5. Difficult to measure the benefits

I understand these concerns. We are just at the beginning of integrating social media in learning.  Columbus would have never discovered the Americas if he stayed in coastal waters. Sometimes we have to dare to step out of our comfort zone and discover new things. 

We can't deny the benefits of social media anymore. Tools like twitter, google, linked in, youtube, ... were once nouns. Today they became verbs, because sooooooo many people use them every day. If you don't know something, you google it. If you want to share something, you blog or tweet it. If you want to meet interesting professionals, you look on linkedin and perhaps you join a discussion group on the topic you want to learn about. 

Many Social media were once nouns. Today they are verbs. We can't ignore them anymore and we have to embrace them. 

How can you implement Social Media in your Learning environment ? 

Step 1 : Create a mind shift from training to learning. 

Too often I still hear people only talk about (classroom)training. These are the only formal ways to train people and make them learn. According to Charles Jennings this formal way of learning is only 10% of our learning portfolio. 20% of what people learn comes from other people through interactions like coaching. The last 70% of what people learn is through experience and doing the job. 

I believe the way people use Social Media is an important part of this 70% learning. We google, youtube, share, like, ... and unconsciously we learn by using these tools. 

Be aware of these learnings. They can be as important as any other (formal) training you attend. 

Step 2 : Don't open the gates all the way at once. Start small to become a giant. 

If you want to start using Social Media as a part of your learning environment, start small. Don't use all social media at once, but choose one or two tools that might help you. Try it out and discover what happens. Try it with a test group of people who already believe in it, but also people who can ask difficult questions. Learn from these experiences and move on. 

Step 3 : Help people to join you

Many people already have a linkedin or facebook account (If Facebook was a country, it would be the 3th biggest nation after China and India). But there are still many people who don't have an account yet. Help them to find their way through the labyrinth of social media. Help them with security settings of their account. Tell them what they can do themselves. Turn them into social media likers.

Step 4 : Create and share content with added value

There is an enormous amount of information available on the internet. It can be important to help people in your organization to find information with added value. Maybe it comes from a solid source. Maybe you created it. Maybe somebody in the organization wants to share something. By sharing content with added value, more people will be willing to use social media as a learning tool. 

Step 5 : Invest in digital wisdom of your colleagues

There is a lot of information available, too much. Not all information is as valuable. We need to help people in searching social media and use them in a smart way. Don't accept anything you read (what about this article ?) 

To conclude 

Schools are already embracing social media to make their students more eager to learn. Organizations will have to follow, because their employees already do use social media to learn (unconsciously). I see organizations carefully discover the benefits of tools like youtube, linkedin, wikipedia, ... to create a stimulating learning environment, and I believe we should continue on this new adventure. 

Play, discover and learn with social media. 

In one of my previous blogs I already explained how some companies use social media today. Find out more about it on : http://d-comma.blogspot.be/2012/10/how-kbc-bnp-and-alcatel-lucent-use.html