Today is a big day for our company—we are officially releasing our new First-time Manager program based on the essential secrets of The New One Minute Manager. It’s a great one-day program designed to address some of the key challenges people face when they step into a leadership role for the first time—including how to set goals, praise progress, redirect behavior when necessary, and conduct effective performance review sessions. One of the challenges we zero in on is providing day-to-day feedback and coaching—especially when it involves redirecting behavior that is off-track.  Typically, new managers receive very little training in this essential skill, and without training they often struggle—either coming on too strong and alienating people, or spending so much time beating around the bush that the team member doesn’t have a clear sense that a change is even necessary. When someone makes a mistake, you need to tell the truth so the person changes the behavior—but make sure you speak in a caring way. Also assume the best intentions. The best way to do this is to talk to your direct report about what you observed and make sure their goals were clear to them at the time. Once you both determine that the goals were clear, check out the facts leading up to the re-direction, to make sure you both agree on what happened. Discuss the impact of the behavior, and then reaffirm the person in a way that is meaningful. Let the person know they are better than their mistake and you have confidence and trust in them. Garry Ridge, CEO of WD-40 Company, states it this way: "It’s important to maintain the balance between being tenderhearted and task oriented." As a leader you must be able to re-direct behavior to keep people on the right track while also respecting their dignity. Remember—when you share feedback it is never about you or the other person; it is about the behavior. A leader’s job is to constantly help people be the best they can be. What are some of the other challenges you’ve seen new managers struggle with?  Share them in the comments section below.  I’d love to tap into our collective wisdom and begin to identify more of the challenges new managers face and some ways to effectively address them.  With approximately two million people stepping into new management roles each year, it’s important we help them—and the people they serve—get off to a great start!  Share your thoughts below and I’ll use them as jumping off points for upcoming posts, tweets, and comments.

I found this article interesting from The Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology called "Successfully leaving work at work: The self-regulatory underpinnings of psychological detachment".  Like all academic studies, the big words can be off-setting but their  research confirms some of my practices: Detaching from work- defined as mentally and physically disengaging from work during off-hours - is an important prerequisite to effective daily recovery and psychological well-being. However, the extant literature has yet to articulate exactly why some employees fail to detach from work and, furthermore, offers few concrete recommendations on how to increase detachment on a daily basis...This study proposes that employees' minds continue to linger over goal-related content after the workday is finished. Consistent with a self-regulatory perspective, employees had more difficulty detaching from incomplete (vs. completed) work goals later in the day. An experiment  demonstrated that creating plans to resolve incomplete goals increased psychological detachment among employees with traits that chronically inhibit detachment. Here are more details about what they discovered: Creating plans at the end of the day that describe where, when, and how unfulfilled work goals will be completed is an effective, low-cost intervention that enhances psychological detachment among employees, which will ultimately improve occupational health and performance. My interpretation is leave yourself notes how to jump in the next day.The planning intervention was primarily effective among employees who typically have difficulty detaching from work during leisure time, indicating that intervention efforts should be targeted at specific types of employees. My interpretation of this is you have to have discipline to make this work. When setting daily work goals, employees should be encouraged to focus on smaller, concrete goals at the end of the day in order to reduce unfulfilled work goals and facilitate psychological detachment. My interpretation is be clear what your realistic priorities are each day.Purchase our new Leadership Training book for more interactive ways to keep leadership in the conversation and not allow it to be pushed away in the chaos. Well, this sounds like project management to me!  Just last weekend, I left with a giant project very undone to spend the weekend with family.  I did create markers for where I was and what needed to be done and it did make it easier to put it out of my mind and return to it on Monday.  It also jump started by restart. How can you practice these time / project management disciplines with your team to help them detach?  Our new release of the Project Management for Trainers book might help here.

You remember how words make you feel, not the words themselves. Maybe that doesn’t sound right to you but think of the first time you met your significant other. Do you remember what you said? What your significant other said? Probably not, but you do likely remember, in detail, how it made you feel. Now, consider what you could do if you could harness the power of that emotion and apply it to helping your eLearning audience remember and connect with facts. Facts may be more consistently accurate, but emotions are what our brains filter our experiences through and what we can recall most readily. Taking your audience’s emotions into consideration is especially helpful when dealing with subject matter that is dry but important. For example, with corporate training, you might need to write up a section on which documents need to be filed for a new employee. Things don’t get much drier than talking about filing papers, but think of the massive headache new employees might have if their tax information isn’t filed and their paycheck is held up because of it. Telling your learners about the human side of what they’re learning and how it affects real people can make the difference between someone remembering long enough to apply the knowledge and someone just remembering for the length of the course.

We discuss the trends and issues we observed during the weeks of February 1-15, 2016 as we flipped resources into our Flipboard magazine (http://bit.ly/trendsandissues). We have three trends that we discuss. The first is, again, continued news virtual reality. The primary focus was the push for content for virtual reality devices. There was also resources […] Tags:   Del.icio.us Facebook TweetThis Digg StumbleUpon Comments:  0 (Zero), Be the first to leave a reply!Copyright © Trends & Issues [Episode 57 February 1-15 More VR, 2016 Ed Tech Predictions, 2015 Ed Tech in Review, and Online Learning], All Right Reserved. 2016.

In my post Ten Tips for Interviewing Subject Matter Experts (SMEs). I provided recommendations for writers when working with SMEs. On Larry Kunz’s blog, Leading Technical Communication, he posted a great article that takes a different but complimentary view. The article is What writers need - and don’t need - from SMEs. It instructs SMEs on the information and assistance that technical writers need from them. Next time you start working with a SME, provide them with this information to help them help you.

In the last post, I suggested the importance of developing effective and vibrant collaboration. However, there is an important consideration to note that would enable such collaboration to take place whether in the business learning culture or the formal education culture. Such collaborations need to happen within the context of a "community of learners". The establishment of dynamic e-learning communities has been the subject of rising interest within the education research community. In order to build the future of effective virtual or online learning communities, it is important to understand the present obstacles to achieving this.The Obstacle of An Entrenched Dated SystemWe are the products of the education system that we were raised in. In the industrial based economy, the following ideas were part of what it meant to be educated:The purpose of education was to create a work force that would conform to all the requirements of industry. Therefore, the idea of encouraging a focus on developing creative and innovative learners was considered a non-essential best left to specialized private schools. The ability to develop basic skills and the stress on repetition was mandated as essential and repeated assessment of learning was considered to be similar to the use of quality control in manufacturing processes.The purpose of education was also to create life long consumers who would use the wages that they earned to benefit the growth of wealth for owners of industry. In the 20th and 21st century, consumers who were as young as 4 yrs old were targeted. Through the use of ads focusing on cartoon characters using or promoting "must have products" to these targeted age groups, the attitude of accumulating more and more products to consume created and nurtured excessive consumerism as a positive mindset at an early age. With each age group, the consumerism mindset grew exponentially.   Businesses reading such points might ask the question:"So, what! Consumerism has provided employment for people, provided good lifestyles with modern conveniences and has allowed capital through taxation to create wealth for the country. What's wrong with that?" The Changing Needs of SocietiesWith the exponential advance of technology and new ways of communication, the needs of a new generation of learners and the societies that they became adults in, changed. The heavy emphasis on consumerism created great wealth for business but greed created complex real world problems that threatened to destabilize our civilizations. The skewed distribution of wealth on a global scale created areas of the world where large populations were suffering pre-industrial problems associated with great poverty, disease, and starvation. These very real and painful inadequacies resulted in the rise of civil wars, dictatorships and breakdown of the rule of law.So, the obvious question that should occur to you, is:"What does any of this have to do with creating online learning communities? I sympathize with such horrible global inadequacies but how can education alleviate any of this?"Building a Generational Bridge Through Online EducationThe past model of excessive consumerism has had its impact on the one element of people's lives that can enable them to tackle complex real world problems and improve their quality of life, that being education. In this age if we do not change this mindset in education then the events we see happening in our world will continue to spiral downward. In order to effect change in education, the past generation, who are now in positions of power in business need to cross a generational bridge by restructuring core values that have been a part of their business for so long.Brad Fergusson of the People Before Profits Organization, recognizes the need for this restructuring of core values. Putting "people before profits" is a radical concept in the global business world and it is not saying that businesses should not make a profit. Businesses have a responsibility to their share holders to produce wealth and obtain for them a good ROI. It is saying that we can no longer ignore the growing needs of people, especially when businesses have both the resources and global reach to make a real and lasting change in the quality of life that people have. It is my belief that the quality of education and how we make that accessible to societies will determine the path that societies follow and ultimately decide whether civilizations are enriched or whether they destabilize.Next......Part II-Creating Opportunities for Effective Learning Communities  

Quick eLearning development isn’t a new idea, but it is a topic of constant conversation. As instructional designers are pushed to create content faster and deadlines are moved up, the concept of creating courses at the speed of sound becomes more commonplace. But how can you prevent a "course factory?" This topic is discussed by Cathy Moore and describes an employer who values course quantity over quality. Use Standard Benchmarks Start out by determining an average development time across the whole industry. This way you’ll know how you compare against eLearning professionals in similar situations. This can also give you a baseline to know if you need to improve your processes by decreasing or increasing time spent on an individual project. One of the most respected and shared reports on development time was by the Chapman Alliance in 2006. This report stated that building basic training requires an average of 79 hours, intermediate training requires an average of 184 hours, and advanced training needs an average of 490 hours. Basic is described as "including content pages, text, graphics, perhaps simple audio, perhaps simple video, test questions" and typically refers to PowerPoint to eLearning conversion. Intermediate training (or interactive training) includes the same content as basic with an increase of 25% in terms of exercises and interaction. Advanced includes highly interactive courses that will contain aspects of a basic and interactive course with more interactions such as simulations and games. In the eLearning 101: A Practical Guide eBook, a similar definition was constructed under the terms passive, intermediate, and moderate. When looking at your team’s course development, how long does each subset take? Are you above or below the average? Above the Average If your development time is taking more than the average, consider this a good opportunity to make process improvements. Take a step back and look at what your team is doing. Are they doing it effectively or are there ways to speed up the process? One of the easiest ways to speed up a process is to create commonly used assets such as email templates, PowerPoint presentations, and course templates. Having a standard way of approaching these situations will reduce guess work and also speed up development time. One of things suggested in our eLearning 101: A Practical Guide eBook is to conduct a meeting before you start creating a course to go over the general process and determine basic information. Why not create a meeting template that addresses the basic information and asks the common questions? Other ways to reduce time include: A pre-created storyboard template that can easily be adapted to your needs Creating sample color schemes to use as suggestions Making a repository of organized stock images, video, and sounds to reduce the amount of time spent searching for appropriate course objects Dedicating an area of your work space for audio recording that doesn’t need to be taken down or adjusted each time a new recording should take place Email templates for reviewing content that include instructions on how to easily access software such as ReviewLink™ Below the Average Being below the average time spent on development means you’ve either streamlined your process into efficiency or that you’ve run the risk of becoming a course factory. You’ll know you may have unintentionally become a course factory if any of the following scenarios sound familiar to you: I don’t question the client or subject matter expert’s decision I only create courses to transfer knowledge Training is a one-time offering Once I publish the training there is nothing else I need to do I don’t create dynamic content I use the same course format and template for every project To keep from becoming a course factory, your development and creation practices should always evolve. Frequent conversations should happen throughout the project to make sure pertinent information is always under consideration. Each project should be a new build with a new mind set to make sure content is fresh and engaging. The eLearning 101: A Practical Guide eBook recommends that you take extra time before a project begins to make sure you’re starting the project off right. Download the free eBook now to learn more about course planning and development. Resources: http://blog.cathy-moore.com/2015/11/do-you-work-in-a-course-factory-do-you-care/ http://www.chapmanalliance.com/howlong/   The post Developing Quality eLearning at the Speed of Sound appeared first on .

This one comes to us from Sarah in our Facebook group, and this is something she’s doing that I think is great because I didn’t even know you could do this with Thinkific. It’s a really cool growth hack and apparently lots of other people have been doing this in Thinkific as well. Watch the video to find out more. It’s about creating the appearance of a course recommendation engine and suggesting other courses for people to purchase as they go through the checkout on your site. This is kind of like how Amazon does it on their product pages. When you go to any page, you see a section titled ‘Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought’ with a row of other products that go well with the current one. Well, guess what, you can do this on Thinkific too! On your course page, you can say things like "People who were interested in this course were also interested in these other products." Or on your "Thank you" page, once they’ve purchased, you can recommend other products by saying "People who purchased this also purchased these other wonderful products." It’s very simple to do, and you can use the up-sell feature in your course dashboard to up-sell or cross-sell people into other product bundles or courses. Start Up-Selling Amazon makes millions because of their product recommendations feature. Fortunately, you don’t need to hire a developer to create Amazon-like features. It’s all built into Thinkific for you. Start with a free trial and generate more revenue by using this trick on your course site. The post Teach Online TV #02: Up-Selling, Cross-Selling, And Course Recommendations appeared first on Thinkific.

Humans are social creatures. In the Stone Ages, we formed groups to hunt and survive in the wilderness. In the Middle Ages, our communities grew into powerful civilizations and religions. In the Industrial Age we built companies and factories on the backs of groups. We work in groups, we play in groups, we thrive in groups, we survive in groups. In today’s digital world, we’re starting to see our groups and communities shift online. Social networks stormed into our lives and now everyone is checking the latest post or tweet every ten minutes. You don’t need to be a prophet and start a new religion to gather your followers. Today, anyone can do it online in a few steps. And one of the best ways to create a community and attract raving fans for your business is with Facebook Groups. Just to be clear, we are not talking about Facebook Pages. Facebook Pages are essentially public profiles for your business where you broadcast posts to your audience (most of whom won’t see your posts anyway). A Facebook Group, on the other hand, is a place where your customers congregate and interact with each other. The goal with a Facebook Group is not to broadcast your content. The goal is to build a community for your customers. #FacebookGroups help you build a thriving community for your customersClick To Tweet Throughout this article we are going to show you several examples of entrepreneurs and online course creators who have successfully built communities for their customers using Facebook Groups. We reached out to everyone you see in the post to get their thoughts on creating, growing and maintaining Facebook Groups. We’ll start off by outlining some of the benefits of creating a Facebook Group, and then we’ll walk you through the steps involved in creating your group. After that, we’re going to give you a series of specific tips to help you build and maintain a thriving community for your students. Before we begin, you should know that this is a comprehensive post. If you don’t have time to go through the full thing now, download our workbook on building communities with Facebook Groups and follow the steps offline. Benefits of creating a Facebook Group Creating a private Facebook Group for your customers and students is beneficial for a number of reasons, and we’re not the only ones who think so. Suzi Nelson, the Community Manager for Digital Marketer, said in an article on Digital’s Marketer’s blog that establishing a private Facebook Group for their customers has helped the company meet a number of important business goals including: Increasing customer satisfaction Reducing refunds Increasing retention in monthly memberships Increasing sales generated by word-of-mouth recommendations Many of our customers have already started to experience the benefits of creating a Facebook Group for their business. Julie Harris, a creative business consultant and brand designer, for example, created a Facebook Group called The Creative’s Corner in order to build and nurture her relationship with her audience. We got in touch with her and asked her what it’s like to have a Facebook Group. Here’s what she had to say: "Leading a Facebook Group is an excellent way to establish your creditability as a leader in your market. By sharing your knowledge, providing guidance, and creating opportunities for growth and expansion only helps your professional reputation as a creditable resource. You can also learn so much about your target market. Asking questions directly to your most loyal followers about what kinds of products they want you to create, or services you should provide, or how to strengthen existing ones is an invaluable way to increase the value you provide professionally without spending a dollar on marketing or research." As an online course creator, setting up a Facebook Group for your students is definitely a worthy pursuit. Your community of happy customers, or raving fans - as Ken Blanchard would say, will likely become your greatest source of future revenue (you do plan to create more than one course right?) and word-of-mouth promotion for your business. Here are some of the main benefits of having a Facebook Group for your online course: 1. Direct communication with your students When we spoke to Ryan Stewart, who runs the group Digital Marketing Questions, he said being able to communicate with his followers was the biggest benefit of it. Having a Facebook Group gives you the opportunity to interact with your customers on a platform that they are likely checking multiple times throughout the day anyway. Many individuals actually prefer to communicate through Facebook versus by email or phone. "It’s a great way to communicate with people. To me, it’s like having a highly engaged email list." - Ryan Stewart 2. Course and product feedback At Thinkific, our development team is constantly adding and improving upon the features of our online course creation software, and in many cases those improvements were sparked by feedback we received from customers in our Facebook Group. We also set up an online course training library with free video tutorials that were inspired by feedback and questions we received from customers in our Facebook Group. Create a Facebook Group for your students and get feedback on your online course #teachonlineClick To Tweet 3. Customer service Instead of sending an email to our support team, many of our customers will simply post a question in our Facebook Group. Anyone on our team can jump in and answer that customer’s question, and sometimes other customers end up answering their question for us, often within minutes! If your students are having trouble understanding a concept, they can ask questions in the group and others can help them out. 4. Student retention Have you ever sent a complaint to a company’s support team, only to receive a response several days later, if at all? In that scenario, chances are you didn’t remain a customer for very long. After all, nobody likes to feel unappreciated or unacknowledged by a company that they have bought from. Facebook Groups help increase customer retention, because they give customers the opportunity ask questions and get a response quickly, and be a part of a community of other people who can help them out. A Facebook Groups helps you increase student retention for your online course #teachonlineClick To Tweet 5. Customer acquisition Having a private Facebook Group that is exclusive to your customers is also a great bonus to be able to offer your prospective customers. When you’re trying to sell your online course, your private community can be a major value add because your prospective students will know that when they buy your course, they aren’t just buying information. They are buying the ability to network and interact with other people who are taking your course. On the flip side, your private Facebook Group can be a source of new customers, as Stephanie Nickolich, owner of the Style Your Success Society told us. "Owning a private Facebook group that has quickly grown into an amazing community is a great way to spotlight your business, it’s a safe place to get to know people, to interact on your terms, and to collaborate with other business owners. It has changed the game for my business as many of my clients have found me through my private Facebook group." - Stephanie Nickolich Additionally, the social proof of having a big community indicates that your course is definitely worth buying. 6. Increased authority As the creator of a Facebook Group, you have the ability to bring people with similar interests and goals together and initiate conversations between them. The effect is similar to that of hosting a live event (like a conference or a party, for example). When you host a live event, many of the attendees will get the most value from interacting with other attendees, and since you’re the one who made it possible for them to come together, you get the credit. Placing yourself in that position of leadership increases your perceived authority among your audience. Nick Loper, who runs Side Hustle Nation, had this to say to us: "Being at the hub of these valuable interactions is strengthening my relationship with the group members." - Nick Loper 7. Increased traffic Sharing content that you create with the members of your Facebook Group can be an effective way to increase traffic to your website.When you post something in a Facebook Group, all of its members receive a notification that you have posted in the group, increasing the likelihood that they will engage with your post. Danavir Sarria, who started the group Copymonk, told us this: "Whenever I post an article, I get lots of love in the form of traffic and engagement." - Danavir Sarria Just make sure that you’re not always posting your own content or trying to make a sale. Focus on providing value. Blog posts, podcast episodes, videos and infographics are all examples of types of content that you might already be publishing online to help educate your target audience. 8. Increased revenue In addition to attracting more customers, your Facebook Group can also serve as a way to increase revenue by granting access to it as an upsell. So, instead of offering access to the group as a free addition to your course, you can sell your course at the regular price and then offer access as a paid upgrade once students complete the course. Alternatively, you can create two pricing plans - one with just the course, and a higher priced plan with both course and group. Students can then pick the option that suits them best. Your course plus group plan could also be priced as a monthly subscription. Up-sell access to your Facebook Group to generate more revenue from your online course #teachonlineClick To Tweet Creating Your Facebook Group Okay, so hopefully by now you’re convinced of the power of Facebook Groups to build a sense of community and increase engagement among your customers. So the next step is to actually create one, right? Don’t fret. Setting up a Facebook Group is the easy part (building and maintaining a thriving community is the hard part, but we’ll share some tips on that shortly). The process for setting up a Facebook Group is pretty straight forward. From the main menu in your Facebook account, you simply click on Create Group. From there, you’ll be asked to fill in some details about your group and add its first few members. Creating a #FacebookGroup is easy. Building a thriving community is the hard part.Click To Tweet Here are the basic steps involved in setting up your Facebook Group: 1. Choose a Group Name The name of your Facebook Group should definitely include the name of your online course, so that it is easily recognizable by your customers. We also recommend adding an additional term to your group name that helps to signify that it is a group and not a Facebook Page. For example, the name of our Facebook Group is Thinkific Studio (the word "studio" helps to distinguish our Facebook Group from our public Facebook Page). 2. Select your Group’s Privacy Settings After you choose a title for your Facebook Group, you will be asked to select your group’s privacy settings. There are 3 different privacy settings: Public, Closed, and Secret. The privacy setting you choose for your group will affect who can find the group, see its members, see its posts, and who can join it. Here is a brief explanation of the different types of groups, and what they are each suitable for: Public Groups: A Public Group can be found by anyone, so even people who are not a member of the group will be able see who its members are, and see the posts. A Public Group is not the best option for your existing customers, but it is a great option for communicating with your audience (aka your prospective customers). If you have a blog, podcast, or book, for example, a Public Facebook group can be a great way to create a non-threatening environment where your target audience can engage with you, consume your content, and interact with other members of the group before they decide to buy from you. Basically, you give them the chance to get to know, like, and trust you before they make that decision to become your customer. The downside of a Public Group is that since anyone can join it, there is less of a sense of exclusivity, which reduces the perceived value of the group. Closed Groups: A Closed Group can be found by anyone (they can also see who its members are), but only members of the group can see the posts. Anyone can request to join a Closed Group, but their request must be approved by someone who is an Admin of the group before they will be added. If you want to create a Facebook Group exclusively for your existing customers, this is the best option. Secret Groups: A Secret Group cannot be found by anyone. Only the members of the group can find it and see the posts. A Secret Group is great for communicating with members of your team, members of a mastermind group, or a team of ambassadors (often called a launch team) who are supporting your next big project, like a book or a podcast launch. Closed #FacebookGroups enable you to build an exclusive community for your customersClick To Tweet 3. Write Your Group Description Your group description will appear in the right sidebar of your group where anyone can see it (unless you’ve created a Secret Group, then only its members will see it). It doesn’t have to be long, but it should definitely be clear and compelling. Who is your group for? What is the purpose of your group? What are the benefits of joining? These are some of the questions you should answer in your group description. Here are some examples of descriptions for various successful Facebook Groups: Thinkific Studio - Group Description Internet Business Mastery Academy - Group Description Smart Passive Income Community - Group Description 4. Create a Cover Photo for your Group Similar to a Facebook Page or a Facebook Profile, you will be asked to upload a cover photo for your Facebook Group. This cover photo will be displayed at the top of your group’s page. If you have a graphic designer or web designer on your team, ask them to create a cover photo for you. If not, you can find a designer on Fiverr or on a freelance network such as Upwork. Another option is to do it yourself using a design tool such as Snappa or Canva. We also have a resource of 115+ stock photos you can use for free. Your cover photo should be consistent with the overall branding for your online course so that your group members know that they’ve come to the right place. Here are some examples of cover photos for various Facebook Groups: Smart Passive Income Community - Facebook Group Cover Photo   Instagram Domination by Foundr Magazine - Facebook Group Cover Photo Authority Self-Publishing - Facebook Group Cover Photo Internet Business Mastery Academy - Facebook Group Cover Photo 5. Pin a Welcome Post to the top of your group When you create your Facebook Group, your first post should be a Welcome Post for all your group members. However, as you and your members add more posts to the group, that first post will automatically be pushed down to the bottom of the group’s newsfeed. For that reason, you should pin your Welcome Post to the top of the newsfeed, so that regardless of when someone joins your group, they will always see that Welcome Post right at the top. Similar to your group description, your Welcome Post is a great place to introduce yourself and remind your members what the purpose of the group is for. You may want to include your Group Guidelines in your welcome post, or at the very least, remind new members to read your Group Guidelines before they post anything in your group. We’ll cover Group Guidelines later in this article. Here is an example of a Welcome Post that Jill Stanton (co-founder of Screw the Nine-To-Five) pinned to the top of her Facebook Group. It’s a pretty detailed post, so anyone who wants to read it will have to click on "See More" to read the whole thing, but you get the idea.   Tips for Growing your Facebook Group Once your Facebook Group is created, the next step is to start adding members to your group. When we created a Facebook Group for our customers in the beginning of 2015, we didn’t put very much effort into promoting it to our customers. In the beginning of 2016, after experiencing the benefits of having a Facebook Group firsthand, we made the decision to actively encourage all of our customers to join the group. Today, we are proud to say that our Facebook Group has evolved into a highly engaged community, where members are sharing advice, ideas, and strategies for building their brands and launching their online courses. Here are some strategies for growing the number of members in your group that have worked well for us and other Facebook Group creators that we spoke with: 1. Send an email to your newsletter subscribers or existing customers If you’ve created a Public Group for your audience, send an email to your list of subscribers to tell them about the group and invite them to join. You can also add an invitation to join your Facebook Group to the first email that is sent to all new subscribers who join your list. If you’ve created a Private Group exclusively for your online course customers, then you can send a similar email to all your current and future customers. 2. Invite your existing followers from other channels Adrienne Dorison, who created the Society of Self-Mastery, told us that she uses her existing social media channels to promote her Facebook Group. People who read her blog, and follow her on Instagram and so on are already interested in what she has to say, so bringing inviting them to continue a conversation in the group is a no-brainer. "When I share something challenging or vulnerable or want people to engage back with me, it’s important that I go first to make them feel comfortable to share." - Adrienne Dorison 3. Add a link to your Facebook Group on your website Add a link to your Facebook Group to the main menu or sidebar of your website. Another great place to include an invitation to join your Facebook Group is at the bottom of your blog posts. 4. Invite your friends and connections to join your group Many of your existing friends and online connections will likely be interested in joining your group, but do not add people to your group without asking them first. Most people find it annoying when someone adds them to a Facebook Group without their permission (if they don’t want to be in the group, they’ll have to manually remove themselves from it). Instead, send them a private message first to tell them about your group and ask them if they would like to join it. "I then invited many of the woman that I had interacted with online months prior and within the first week, it grew to over 1000 members organically. Now, we’re approaching 10,000 members and the group isn’t even a year old. CRAZY!" - Stephanie Nickolich 5. Let your group members add other people to your group Unless your Facebook Group is exclusively for your existing customers, don’t restrict your group members from adding other people to it. In fact, you may even want to consider making some of your group members (the ones you know personally or trust the most) Admins of your group. This will give them the power to approve member requests so that you don’t always have to. These options can be configured in your Group Settings. 6. Add a link to your group to your email signature You are probably sending and responding to several emails on a daily basis. If so, your email signature is a great place to include a call-to-action for those people that you are corresponding with. Here is an example of what you could say at the bottom of your email signature: "Have you joined our Facebook Group yet? It’s a great place to (insert benefit). Click here to check it out." Try using your email signature to attract people to your Facebook GroupClick To Tweet How To Increase Engagement in Your Facebook Group Once your Facebook Group is set up and full of members, your job is to encourage and facilitate engagement so that your group doesn’t become a ghost town. The more engagement there is in your group, the more value there is for each of its members, and the more incentive there is for existing members to stay and new members to join. Here are some tips for increasing engagement among members in your Facebook Group: 1. Create a group around a specific topic When we asked Elizabeth Kelsey, who owns the hugely successful Blogging Boost group, what her secret for increasing engagement was, her reply was: "Create a group that is centered around a topic that many people are passionate about. That tends to spark conversation organically." - Elizabeth Kelsey When you create a Facebook Group for your business, don’t make the mistake of thinking that the purpose of your group is just to promote your business. It’s not. The purpose of your group is to build a community of individuals who share a passion for the same topic or are working towards a similar goal. The additional exposure your business receives as a result of having a Facebook Group is great, but the focus of the community should be on the topic. For example, Matt Suess, a photographer with image editing and photography courses, created a group for a specific photography software called On1 that he uses and teaches about. That sounds really niche, but he managed to grow it to almost 700 members in just 2 months. Matt doesn’t promote his courses on the group, but it’s so engaging that members automatically look him up and buy his courses anyway. 2. Ask questions to spark discussions Start discussions in your group as often as you can by asking your group members specific questions. You can ask them for feedback on something specific (like a new course chapter or piece of content), ask them what challenges they are currently facing related to your topic, or even just ask them how their week is going. Regardless of what you ask them, the point is to start a conversation. "The main goal of a Facebook Group is to create a discussion, not a sale." - Danavir Sarria (CopyMonk) 3. Participate in discussions and respond to questions Many of the members in your group will start discussions on their own, often by sharing their insights or by asking questions. Do your best to participate in those discussions and answers those questions as they occur. If you have a highly engaged group where members interact with each other without your involvement, that is fantastic, but you should still make an effort to participate in those conversations whenever possible. "Don’t think of it as a broadcast medium, but rather a community with you at the center." - Nick Loper (Side Hustle Nation) 4. Create a theme for each day of the week A great way to increase engagement in your Facebook Group is to assign a specific theme to each day of the week. The theme for each day will help to encourage specific types of posts or comments from group members on that day. Pat Flynn (Smart Passive Income Community), for example, does this very well in his Facebook Group: Monday is "Goals Day" (members post their goal for the week to help hold them accountable) Tuesday is "Top Tool Tuesday" (members post their top business tools, apps, and resources) Wednesday is "What’s Working Wednesday" (members share something they’ve done in their business that worked) Thursday is "Thank You Thursday" (members publicly thank someone else in the group who has helped them) Friday is "Free Speech Friday" (members get to promote their business or current projects) Saturdays/Sundays are "Weekend Wins" (members post their recent accomplishments) You can even automate your group’s daily theme posts using a tool such as Buffer or HootSuite so that you don’t accidentally miss a day. This is one of the expert tips Sarah Cordiner shared with us. "You can pre-load your group posts over a glass of wine on a Sunday afternoon and know that you will have content going out to the group for the rest of the week." - Sarah Cordiner (Entrepreneur to EDUpreneur) 5. Create an adjective to describe your group members This one may sound funny, but it works! Think of a word to describe your group members, and start referring to them using that word. This helps solidify the sense of community among your group members. Here are some examples: Jill Stanton (Screw The Nine-To-Five) refers to her group members as Scroupies John Lee Dumas & Kate Erickson (Podcaster’s Paradise) refer to their group members as Paradisers Nick Loper (Side Hustle Nation) refers to his group members as Hustlers 6. Share content that lives exclusively in your group Sharing exclusive tips and insights (content that you do not publish anywhere else online) is a great way to reward your group members for being a part of your Facebook Group. It increases the value of being a member of your group and encourages members to re-visit the group often. This will also help prevent group members from leaving, knowing that if they do they will miss out on the exclusive content that you share inside your Facebook Group. "It’s all about the value you can provide to the people of the group. Try to create unique value that ONLY the people in the group have access to." - Ryan Stewart (Digital Marketing Questions) How to Maintain Your Facebook Group Sometimes, Facebook Groups get so big and ungainly that it becomes a cesspool of spam. If you don’t want yours to go that way, you need to maintain it! The amount of time it will take to maintain your group will depend on the size of your group and your commitment to encouraging engagement amongst its members. If you want your group to flourish, you should be prepared to spend a minimum of 30-60 minutes per day overseeing and participating in group discussions. Some businesses require a part-time or even a full-time Community Manager to oversee all the activity within their Facebook Group (especially if they have several thousand group members or multiple groups for different purposes). Here are some tips for maintaining and moderating your Facebook Group: 1. Establish Group Rules or Guidelines You’ve probably heard the phrase "without rules, there is chaos." This definitely applies to Facebook Groups. Groups without specific rules or guidelines for its members are rarely successful, because they have no gauge for acceptable (or unacceptable) behavior. They usually end up becoming a free-for-all spam fest. A predetermined set of rules or guidelines helps to set an expectation for all members of the group, and sets the tone for the overall group culture. We recommend you pin a post with your group rules or guidelines to the top of your group’s newsfeed, or add them to your group description so that they are clearly visible to all group members. Here are some examples of common rules and guidelines that most successful Facebook Groups have: No self-promotion (spamming) Be respectful Post only relevant content Be helpful to other members (answer questions) Before you post a question, check to see if it has already been answered "Always post guidelines and make sure your members understand the purpose of the group. You have to be there. Without a leader, a Facebook Group doesn’t work." - Kate Erickson (Podcaster’s Paradise) 2. Designate a Community Manager or have multiple Group Admins If you don’t have the time to maintain/moderate the group yourself, you should consider hiring a Community Manager to do it for you. Another option is to make a few other people (people you know personally and trust to do a good job) Admins of the group so that they can help moderate the group. 3. Delete Posts That Break The Rules If you see a member of the group post something that violates the group rules, delete that post immediately. Next, send a private message to the person who posted it with a brief explanation of why you deleted their post. Sometimes, people post something without knowing that they violated the group rules. If that’s the case, simply remind them to review the group rules before posting again. 4. Remove Members When Necessary If certain members of the group are repeatedly breaking the rules (even after being warned not to), remove them. If a specific member is being disrespectful to other members in the group, remove them. If you receive multiple complaints from other group members about someone, remove them. As the group moderator, it is your job to ensure your group is a positive and safe environment, where members can feel comfortable and supported. Don’t let one bad apple spoil the environment for the entire group. "Don’t blindly invite people! Or let the inmates run the asylum." - Sol Orwell 5. Post Friendly Reminders To All Group Members Once in a while, you may need to post a friendly reminder to all group members to respect the group rules or guidelines. A public reminder is a strong display of leadership, and many of your group members will respect you for doing it. Enforcing your group rules might make you feel uncomfortable, but it is necessary in order to maintain the integrity of your group. The screenshot below is an example of a reminder post. Jill Stanton (Screw the Nine-To-Five) noticed an increase in the number of people in her Facebook Group that were violating her group rules, so in typical Jill fashion, she decided to put a stop to it. Her post to the group was polite but firm, and she won the respect of hundreds of members in her group in the process (her post received over 500 likes and more than 100 comments from people who supported her post). Are you ready to create a Facebook Group for your customers? If you made it all the way to the end of this article, congratulations! We know it was a pretty long post, but we wanted to give you as much practical information as possible to help you create, grow and maintain a successful Facebook Group for your customers. Hopefully we’ve done a good job of showing you why building a community for your customers is one of the best things you can do for your online course. It will help to attract new students and keep your existing ones engaged, excited, and accountable to completing your course and implementing what they learned. Who knows, you may even end up with some ideas for your next course based on their feedback! Don’t forget, we’ve created a workbook with step-by-step instructions to set all this up. So download it, set aside a few hours, and get your Facebook Group up and running!   The post How To Use Facebook Groups To Build A Thriving Community appeared first on Thinkific.

Librarians using Twitter will be familiar with Andy Plemmons (@plemmonsa),  a school library media specialist at David C. Barrow Elementary in Athens, GA. His library program is grounded in transliteracy, participatory culture, and students as creators of content shared with the global community. Andy’s students are often seen skyping with authors, guest speakers, and the developers of the tools that they use in class. Besides Twitter, you can keep up with Andy and the students of Barrow Elementary at Expect the Miraculous blog. We had a chance to catch up with Andy and ask him the following questions… Name:  Andy Plemmons Location: Athens, Georgia Current job(s): School Library Media Specialist Current computer: Dell XPS 13 Current mobile device(s): Iphone 6 and Nexus 7 One word that best describes how you teach or work: Connected If you had $1,000 to spend on classroom tools and wanted to make the greatest impact on student learning, how would you spend it? Through my student book budget project, I’ve seen what a powerful experience it can be to give students total control over a portion of a budget. By developing surveys, conversing with peers, analyzing data, setting goals, meeting with vendors, making wish lists, and debating a final decision, students become committed to the task and their decisions are respected by the school community. Anytime that students lead the decisions it will have a greater impact on student learning. What are you currently reading? The Innovator’s Mindset by George Couros Who are your influences in the education community?   Through social media, I’ve met so many dynamic educators whose ideas have inspired me, and I’ve been lucky enough to meet many of these awesome people in person.  Even though I have a core group of people that I turn to, I truly never know where my next idea will come from. By engaging in social media through hashtags and chats, I’m pushed and inspired to try new things. I love that on social media we can all contribute and support one another regardless of where we are in our own education stories.   What browser do you use regularly?  Google Chrome. What app or web service, not currently in existence, do you wish someone would develop?   We need a matching service for educators around the world who want to connect their students for meaningful collaboration beyond borders.  There are many communities online and many tools for connecting, but it takes a lot of time and planning to make global connections work. The amount of time it takes to find someone who matches well with you and your students takes away time and energy that could be put into the actual planning and collaboration toward something meaningful. What is your workspace/classroom like? Flexible! When we designed our library, my main word that I kept bringing back to the architects was that I wanted a space that could change shape and purpose at a moment’s notice. What resulted is a space with very few fixed pieces of furniture and most everything on wheels. Our library is a space to dream, tinker, create, and share and the space allows us to work together in many different ways. What apps/software/tools can you not live without?   I’m a huge fan of all of the Google tools. It seems crazy that it really hasn’t been that long that we’ve had these collaboration tools at our fingertips. I’m still amazed when I see students from multiple locations come together in a Google Hangout to chat, draw together in a Google Drawing, or write a poem together in a Google doc. When we share a link to a collaborative doc on Twitter and instantly have an audience of viewers, our students are immediately published authors. Beyond Google, I love any tool that allows student voices to come together in one place regardless of real-time connections. Flipgrid is one of the tools that I constantly find new ways of using. I love hearing the many different voices that come together around a common question and the ability to instantly share those responses with the world. What is your best time-saving trick? People often ask how I find the time to blog. To me, I can’t imagine not finding the time to blog. It is my best way of reflecting on what I do, sharing with others, and looking back at my portfolio over time. To help myself, I’m constantly documenting what we do. I’m never without my phone, and I quickly snap moments in time throughout the day and post them to Twitter and Instagram. When I sit down to write a post, I really have a lot of material ready to use. It’s just a matter of pulling the links from social media and pasting them into the blog.     Share with us a time when you failed in your teaching or learning pursuits. How did you persevere? Failure stories are so important to me because they put you in check and remind you that you don’t always have the answers the first time you try something. Although failure is important, it’s really more about what you do with the failure. I love to tell about how I was not accepted into library school for my specialist degree in college. I had my heart set on a career path and I was rejected because of a few points on an entrance test. Even though I was sick about what happened, I picked myself up and asked if I could have a second chance. After lots of studying how to take a test, I took the test again and picked up enough points to get in. I think about all of the learning that has happened in our library in the last 8 years that I’ve been a part of it, and I’m so thankful that I didn’t give up. My story also reminds me of how much potential is within each of our students that goes far beyond a number we see on a test. Any parting thoughts you would like to share with our readers? People often ask if I ever sleep or say something like, "I just don’t know how you do it all."  The truth is that I do sleep and I don’t do it all. There’s always more ideas than what I can actually accomplish. On those days when I feel like I’m not doing enough, I can look back at my blog and my tweets and remind myself of all of the things that have been happening. I encourage all of us to share our stories, even if it’s just one small thing a day. That documentation serves as a portfolio to look back on, but it also defines for the world what your classroom is really about.     Andy will part of the Teacher-Librarian Summit, Wednesday, February 24 from 9 a.m.-4 p.m. Andy will also be leading the following sessions: Becoming A Global Educator Thursday, February 25 | 11:30 AM - 12:20 PM | Room: Tahoma 5 Description: What does a global educator and a globally connected classroom and library look like?  There are some steps you can take to connect yourself and your students with the world.  See how the David C. Barrow Elementary Media Center has used social media, Google docs, Skype, and Google hangouts to connect with other educators around the world for events like International Dot Day and World Read Aloud Day.  Learn how these events have expanded to global reader’s advisory events such as the Picture Book Smackdown via Google Hangouts.  See how students are taking action after participating in connections with classrooms around the country for America Recycles Day.  These schoolwide events have been the beginnings of the global culture that continues to grow in our school. Creating Goals That Matter Thursday, February 25 | 3:00 PM - 3:50 PM | Room: Tahoma 5 Description: What educational goals really matter to you?  What inspires your goals to be a next generation educator? Learn what inspired the four goals of the David C. Barrow Elementary Media Center.  See how those four goals are taken into every collaborative planning session with educators as well as examples of how the goals shape learning throughout the year. Makerspace Journey Friday, February 26 | 10:30 AM - 11:20 AM | Room: Tahoma 2 Description: What is a makerspace? What does it look like within a school? Where do you start? Hear the story of the David C. Barrow Elementary Media Center’s makerspace and how it evolved from a single robot to an ever-changing makerspace full of opportunities for dreaming, tinkering, and creating. See examples of how the makerspace is connected with curriculum as well as how it gives students a space to explore their interests. The post Meet a Tech Savvy Teacher: Andy Plemmons appeared first on NCCE's Tech-Savvy Teacher Blog.