Using online training you can now reach out to new audiences that you could not address in a cost effective way before. Let’s face it: as a successful trainer, especially if you’re a trainer with a deep expertise, you are most likely not cheap.  This is of course a good thing, but it also limits your market to rather large organizations or big corporations. Smaller companies, let alone individual employees, cannot afford your services. Online training, if done correctly, can change this. It is an opportunity to sell your skills and experience to a larger audience. You can start by using your existing clients as marketing channels for your online training products. How does that work? As an example, suppose you are training pharmacy employees. You tell them about the safe use of certain drugs: the correct dosage, the potential side effects to watch for and the best way to administer the drug. Suppose you could sell pharmacies an online training package which is really a light version of your original training. This training "light" is focused on one specific drug only and explains everything without any pharmacy jargon. There are plenty of training opportunities outside your established base of customers Now, why would pharmacists buy what is essentially a dumbed down version? To educate their customers of course. Think about having to read the instructions that are included in the box, in tiny script and boring prose. Surely an online presentation with a little quiz afterwards creates a much better learning experience. As another example, if you are training personnel managers in interviewing and screening job applicants, why not sell your expertise to those same job applicants? After all, you already know exactly what personnel managers are looking for. Box your expertise in an online training and sell it directly to employees. Consider focusing on a select group  (e.g. high potentials looking for a new career opportunity) as this facilitates your marketing efforts. To turn your skills as a trainer into an online training package, there are various options. For starters, you can conduct an online seminar. This is a natural extension to what you’re already doing, presumably, on a day-to-day basis. You talk to a group of people, the only difference is you’re doing it online. For a potentially larger audience. The other option is to extract yourself from the process, either entirely or partially. If you participate in asynchronous discussions - a fancy phrase for using e.g a forum - you get to decide when you provide the answers and advice. This means you can also employ other people to answer the easier questions for you. If you create a truly standalone interactive course, you eliminate yourself entirely from the process - freeing up your precious time for lucrative training sessions in big corporations. In short: online training is an opportunity to expand your customer base because you can reach audiences which could not afford your services  previously.

How do you create an engaging online training? Use video to illustrate the need for the training. For instance, if you train paramedics in dealing with aggression (and unfortunately, yes, paramedics do face aggression), you might start your online training with a video taken from a news item on this topic. This is not so different from a regular "live" training session: The video provides an illustration of the problem and then you step in to learn participants how to deal with a situation that they may face themselves. Video in online training In an online training, you can also set up a discussion based on the video. In all Learning Management Systems (LMS) I know, you can include a forum in a training. Just make it clear in the title and the description of the forum what the purpose is. If you have a small number of participants (or if you divide them into small groups), you can task everybody with posting a statement based on what they’ve picked up from the video. As an aside: an online training video can be revisited over and over again. That sounds very boring, but here is a quote from an IBM trainer, Bob Rohr, who explains why this is actually great: In 1997 IBM produced a series of online courses using streaming audio and video, and I played a role in that. We had 500K students and I collected data from a good subset of that populations. I could scarcely call on a customer that had not taken the courses. I found that many of them had taken the "classes" up to 10 times. When I asked why they would do that, they invariably said they replayed it until they "got it". There is no Instructor that can endure repeating themselves 10 times, and the other students would revolt if you were to do that. As we all know peer pressure comes into play in classroom settings. Here, they were alone; no one knew they did not get it the first 9 times. The machine had no opinion on the matter; it would play it all day and night. Bob cites an intrinsic advantage of computer based training: you can repeat as much as you like. Finding Proper Videos This is the hard part: Where do you find videos which are relevant for your training? Apart from shooting them yourself, there’s nothing for it but to look them up on Google. As an example, suppose you are training a group of managers how to motivate highly educated professionals. So, you are looking for a video, say on YouTube or Vimeo, which explains what really motivates people. Try a few variations of what you are looking for: youtube how to motivate professionals youtube how are professionals motivated youtube what motivates people youtube what motivates us youtube motivating professionals In other words: apply your Google search skills to find relevant videos. You might come up with The surprising truth about what motivates us. Embedding Your Videos in An Online Training Once you have found a suitable video, you have to put it in your online training. Now, how this is done exactly depends on your LMS of choice, but it is usually not very complicated. The easiest way is to just leave the video where it is: usually on YouTube or Vimeo. You do not download the video and then upload it again in your online training. Instead, you just link to the video. In for instance Moodle, one of the most successful LMS systems, this is enough to make the video available to the training participants. Here’s how it’s done: First, you add a new resource to your course (in Moodle, a training is called a course, which is divided into topics). Then you select the resource "Label", which you can use to embed videos.   Type in the title of the video, select the text and click the "Insert/edit link" button. In the little "Insert/edit link" window that pops up, simply input the url (the web address of the YouTube movie that you can copy from the address bar of your browser if you’re looking at the movie). Still inside the popup window, click on the "insert" button. If the popup window has disappeared, the video title should now be underlined. Click the "Save and return to course" button (you may have to scroll down a bit to see it). That’s it! You have added a video to your online training. Maintenance: Watch Out for Broken Links Unfortunately, there is no way to get notified if a YouTube video is no longer "in the air". In other words: if you embed a video, you have to check your online training regularly to see if the video can still be viewed. The video’s owners, or YouTube, may have taken the video down for whatever reason. So, watch out for broken links. To summarize: you can use freely available videos, found through Google, to spice up your online trainings. Your trainees may revisit conceptually difficult videos until they "get it". Use an LMS (Learning Management System) to embed videos in your online training quickly and easily.  

Social media is an ingrained part of today’s society. Source: www.edudemic.com See on Scoop.it - InformationCommunication (ICT)

Creating an online training takes a lot of effort and time. Once you’re done, you want to make sure people will find your online training through search engines such as Google. And you don’t want to be just anywhere in the search results, you want to be on the very first page, preferably in the top five results. This is where Search Engine Optimization (SEO) comes in. How Does Online Search Work? SEO increases the rank of your online training site in search results. Just to be clear: this is not advertising, it’s all about getting people to find your online training through, mainly, Google. So, how does it work? How can you improve the ranking of your online training in the search results? First of all, you need to know a little bit about how search engines actually work - not in any technical detail, but generally speaking. How Do Search Engines Discover Any Online Training? Imagine for a moment there were no search engines. What would you do to find an online training? Maybe you would visit a site where they list a lot of online training sessions. Or maybe you’d use the Yellow Pages website to find trainers and then look up their offerings. Well, this is more or less what search engines do to discover and rank your website too. Actually, they try to visit all sites on the entire internet and one strategy for that is to follow links from one website to the next. Once they have found your website, they create a table with all the words on your site. For each word, they also keep count of how many times you used that word. So, it’s really a frequency list of keywords. Creating a frequency list of keywords is also called indexing. If you start a search and type in keywords, a search engine will look up your keywords in those frequency lists. The search engine’s assumption is that sites with a very high frequency of the words you’re looking for, are more relevant to you than other sites. But there is one more trick search engines use to determine the relevancy of a specific site. This is comparable to asking around before you make a purchasing decision on a car. If you hear a lot of people talking about a specific car dealer, you will be more inclined to visit that dealer, versus the other dealer that nobody seems to know about. What search engines do, is measuring the number of incoming links. In other words: they count how many other websites link to your website to see how important your website is. While doing that, they also take into account what the nature of the linking websites is. For instance, if a website with hundreds of topics links to your online training, that link will count less than a link from another website which is specifically about online training. Where to find a good one? An analogy would be you - still shopping for a new car - listening more carefully to your sister who reads ten automobile magazines every week versus your brother-in-law who only brags about his own car. In other words: you assign more authority to more knowledgeable sources. How Will Search Engines Find My Training Website? Based on what we’ve learned about search engines, we can now specify two important rules: Write text containing the relevant keywords Make sure you have incoming links from relevant websites If you follow these rules, search engines will find your training site and rank it high in relation to the set of keywords that best describe the nature of your training website. In other words: if people type in the keywords that are a very close match to your website, they will get to see your website on the first page of results. As an aside, if you have a brand new training website, you can simply add it to Google using Google’s Webmaster Tools. Other search engines have similar tools to add your training site to their index. Now, let’s look at each of the rules in some more detail. Write text containing the relevant keywords How do I know this actually works? Well, right now my blog post about productization for trainers ranks very high in Google if you use those exact keywords while searching for it. That’s because my blog post is highly specific and custom tailored to trainers. To illustrate the importance of keywords, consider this. There is even a bunch of entrepreneurs who check if a specific search domain is still available. They will think up a number of highly specialized keyword sets, see if these keywords drive enough traffic (if search engine users click through to their website, based on those keywords) and only then they’ll create the actual product. Make sure you have incoming links from relevant websites What can you do about rule number two, making sure you’ve got a lot of other websites linking to yours? You could add your site to "web directories" such as the open directory project or the Yahoo! Directory. Unfortunately, these directories are so general in nature, that search engines do not assign much relevancy to a listing there in relation to the keywords which describe your training website. In other words: it doesn’t hurt to be listed in those directories, but it won’t make much of difference for your search engine ranking. Another strategy is to link to your own website on all sites which allow user edited content. For instance, you could link to your website by posting a comment to a blog post (such as this one). However, unless your comment also contains something of actual value, such as relevant good advice, your "contribution" will be viewed as link spam. In that case, most blog owners will simply delete your comment or not even publish it in the first place. So, the best way to go about this is by trying to help out other people. Only link to your own training site if you’re pretty sure your training would help people visiting the site that does the linking. Should I Expose My Entire Online Training to Google? Some LMS systems (learning management systems) offer the option to expose your online training to search engines such as Google. The advantage is that Google will be better able to index your site (this improves your site’s ranking). However, even if your online training is configured to allow only search engines (outside your regular trainees of course), it’s still technically possible to gain access to your training. Malicious hackers might impersonate a search engine, for instance. So, unless you’re offering a free training, accessible to all, you should not open up your training to any search engines. Instead, create a very good summary for each training on the homepage of your LMS. This summary should contain all the relevant keywords and also a description of the intended audience. It would be even better to create a separate webpage for each summary, where you state everything there is to know about your training: Topic(s) Goals Intended audience Duration Type of training (entirely online, blended or in face to face session only) Anything else which is relevant to your specific training or situation Be as specific as possible. If your training is mainly focused on sales managers but also contains some tips for all types of managers, stick to sales managers anyway. In other words: search engines love specialization and reward it every time over general descriptions. Do I Need A Professional? If you have read this far, then you do not need a professional. Seriously, all a professional can add to your online training’s SEO, is relieving you from the tedious job of checking your site’s ranking on a regular basis and trying to get your site posted on important and relevant sites. As a matter of fact, you are better qualified to judge whether a site is relevant. An SEO professional might list your online sales training on a site for sports trainers, just because both your sites contain the word ‘trainer’. Black Hat Hacker If you do want to hire a professional, make sure they do not employ any of the black hat SEO techniques. Black hat techniques try to trick search engines into ranking your site higher than is actually deserved. In other words: your site will also show up when less relevant keywords are used. This will ultimately result in a disappointment, as any resulting visitors of your site will not exactly find what they were looking for. The blackhat SEO "professional" will still charge you because, hey, they have led visitors to your training site… Most Important SEO Tip: Content Is King To conclude this post here is the most important SEO tip: content is king. The content of your training site should state exactly what you are offering. Do not be vague or general in the hope of winning more customers. Instead, go for content which is custom tailored to a very specific type of customer: your actual, existing customers. Try to write your training site’s content from their perspective. Use words they would use to find your site. The post Beginners Guide: Your Training On The 1st Page in Google appeared first on TrainerTops Blog.

During the first semester of the 2014-15 school year, Gaggle Safety Management discovered and blocked 283,368 references of sex and 188,563 mentions of drugs in student email, text messages, discussion boards, email attachments and computer files. Source: www.gaggle.net See on Scoop.it - FootprintDigital

Virtual worlds aren’t just for playing, they also open a gate to other didactic uses as virtual museums. I love going to all sort of museums, but taking your students with you is another thing as finding time, organizing the trip and preparing the goals can be resource consuming. The alternative is to attend a virtual museum while in classroom. The existing ones offer different options:Picture galleries: they just show a bunch of pictures of their expositions.Virtual reality exposition rooms: you can walk inside a 3D world interacting with the elements.A mixed approach of the previous ones.To better understand what this is about have a look at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. Get inside, have a walk and realize the possibilities of this resource. Other options aren’t so impressive but they’re indeed equally valuable as the Louvre Museum.Some ideas to work with:Just a lovely walk inside the museum.A webquest: combine it with flow control tools, as Moodle.A cultural trip to solve some exercises or complete a presentation.

If your trainees are enrolled in your online training, do they know it’s your training? Are they aware of your name and your brand? Providing an online training creates a great opportunity for spreading awareness of your brand. The Importance of Branding Here is why you should seize the opportunity to improve awareness of your brand. As your trainees are engaged in the online training, they are presumably in a receptive mood. They are ready to acquire new skills. While they are in a receptive mood, they will be more likely to remember your name and brand. This is important whenever the need for a new training rises. While many employees  do not spontaneously request new training, some do. It would be great if they requested your training. Of course, that will only happen if they can recall your brand. Also, some of your trainees may one day lead their own division or company. As leaders, they will usually recognize the value of training. At that point, you want to be sure they remember your name. That’s where branding comes in. How to Brand Your Online Training Do you have a visual style guide? If not, this is where your branding starts. Ask a designer for a comprehensive guide, covering everything from your logo, color scheme, fonts, and table layouts to forms and document templates. Also, ask a professional photographer to take a portrait picture of you. Ready? Okay, let’s take a look at three ways to brand your online training then. Branding Your Scorm Packages You may never know where they are opened, so brand your scorm packages Many online training takes place through a "scorm package". These are the online trainings produced through authoring tools such as Captivate, Articulate or Lectora. Such tools allow you to create rich, interactive training experiences. But they also let you include graphical elements such as your logo. If you are adapt in using one of the aforementioned tools, create a visual online training template according to your visual style guide. Otherwise, ask a professional to do it for you. Do you routinely create scorm packages and distribute them online? Then it is imperative that you brand your online training. Scorm packages can be displayed in a variety of completely different environments, mainly LMSs (learning management systems). You may not always control these environments in which case the only opportunity for branding is inside the scorm package. Create a Template for Your LMS If you do control your own Learning Management System (LMS), you can also create a visual template here. An LMS is website to manage online training. This means you reach the trainee with your branding before they even start the actual training, for instance on the login page. Many LMSs also include profile pages where both trainees and trainers post their picture and provide some background information (optionally, of course). You should do that too, especially if you are a freelance trainer. You should also consider creating an introduction page for new users, where you write a welcome message, followed by your name and portrait picture. This is called personal branding and it is especially important for freelance or otherwise solo trainers. Design Your Email Signature Your email signature is usually just your name and contact data at the bottom of your email message. In a previous post I talked about expanding your email signature for marketing purposes, for instance by including the training titles you are currently offering. Support your brand with images. In my experience, simple images work best. You can take this one step further by including your picture, your logo or even an entire professionally designed graphic element, maybe a nice background image for your list of training products. And finally, if you offer any training through email, you should definitely brand your online training emails too. Not just the signature, but the entire email body. Remember that many email software does not show images by default though, so be sure your email based training also looks good without any of the images. Stick to What You Do Best Many LMSs, email applications, and scorm authoring tools offer the option to upload your logo, configure colors and list font families. Be warned however that this often creates a messy effect. Keep an eye on the end result: is it still looking professional? You really want to brand your online training in the best way possible. Also, if you happen to be talented in visual design and want to invest the time yourself, great, go ahead. Otherwise, stick to what you do best and hire a professional designer instead. Make it clear to them that you want a visual template, not a design for a single page. A template can be reused to brand your online training time and again. The post 3 Ways to Brand Your Online Training appeared first on TrainerTops Blog.

. Image credit:  . Safer Internet Day 2015 - Save the date! .   . . Safer Internet Day (SID) is organised by Insafe in February of each year to promote safer and more responsible use of online… Source: gustmees.wordpress.com See on Scoop.it - FootprintDigital

Are you a new independent trainer wondering how to get clients? You’ve come to the right place. Here’s a beginners’ guide to getting clients for your training business. First of all: congratulations on your decision to make it as a trainer! You’ve got a wonderful time ahead. You’ll meet a lot of new people and get to make interesting and important decisions. Focus on a niche One of the most important decisions is: what will your focus be? I know you want to take on as many assignments as you possibly can. And that’s okay - in the very beginning. Here’s a tip: call established training or consulting firms and see if they have any gaps where you can fill in as a freelance trainer. So, taking on as many assignments as you can is okay. But on the other hand you must also try to specialize as early as possible. Pick a niche and stick to it. This makes your marketing efforts infinitely easier. As an example, let’s talk about Mike, the CEO of a medium sized construction business. Mike has to deliver some pretty bad news: the construction market is in tatters, and revenues have fallen again, this year - the shareholders won’t be happy. Mike is looking for a presentation trainer to help him prepare for the annual shareholders’ meeting. You see, he’s got a brilliant rescue plan, but his presentation has got to be flawless to convince the shareholders. So, he goes to google.com and starts looking for a great trainer. The trainer is going to have to help him out on delivering that presentation. He types in: presentation trainer. Did you just see that? He didn’t type in: "trainer". He’s looking for a very specific kind of trainer: a presentation trainer. Now, if you were a presentation trainer, competing with John the trainer - ‘for all types of training’, who do you think Mike would turn to? He would hire you for the job because you are the expert. In other words: it’s vitally important that you find a niche and totally focus on it because it helps you get customers. Spot an Emerging Trend Of course, if the niche is profitable it will already be filled with other trainers who are very specialized and much more experienced than you are. That’s why you need to find an emerging trend. Look out for a niche that has only just appeared. This may happen because of new compliance rules (new legislation) or new technology. For instance, many companies are taking a keen interest in establishing a social media presence. Suppose you are a starting trainer who’s interested in social media and knows a lot about Facebook, Linkedin and Twitter. Then you might consider targeting companies who work with personnel distributed all over the planet. Think along the lines of "keeping off shore personnel updated and motivated through social media". Entering an emerging niche market ensures that you have the opportunity to grow along with the market. Validate the Market Once you think you have spotted a promising niche, you still need to validate the market for you specialty. This simply means: check to see if there’s actual demand for what you’re offering. Just get on the phone and talk to a lot of potential customers. Would they be interested in hiring you for delivering a training in your field of expertise? Even if there’s no interest at all, you may pick up another emerging trend during your conversations. Or you may find out that your specialty evokes interest in another segment of the market. To follow the example above (the social media expert), maybe companies with a geographically distributed workforce are not interested in social media (they may already be experts themselves). But you find out that small companies with a lot of personnel on the road are indeed very interested, because more than 50% of the twenty companies you’ve talked to wants to hire you right away. In other words, you have validated "small businesses with personnel on the road" as a profitable niche for your social media training. Start Marketing Once you have found a profitable niche, start marketing. This is not just selling, but also creating awareness of your existence. More accurately, marketing is about positioning your training business as the solution to a problem your customers experience. Now, as a trainer, you will be delivering training most of the time. That means you don’t have time to make phone calls or write emails all day long (which is called direct marketing). Instead, you need to rely on reactive or responsive marketing. This means: you react to the customer making inquiries about your services. While this may sound like "wait for the customer to call me", there’s actually real hard work involved here. The difference with direct marketing is that you decide when you put in that hard work - which is perfect if you don’t know in advance what your training schedule will look like next month. Here are a number of responsive marketing methods. Keep in mind that you don’t have to use them all, certainly not from the start - that would be too much work. Pick a few methods that you’re already familiar with and use these intensively. Website with seo: this means a website which has been optimized for search engines (seo stands for search engine optimization). Whenever people type in the keywords for your specialty, or the problems they experience for which you have the solution, your website should show up high in the search results. Automated mailing list: your website should have a signup form for a mailing list. Everybody who signs up, automatically receives an email newsletter, or an email mini-training on a topic of your expertise. You prepare the emails far in advance. Deliver a talk at a conference: this establishes your credibility as an expert. Make sure the talk is recorded, so you can put it on your website and Youtube afterwards. Speaking of Youtube, post a snippet of your training, or an introduction or demo, on Youtube as well. Social media: establish a presence on LinkedIn (profile) and Facebook (even if you are not actually a social media trainer). Participate in groups and communities, post insightful comments. Great Expectations For every new business, a training firm included, it’s important to set your expectations right. Don’t expect a roaring success by the end of year 1. That hardly ever happens if you’re really new to the industry. In fact, just surviving for the first year is a success. Instead, aim for 3 years to create a profitable company. Of course, if you don’t see any growth during the first year at all, you may have to re-evaluate your strategy. Maybe your niche is not so profitable after all. Maybe there is a demand for your expertise, but not in the target market you have selected. You should expect one thing though: to have fun. There will be times when the going gets tough. There are menial tasks to be performed. You may have to deliver a training for a boring company, to make ends meet. But by and large, you should be having fun! The post Beginners’ Guide: Getting Clients for Your Training Business appeared first on TrainerTops Blog.

It’s like your alarm clock blowing off every morning: gamification, pbl, blended learning, 21st century skills… buzzing over and over. But the truth is that you don’t really know what’s going down with all of them. What makes a word a buzzword? Politicians beating around the bush, educational fashion, bloggers repeating things ad infinitum, Social Media, new opportunities created by technology, new jobs demanding new education... I can’t forget our Education Department’s letter sent years ago when Multiple Intelligences started to rocket: we’ll apply this new strategy as it is the one widely rising in Europe (i.e, do as your neighbour does… insane). Was that new buzzword successful or buzzy enough? It seems it wasn’t looking at this:As we are becoming more and more technologically evolved teacher thanks to this blog (LOL) our newest tool for buzzword tracking is going to be Google Trends. Just type what you want to track and observe the result, you may be surprised. The tool’s interface looks like this:As you’ve already realized the previous search has been done with two terms: PBL and Project based learning.Shown results are different for each term, so take in count:Some people use the abbreviated form, as PBL.PBL also stands for Points Badges Leaderboards (from gamification).And, the concept may be so settled down that nobody needs to look it up on the Internet, making its buzzing nature go silent. Let’s be curious about some other terms, but this time I’ll embed searches’ HTML code so it is updated live: Interesting, huh?

Source: www.educatorstechnology.com Excellent flowchart Med K. shared on his blog created by GCFLearnFree.com. See on Scoop.it - Educational News and Web Tools

  How are you different from the others? Your Unique Selling Proposition (or USP for short) is what makes you stand out from other trainers. Although USP contains the word selling,  it is really about the reason why your customers pick you instead of the competition. Ideally, your USP is a strength that only you possess: an unfair advantage, so to speak, that your competitors cannot overcome. From your customers’ point of view, it is the answer to the question "Why should I buy a training from you?". Suppose you are a business trainer specialized in establishing business relationships in China. You help out entrepreneurs who are looking to expand their businesses into China, or maybe off-shore their production there. For instance, you might be training them to recognize the importance of guanxi, or connections and relationships, in Chinese business. Now, if you were a native speaker of Mandarin and all the other Chinese business relationship trainers only speak English, you would have an unfair advantage. You visit the country on a regular basis, read Chinese business papers and magazines and talk to lots of Chinese business people.  You are uniquely qualified to explain the nuances of Chinese business etiquette. All other things being equal, your customers are more likely to pick you instead of your competitors. As long as you clearly state your USP in your marketing materials, of course. So how do you come up with your own Unique Selling Proposition? If you are at least moderately successful, you probably already have a USP even if you don’t know it. You just need to find out what it is. Discover Your USP Find out what your USP is by asking your customers. Why did they choose you? Get on the phone and ask: "Why did you pick me as a trainer?". If a pattern begins to emerge, that’s probably your USP. They could be telling you: "All the others have some experience doing business in China, but I heard that you also actually speak Mandarin." Bingo! You’re the training expert in Chinese business relationships who speaks Mandarin. But what if you don’t get a consistent answer? What if somebody tells you: "You happened to be the only trainer  available." Or worse: "You were the cheapest." Competing on price cannot be a USP - by definition - because there will always be some upstart willing to undercut you be a few percent. If you cannot identify your USP by querying your customers, you are in the same boat as a trainer who is just starting out, with no customers yet. For Starters: Find and Validate Your USP As a starting trainer, you cannot ask you existing customer base. Instead, try to identify your strengths by yourself. See if you have a marketable unfair advantage over other trainers. An unfair advantage could be a unique skill that nobody else in your market has. In the example mentioned above, speaking Mandarin Chinese is an unfair advantage turned into a USP. But a USP need not necessarily be a unique skill. It can also be: offering your training in a new way. For instance, I know an IT trainer who realized that his competitors were all offering face-to-face training sessions in a traditional way. Given the topic of the training, computer skills, this is more than a bit odd: you can easily train computer skills through online training. This IT trainer started offering his services for a much lower price, which he could afford because he no longer needed to travel so much - his training sessions now took place online. But more importantly, his customers’ employees could do a large part of the training in their own time! To identify a potential USP: Make a list of all the potential benefits you as a trainer can offer through your training (e.g. comply with the law, increase work floor safety, increase productivity). Compare the list with what your competitors are offering and scrap everything that your competitors are already listing. For the remaining benefits, see what you are really good at as a trainer. Also, think about what you’re willing to offer. Don’t advertise flexible training hours if you’re not willing to work during vacations. Once you have identified a few promising USPs, it’s time to validate these. This simply means: interview your potential customers to see which USP really resonates. Making a USP Work for You Your USP only works for you if customers actually recognize it. If your advertised USP is "Free post-training support" but your customers always call you because you’re available during vacations you know you should change your USP (anything ‘free’ is probably a bad USP anyway, because the ‘free’ part of it can be easily copied). Another prerequisite for making your USP work, is that potential customers actually get to know it. This part is relatively easy - include it everywhere in your marketing: website brochures email signature facebook page linkedin profile twitter profile business cards even business conversations As a matter of fact, if you are starting out as a trainer, you may even want to name your company (assuming you have one) after your USP - assuming you have carefully validated your USP of course.     The post Trainer, Kill Your Competition With a USP appeared first on TrainerTops Blog.

Finally! The Gamecodization project has its own website and domain:www.gamecodization.com

With the New Year come the New Year’s Resolutions. Maybe yours is going to the gym, learning a new language or even just relaxing more. Whatever your personal resolutions might be, there’s also a… Source: www.business2community.com See on Scoop.it - InformationCommunication (ICT)

Do you want to increase the number of people who click through to your website by up to 150%? Follow this 5 minutes guide to get your picture next to Google search results for your online training site or company website. Let me show you what I mean: On Google’s website, if somebody types in TrainerTops blog, or any other query which leads to this blog, my portrait shows up next to the search results. There’s at least one study that suggests this little gimmick improves click through rates by up to 150%. Now, my own portrait won’t result in a 150% increase of course, but you are much better looking than I am, so why not give it a shot? I mean, even if it does not really increase your click throughs, at least your potential customers will recognize you. This is especially important for you as a trainer, since you always have to sell not just your training but yourself as well. So, here’s how to include your picture in Google’s search results real quick: create a Google account if you don’t already have one; add a photo; find your Google Plus URL; paste the Google Plus URL into your website; paste your own site’s url into your Google Plus Profile. Okay, that was maybe a bit too quick, but don’t worry, we’ll take this one step at a time. Step 1: Add Your Picture to Your Google Account If you don’t have a Google account yet, go to google.com and click on the "Sign in" button. Use the Sign in button to create a new account (or sign in if you already have an account). On the next screen, click on the "Create an account" link and follow Google’s instructions. Now click the ‘Create account’ link Pretty soon, you should be able to add your picture, by clicking on "Add a photo". After you have filled out a form, you’ll get to see this screen where you can add your picture. Step 2: Paste Your Google Plus URL into Your Website First, look up your Google Plus URL. Proceed to Google.com, sign in and click on your your own picture in the top right corner. Then click the "View profile" button. Click on your own portrait, then the View profile button. Now, in the next screen, copy the url, minus the "/posts" part. Paste the copied url in Notepad or any other text editor. Copy your Google Plus URL from the address bar of your browser. The url should look something like this: https://plus.google.com/u/0/102755877028915392448 It’s time to put this url in your website. There are two ways to do this: Edit the "source code" of your site, i.e. the html code Use your blog software or content management system to insert the url - I’ll use WordPress as an example I’ll give you some more details for both methods shortly, but in both case you need to put the url into a so called "link" element: <link rel="author" href="https://plus.google.com/106072584364901278079″/> Just paste your own Google Plus url inside the quotation marks of the href to create your own link element: <link rel="author" href="your url goes here"/> Change the Source Code If you have access to your site’s html code, you can paste the link element directly into the file that is responsible for your site’s header. This will typically be a file called ‘header.html’ or ‘header.php’ - but this may vary. If your site uses multiple html files containing a line with ‘<head>’ in it, you should add your link element in each of these files. Insert the link element element directly beneath the line with the ‘<head>’ element. For example: Paste the link element directly beneath the line with the tag ‘head’. Once you have inserted your Google Plus URL, make sure that all changed html files are uploaded to your website. Update the Header  of Your WordPress Theme If you are using software to edit your website, things should be slightly easier. Here, I’ll use the example of WordPress, which is blogging software. Visit the /wp-admin/ section of your blog, then select Appearance > Editor. Now select the Header template of your theme. Insert the link element right underneath the line with the <head> tag. Don’t forget to click the button ‘Update File’ when you’re done. If you are using a cache plugin, such as WP Super Cache, do not forget to delete the cache. Step 3: Tell Google Plus About Your Website In the final step, we tell Google Plus about our website. Go to your Google profile (e.g. by clicking on your portrait) and select the "About" menu option. Then, under "Links", click the "Edit" link. In the little window that pops up, select "Add custom link". Under label, fill in the name of your site. For URL, type in the complete address of your website. Click the Save button and you’re done! But I’m Not Seeing My Picture Anywhere! Please keep in mind that your picture may not show up immediately in the search results. Google first has to crawl (re-index) your site again. If you don’t want to wait for this, you can ask Google to crawl your site right now. Here’s a guide to Ask Google to crawl a page or site. But even following this guide may not result in Google showing your picture immediately. So, if you want to know if you did everything right, go to http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/richsnippets and fill in the address (url) of your website. Hit the "Preview" button and you should see your own portrait. The post 5 Minutes Guide to Get Your Picture Next to Google Results appeared first on TrainerTops Blog.

Is online training poised to make face-to-face training sessions obsolete? To answer that question, let’s take a look at two types of online training first: synchronous and asynchronous online training. Asynchronous Online Training During an asynchronous online training, the trainee and the trainer are not necessarily present at the same time. How is that even possible? Simple: think correspondence studies. Of course, a training is usually more engaging. It’s hard to imagine a training taking place ‘by correspondence’. However, modern technology is (much) more engaging than correspondence could ever be. As a trainer using asynchronous online training, you have the option to create: Adaptive tests: if the trainee does really well, have them automatically skip to the end fast. If, on the other hand, the trainee scores pretty bad, provide additional explanations and test again. Integrated videos: in between tests, show instructional videos. This works especially well for behavioral training. Reinforcements of the training long after the fact: send out emails, text messages or even mini training videos, to improve transfer of training to the work floor. An additional huge benefit is peer to peer communication. Trainees nowadays have the option to lend their ear to peers, share their training experience and support each other through forums, email, and other online collaborative instruments. Synchronous Online Training In this type of online training, everybody’s present at the same time, just not in the same place. In a teleconference, teleseminar or webinar, the trainer not only ‘broadcasts’ the training, but also responds to questions or remarks at the spot. Of course, because everybody’s using a computer, things like live polls are an option as well. Live online training usually entails having a video stream of the trainer or a computer screen (containing, for instance, a Powerpoint presentation). If recorded, the online training can be used for an indefinite time afterwards as well. For very specific purposes, a live online training session may be extremely effective. For instance, it may be used to replace the traditional ‘language learning labs’, where the language trainer (usually a native speaker) listens in on the students practicing their pronunciation. Adding Value to Face-to-Face Sessions Through Online Training I think it’s clear that online training is not going to replace face-to-face training any time soon. The physical presence of the trainer is just too important. However, online training can definitely add value before, during and after the face-to-face training. Before Before the face-to-face sessions, you might want to use asynchronous online training to: Establish thresholds or prerequisites: "meet these requirements or you’re not allowed to do the training". Gather data for "remedial" training: find out which skills the trainees are lacking beforehand, and adjust your training accordingly. Introductions: have everyone post a little biographical information. Of course, this is no substitute for an actual introduction, but it does provide a little more background on everybody. During Use the online training software to count heads (presence list). Broadcast the training to everybody who couldn’t be present physically and take questions online (synchronous online training). Reduce the face-to-face training time: everybody’s already taken the theoretical part through online training, so there’s no need to reiterate that. After Use online training software, such as a Learning Management System (or LMS for short), to keep in touch with the trainees. Have everybody evaluate the training, through an online evaluation. If the subject of the training consists of very specific skills or knowledge, conduct tests online. Automatically send out reminders of the topics of the training, maybe in the shape of scenarios or cases. To conclude, I would say that trainers who ignore online training options are also ignoring an ever increasing demand of their customers. As the new generations take their place on the work floor, employees will increasingly expect to be supported by their electronic devices (not just computers, but also tablets and smartphones) while training. The post Will Online Training Destroy Face-to-Face Sessions? appeared first on TrainerTops Blog.

Welcome to The Matrix. Which pill are you going to take?1. Teacher basic profiles: know your colleagues.The expert: he’s up-to-date all the time and knows great solutions for your tech problems. He also looks forward to sharing strategies with you. Stick to him, but don’t bother him too much with your doubts.The survivor: not an expert but he tries hard and know basic things as he’s realized about the importance of tech in school. Besides he doesn’t want to fall back as he sees his colleagues improving. Collaborate with him.The runner: doesn’t know much and doesn’t want to know. He escapes from any attempts from his school to get involved in tech projects, and he’ll even try to sabotage them. Bet you’ll find him criticizing the expert. Avoid him at all cost.10. New technologies must serve education, and not the other way aroundTechnology applied to Education has to be: easy, clean, straightforward and effective, among many other positive characteristics. Don’t even try to be a magician or a funambulist. If some tech solution imposes too many constraints then it’s badly designed, its interface is not good, or it hasn’t any pedagogic basis. Discard it.11. A good approach usually involves a combination of different tools.Some teachers love brands blindly. If they like something they just exclusively use it while they detract other things. Avoid it. Visualize edtech as a puzzle. Pieces won’t make the picture, but don’t force the assembling. 100. Pedagogy is the key, technology must just be subdued to it.Clear enough, isn’t it? Many can’t see as clearly.101. Aesthetics, the red ribbon.It’s demonstrated: humans are attracted by colorful things. We’re similar to bees flying about looking for flowers. A mediocre but beautiful resource can attract more people than a good but ugly one. So, look for the best mixture: good and beautiful (and cheap!).110. Beware of buzzwords.Don’t get mesmerized by buzzing things. A stupid thing goes on being just that, even if it’s supported by millions of people. Be critical, check their presence on the Internet (read my other article Tracking down buzzwords) and use your common sense (not so common nowadays).111. Don’t expect things to come out as you planned. Contingency plans are mandatory.WIFIs not functioning, viruses wiping computers out, password related problems, incompatibility affairs, students cheating on you… Have a plan B with some offline resources, or move to plan C and take out the scrolls.1000. Be open-minded, be skeptical, be all together.Being a tech fan teacher doesn’t mean you have to try everything. Give it a try to proven tools, and a fast try to the new ones. And, most important, keep the whole picture in mind.1001. Be up-to-date.In this new changing world the meaning of "stuck in the past" could be a matter of just 1 month. Being deranked from expert to newbie is easier than ever.1010. Socialize.Many people have already done what you want to go about. Ask them, check social networks, it’ll be faster than investigating on your own.1011. Track, measure, come to a conclusion and rearrange.Keep a record of your tools, their uses and results. Quantitative measures do help in the process. Isn’t that the famous quality control system?1100. Think about the future.Play the sage and forecast the future, Einstein style. Hidden realms of the mind suddenly overflow when they are excited....more to come.

If you are an independent professional trainer with an established clientele, you are in grave danger. The danger is called complacency. Now, that word might have a connotation of "laziness", but that’s not what I’m talking about. You probably work harder than most of your friends and relatives. And  you get to send all the invoices, sweet! But the thing is you could achieve even more if you left your local optimum. You see, you are standing on top of a hill. It provides a nice view of the scenery, but as long as you stay there, you will never reach that mountain peak that is on the horizon. To reach that mountain and scale it, keep reading. In this post I’ll share 5 strategies on how to explode your training business. However, before we take a look at the 5 strategies, you need to recognize when you are at a local optimum. This may be sooner than you think, because nobody is able to deliver training 40 hours a week. You have to allocate time to acquiring new customers, doing the paperwork and actually preparing each new training. Let’s put it in straightforward terms. If your income has plateaued in the past few years you are now standing on that hill, looking out longingly to the mountain in the distance. If you could not possibly do more without getting overworked and stressed out, you have reached a local optimum. This is actually quite an achievement. Many people quit and become employees long before that time. But before we congratulate ourselves too much, let’s see how we can move on. Without much further ado, here are the 5 strategies. 1. Productize Your Training Wait? What? Is that even a word, productize? Yep, and it means: turn (a part of) your training into a product. Some ideas, starting with a few low gain options, ending with real money makers: Create mouse pads, mugs and leaflets which reinforce the core concepts of your training. You’re probably not going to able to actually sell these items, but they will be distributed among employees and continue to refer customers to you long after the training. Write a white paper on your topics of expertise. Again, this will not directly make you any money, but it will establish you as an authority, making your marketing efforts easier. Write an actual book. This may be the first product that will make you money independently, but it does take a significant amount of time to author a book. Odds are that you’ll just barely break even on this. Sell training materials: in addition to the book, you create work sheets and training exercise materials. This is where the real money is. Other trainers will use your stuff to deliver their own training. 2. Delegate Or Outsource To grow your business, you need to free up time. Delegate or outsource boring, repetitive, time consuming tasks. Not just bookkeeping, but also tasks like finding videos or images for your training sessions, putting together powerpoint slides or other training materials, and creating proposals. Depending on your level of ambition, you can use the liberated time to deliver another training, which creates additional revenue. But really growing your business demands that you spend your time on creating products and selling these. Now, delegating and outsourcing is a skill you need to learn. At first, if something goes wrong, you want to be able to finish the task yourself quickly. So, start with small, non-essential tasks. Maybe you need to find a video on Youtube to illustrate a training concept. That would be a perfect task for a virtual assistant (VA). A virtual assistant is a professional assistant you interact with through the internet or the phone. They typically provide assistance in the field of administrative tasks or online research (such as finding a list of candidates for your Youtube video). You can find virtual assistants anywhere, but some sites have specialized in offering virtual assistants. Here’s a short list: ask sunday Brickwork India YourManInIndia TasksEveryDay If you decide to ‘hire’ a VA, insist on an assistant who’s English is excellent. Be prompt to ask for another assistant if you feel they are not being helpful. When assigning tasks, be very specific and provide examples of the results you’re looking for. 3. Hire Trainers Hire starting trainers to execute less demanding training sessions. You are the expert, so you probably cannot hand over all of your training to another. But a significant chunk of the training might be about introductory level stuff that could easily be done by a new trainer. So, see if you can split up a longer training into multiple sessions. On day one your hired trainer starts with the introductory level session. The other session you deliver yourself. If you training typically consists of three days, you have just saved one third of your time spent on delivering the actual training. You can ease your way into hiring by starting out with freelance trainers. Tap into your network or use sites like linkedin.com (there a number of groups for trainers, some of them have job listings), elance.com and odesk.com to find freelance trainers. Once you’re comfortable with having other trainers delivering part of your offering, I would recommend taking a look at payroll companies. A payroll firm deals with the administrative tasks normally associated with hiring somebody. In many countries, it’s also possible to have the payroll firm hire the trainer, legally speaking. The payroll firm will sent you an monthly invoice, which includes a small surplus charge of course. So, the payroll firm is the legal employer while you’re the actual ‘boss’. This saves you a good deal of time otherwise spent on, well, doing the payroll. Be sure to find a really trustworthy payroll firm though. If they file for bankruptcy, in most countries you will be charged with the taxes the payroll firm normally would have paid, even though you have already paid them through the monthly invoices. In other words, check out the payroll firm and avoid paying your taxes twice. 4. Put Your Training Online Create a stand alone online version of your training. Using software, such as a Learning Management System (LMS) you create an online version of your regular training. Of course, an actual face-to-face training session can never be replaced by online training, but you can probably think of some parts of your training which could be delivered asynchronously (trainees are in different places, taking the training at different times). You can go about this in various ways: Create so-called scorm packages containing a single mini-training Conduct the pre-training assessments online Deliver the entire experience online: from assessments and the actual training to follow-up tests You can also look at online training as a special case of productization. I’ve talked about both topics in separate posts as well, see productization and online training, so let’s skip to the next strategy. 5. Start a Franchise Or an Affiliate Program Are you very successful with training methods you have developed and fine tuned yourself over the course of many years? Then think about starting a franchise training business or an affiliate program. This strategy is the logical next step if you are already selling your own training materials to other trainers (as discussed under 1. Productize Your Training). In addition to using your materials, a franchisee also conducts business under your company’s name. Usually, they are only allowed to do this once they have followed some sort of certification training - for which they will have to pay a fee. To keep things simple initially, you could also start with an affiliate program. In this case, other trainers resell your training - or training materials such as assessments - to their own customers. Providing an affiliate program can be really successful if you are specialized in a one or at most a few closely related topics. Your name will provide credibility to all trainers working with your materials and training programs. Establishing credibility is worth a lot, especially for starters, so you should be able to sell your affiliate program with relative ease. If trainers are actually using your business name, as they would under a franchise arrangement, you have to be pickier. You don’t want just anybody to use your name. Here’s what you absolutely need to have in place: An overall "this is how we do it here" guide, describing your values and goals. Manuals for each specific training. As mentioned before, you should have a certification program in place: a "train the trainer" program. Make sure that everything and everybody is kept up to date. Each expired certificate should be a signal for a franchisee to return to HQ and do a refresher. A final word of advice: develop an entrepreneurial mind set. Try to seek out new opportunities for your growing your training business. Good luck with scaling that mountain! The post 5 Strategies to Explode Your Training Business appeared first on TrainerTops Blog.

Teachers need to socialize and, more important, they have to share quality information. If we have to be present on all social networks, well… then we can go nuts. That’s why it’s important to know which networks to choose and what for. As a teacher I personally use these:Twitter: my favourite one. Rivers of knowledge flow unstoppably all day long. Check my account, I have a lot of Ed colleagues.Pininterest: love it! It’s like a collection of cheat sheets! It’s way useful to find resources (e.g, for flipping).Google+: I’m still forcing myself to check it on a regular basis, but some communities about education are starting to settle down, and its interface is very attractive, not to mention it’s directly indexed by Google.Facebook: I must confess I have a personal and a professional profile. With the second one I sometimes find useful information.LinkedIn: this is more suitable for professional promotion.Reddit: I don’t use it widely, but I must admit it’s a good place to curate information.I usually check my Twitter account through my mobile device. When I find something worth sharing I click on it to access its details and I long tap the screen to copy the text to the clipboard. Then I open Everypost, paste the clipboard and multishare it. Everypost is an application which lets you publish a message in multiple sites at once. Just enter the information of each account you possess when installing for the first time. Google+ might give you some troubles. Switch off Google’s security checks, and if problems persist change your account’s password. It works, I did it that way.Check out this video for the details:

How to Say ‘Thank You’ on #SocialMedia #infographic #pinterest #edchat #digcit http://t.co/lkrL0qu1Jr — ICTPHMS (@ICTPHMS) January 18, 2015      

Picture by Zach Beauvais, published under cc The 25 blogs presented here are a great source of inspiration and practical tips for trainers and coaches. Visit these blogs if you’re looking for new training exercises (energizers, ice breakers, etc.), motivational stories from other trainers, industry news and trends, or great advice on how to grow your training business or gain management buy-in. I have broken up the list of blogs into three categories: Personal blogs - mostly from independent trainers Corporate blogs - blogs from specific training companies Portal sites - here you’ll find multiple bloggers in one spot Please note that the blogs are ordered alphabetically within each category.  So here, the top 25 means: out of all the other blogs. Personal Blogs corporatetrainer.com The blog posts on Corporate Trainer are a mix of the training experiences of the author, Peter, and practical advice. An example of the former - personal posts - is 9 challenges all trainers face ("Our  work is going virtual, that is scary"). An example of the latter is 14 ways to make a training program work. joitskehulsebosch.blogspot.nl Joitske Hulsebosch specializes in new media for learning. The insights relayed on her site apply to training as well. Her creative way of thinking shines through in blog posts such as The power of infographics for learning and 10 tools challenge: making youtube playlists, about the dangers and benefits of using online tools in your training business. learningrebels.com Regardless if you are an "Accidental Trainer" or an accomplished trainer with years of experience, if you like to be challenged in your thinking and have a passionate, authentic voice in your reading matter, this blog is for you.  Start with 3 Things this learning rebel would tell my "new trainer" self. Learning Rebels Mission Statement: Passionately Embracing Unconventional Ideas in Learning Today. salt-box.co.uk SaltBox takes an unconventional approach to training. Their blog posts, just a few so far, are personal accounts of their training experiences. They also like a good party as they relate in the post 5 Reasons to Celebrate your Business’s Birthday! thetrainerstrainingcompany.co.uk The Trainers Training Company is a great resource for freelance trainers and coaches. Or really for any independent trainer who is looking for advice on how to start, develop and grow their training business. Sharon Gaskin, the founder, writes inspiring and actionable blog posts, such as Freelance Trainers: Are You Using This Simple Strategy to Get Business? She also personally responds to comments, both on this site and in her LinkedIn group Trainer Talk. Corporate Blogs blogs.ddiworld.com DDI World specializes in talent management. Coaches interested in the field of leadership development should take a look at a few of their posts titled Are We Missing the Mark on How to Develop Leaders? and Leadership: A Career Choice or a Constraint? bottomlineperformance.com The blog on Bottom Line Performance’s site has a pretty broad scope, but you’ll find their articles tagged training are really catered to (corporate) trainers. Titles include Why Don’t Trainers Worry About ROI? and When You May Not Need a Training Program. dashe.com/blog The social learning blog pays attention to trends in corporate training, writing about topics like 5 Things Millennials Want From Training and How To Make The Flipped Classroom Effective In Corporate Training. If you’re interested in learning on the workfloor in general, be sure to visit their blog’s homepage too. iecoaching.com This blog contains a number of concise video clips, each providing coaching tips presented in a clear, actionable way. The tips don’t have a clear title (they’re simply numbered), so you’ll have to scan the description for keywords you’re interested in. For example, Tip #7 looks at how to develop direct communication - "the ability to communicate clearly, effectively, and use language that has the greatest positive impact on coaching counterparts". explorance.com/blog The eXplorance blog has some interesting articles on corporate training. There are posts on the theory behind training, such as Kirkpatrick’s Four Level Evaluation Model for Training Success, and some more practical posts like 5 Steps to Creating Effective Training Programs. langevin.com/blog The Langevin Blog offers tips and best practices for trainers, instructional design, training management, virtual classroom, and even non-trainers, with posts such as 5 Tips for Writing Training Objectives. There’s even tips that are applicable anywhere, such as 5 Instructional Techniques for Building Climate and Rapport. mlrtraining.wordpress.com The MLR business training blog provides a funny anecdote The Joy of Business Management Training (or not!) and practical advice on Transferring Learning from the Training Room to the Workplace…..What makes this happen? If you, as a trainer or coach, want to start your own blog, you could do worse than following the example of this site. phasetwolearning.wordpress.com Phase (two) learning has a number of posts about onboarding as well as articles of a more general nature. There’s a very practical post Bring Your Own Workshop Stuff and an article titled Adult Learning Principles: A Quick Refresher. thetrainingbusiness.com The Training Business’ most recent post dates back to August 2013. I do hope they keep posting, because there are some real nuggets on this site. Such as A Quick, Simple, and Free Facebook Marketing Tip that will Increase Awareness of Your Training Courses. thetrainingclinic.com/blog The Training Clinic offers down to earth advice for trainers. For instance, Try a Cocktail Exercise! After lunch. A dreaded time for all trainers- and learners! Increasing participation is a must and raising activity is a double blast to boredom. The cocktail exercise accomplishes both. In another post, they talk about why you should Market Your Training Function. I like the Training Clinic for their unconventional approach in choosing titles: Need to Increase Attendance? MOB Them! thetrainingworld.com "Training & Development World" hosts articles on practice and theory behind training. Here, you’ll find articles such as A Simple But Powerful Training Model For Trainers and Make the Training "Stick". trainingdirectoryuk.com/blog With the Training Blog on trainingdirectoryuk.com you’re going to have to cherry pick the interesting articles. Be amazed at how many training related acronyms there are, for example. Or pick up advice on How to make your internet business stand out above your competitors, in case you’re providing online training. trainingstation.walkme.com Training Station specializes in organizational learning and employee productivity, meaning its articles are mostly about corporate training. Topics include How to prevent employee disengagement in training and Corporate training activities to improve the learning process. trainingzone.co.uk/blogs TrainingZone actually features multiple bloggers. This means they cover a wide range of interesting topics such as 7 Pricing Secrets All Coaches Should Know and Five suggestions for making training more memorable. To read some of the articles, you have to be registered, but hey, registration is free! All in all, TrainingZone is a very valuable resource of actionable information and  training tips. Portal Sites astd.org/publications/blogs It’s easy to get lost on astd.org. There are many pages and articles, not all relevant to trainers and coaches. Some blog posts are really introductions to books or other commercial items. But there are some nuggets as well, such as Five Tips for Success When Using Games in Training and How Effective Is Executive Coaching? For trainers and coaches, probably the most interesting section of the site is the Learning & Development Blog. elearningindustry.com As the name implies, this site does not cater specifically to trainers and coaches. I have included elearningindustry.com nevertheless, because they regularly post interesting articles, such as Can Your Training Sell? Many of their articles are written by training experts, listed on their bloggers page. elearninglearning.com/train The training section of eLearning Learning hosts a number of articles on (corporate) training, mostly in the context of e-learning. Many titles on this site link directly to other sites and that’s a good thing. You’ll discover other useful blogs this way. They’re also able to cover a wide range of topics, from 3 Simple Ways to Improve Compliance Training to 5-Steps for Creating Effective Employee Training. Even if you’re not interested in e-learning, you should still check out this site for its variety and broad scope. You’ll be sure to find something of interest. free-training-resources.the-trainers-lounge.co.uk The name says it all, Free Training Resources is not actually a blog but a very handy collection of icebreakers, energizers and introduction exercises. And really any type of training resource. hr.answers.com/training-and-development While not an actual blog, this subsection of answers.com is interesting nevertheless. It contains introductory level articles on topics such as Four Types of Training Activities that Work and How to Create Winning Hands-On Learning Activities. trainingindustry.com "Your portal to the world of training" as they call it, is indeed a portal-like site. It features many in depth articles, overviews of the state of the training industry, such as Size of Training Industry, and advice for training executives, for instance Building Trust And Collaboration In The Training World.   The post Top 25 Inspirational Blogs For Trainers And Coaches appeared first on TrainerTops Blog.

How do you find high demand, low competition training markets? If you’re looking to start a career as a trainer, this is an important question. But even as an established trainer you might want to enter more profitable markets. In both cases you’re looking for niches, or sub-categories, in the training market that are underserved. To identify these profitable niches you have to do some market research. But not the type where you invite lots of consumers in your test panels and feed them your new frozen yoghurt. Instead, we are going to explore a number of relatively cheaps tools which have become available in recent years. But first we need to talk about your passions and strengths. Not all the profitable niches you’ll identify shortly are a good match. Some may be very boring, some may involve working with people you may not like. Even if these niches have great potential as profitable markets, they may not be suitable for you. It is very unlikely that you’ll be successful in market where you have to do work you absolutely hate. Mapping Your Skills And Strengths to Niches To find niches which suit you, make a list of your strengths, or skills, and passions. To illustrate the difference between a passion and a skill, think about aircraft spotters. A plane spotter’s passion is obviously planes. But amongst their skills is probably not piloting a plane (or else they’d be doing that instead). A nice tool for compiling a list of your passions and skills is MindMup, an online mind mapper which lets you save your mind map to your Google Drive. Here’s an example of my list. Now, using your strengths and passions, try to come up with a list of suitable niche training markets. Don’t worry about profitability or competition, that’s something we’ll be looking at shortly. Here’s a list I compiled as an example.  Generate Keywords to Find Niches We now have a short list of interesting niches where you can apply your strengths and passions. To expand your list, you could start using Google to find related niches, based on keywords. Just type in your keyword and you’ll see that Google automatically shows a list of related keywords (other search engines do much the same thing nowadays). While this is a nice start, Google offers a more comprehensive tool as well: the Keyword Planner. To use the Keyword Planner, sign up for Google Adwords (you may be required to input your credit card, but using the Keyword Planner is free). Once you’ve logged in to Adwords, find the menu option ‘Tools’ and select ‘Keyword Planner’. Then select ‘Search for new keyword’: Enter your keyword, ignore all other options and hit the ‘Get ideas’ button. The Keyword Planner will now show you a number of related keywords, conveniently listing the competition in the advertising space as well. Keep in mind that we’re specifically talking about Google’s advertising space here: the ads that Google shows next to the search results on its regular site (called Adwords). If you plan to use Adwords, you should not select a niche based on keywords with a high level of competition. There’s one more thing you need to know. Unless you’re planning to sell your training in a location independent way, for example as an online training, you should restrict the keyword list to your country, state or even city. In the left column, click on ‘All locations’ under Targeting to enter e.g. your city. Once you’ve done that, Google will retrieve a new list and the numbers will be lower (because you’re no longer searching globally). If the search volume for your niche is high, and the competition is low, go for it! Advanced Competitive Analysis As I said earlier, the competitive analysis Google’s Keyword Planner provides, is limited to just the advertising space: for a given set of keywords, how many advertizers are out there and what are they paying per ad? While that is interesting information, you may also want to look further. Here, I’ll show a tool for analyzing the competition on the web, or more specifically their rank in search engines such as Google. This is called SEO competition, after Search Engine Optimization. SEO competition analysis tries to find out how hard it is to get on the first page in Google. So, if the SEO competition is low, then your chances of reaching the first page on Google for the keywords of your niche are good. The rational behind a competitive analysis based on SEO competition is that everybody is on the web nowadays. If you find a number of related keywords with low SEO competition, that probably means there’s also little competition in the ‘real world’. And even if that assumption is not true, it still means you have found a marketing channel that is underutilized by your competition - allowing you to reach that niche cheaper than they do. SEO Competition Analysis Tools First of all, you could probably gather all the data you need by just using Google. However, there are various tools which make life easier by saving you a lot of time. I have tried two of them Jaaxy and Market Samurai. I found Jaaxy to be… lacking in features. For instance, if you’re looking for related keywords, Jaaxy will come up with a nice table showing the keywords, the monthly searches and the competition, but the columns in the table cannot be sorted. Also, the trial version is limited to just 30 searches and even then imposes some additional constraints. Market Samurai is a much better SEO competition analysis tool. The trial version is completely functional and provides real value. The only drawback here is that you need to input you Adword account data - which is usually your Gmail account. So, in the background, Market Samurai is using Adword data to perform its analyses. Because Market Samurai is so much better than any of the other tools (that I know of) out there, I’ll include a brief tutorial on Market Samurai here. If you know any better tools, please let me know in the comments. Market Samurai Market Samurai is a tool that lets you analyze the SEO competition. You can use Market Samurai to find a niche in the training market where the demand is high and the competition low. There’s a nice video introduction, but using the tool for the first time can still be overwhelming. Here’s what is most important. Generate Keywords You start by inputting your main keyword and then generating additional, related keywords. Simply click the "Generate Keywords" button to do that. Once Market Samurai has retrieved a number of related keywords, you can have these analyzed by hitting the "Keyword Analysis" button. For now, only a few metrics are interesting: Total Searches - How many people enter this keyword each day, on average? SEO Traffic (SEOT) - The maximum potential daily clicks that a number 1 ranked site for this keyword term could potentially achieve. The average price per click-through in Google Adwords (AWCPC) Using the check boxes, you can uncheck all the other columns. So, what have we just learned? Well, the keyword ‘onboarding’ is promising in that, worldwide, quite a few people search for it every day. On the other hand, advertising through Adwords would be very expensive indeed: $8 per click on your ad. That’s a whopping $2000 a day (250 SEOT x $8). This is not within our budget, so we need to know if we can make it to the first page of Google with our site, when people are searching for onboarding, because then we won’t need any advertising. SEO Competition Analysis Select the SEO Competition menu item to find out how other sites are ranking for the term onboarding (or really any other training related keyword, of course). You’ll be presented with a large table of information. Uncheck all columns through the checkboxes "Off Page" and "On Page". Then select these columns: PR: PageRank - the strength of the website’s position in Google’s search results, determined by the number and quality of incoming links BLP: Page Backlinks - the total number of links pointing to this page YAH: Yahoo Directory - is the site listed in the Yahoo Directory (this is still important in the USA, but less so in other countries) Title: is the keyword in the title? URL: is the keyword in the URL? Together, these metrics will give you a good indication of how easy (or difficult) it will be to enter the top 10 search result with your website, for the selected keyword. If you see a lot of yellow and red here, you’d better start looking for another keyword to find your training niche. Tip: compare the competitive analysis of a new niche (keyword set) to a market you already know intimately. For instance, I happen to know (from experience) that the e-learning market is highly competitive - both in the real world, in the Adwords advertising space, and in Google’s index. So, if you put the keyword e-learning (or preferably your competitive market’s keyword) through Market Samurai’s SEO competition, you’ll get a feeling for what those yellows and reds (see screenshot) really mean. Training Niche Selection To summarize, if you want to select a profitable training niche you need to: Find out what your skills and passions are; Map these to potential niches in the training market, using related keywords to find additional niches; Identify low competition, high demand keyword sets with the help of SEO competition tools. Of course, once you have identified a great niche the real work starts. Talk to potential customers in the niche market. Put up a website centered around the keywords, specialize in this niche, learn new skills if necessary. Good luck and have fun! The post The Secret to Finding Profitable Training Markets appeared first on TrainerTops Blog.

Learn the new way to stay updated: RSS. While RSS has been around for a while, few people understand the potential to stay on top of news and interesting thi… Source: www.youtube.com We actually teach RSS feeds in my 8th Grade ICT class! Thanks for the resource!  See on Scoop.it - InformationCommunication (ICT)

Teaching how to set up and maintain a blog was something plain and simple years ago . Nowadays things have become more complex… much more: HTML5, SEO, personal brand, positioning, ads, affiliation, social media… Those aren’t but a few terms to take in count really seriously. Enrich your lessons! A black-hole-mass like concentrated knowledge pill about blogging for students:Your personal blog:Blogger: it’s integrated in Google and it gives many useful stats, but you have to promote it (#4) and look for readers.Online articles sites:out-of-your-blog publishing sites, like ezinearticles, or hubpages. You’ll be likely to have more visits.Your articles:Measures: try something like three hundred word articles, redacted in no more than one hour, five to seven articles a week.Be original, different, specific, unique, constant, fascinating, provocative...Other: grammar, style… ensure the communicative process takes place, i.e, what you mean is what it’s been understood.Ease things up: links to other pages (e.g definitions to Wikipedia).Open up comments to know about your audience’s opinion (and watch out trolls).Tools:Google docs: easy to work online, insert things, thesaurus, copy&paste it to blogger… You can even write through your mobile or laptop. Check my other article about this.Google drive: keep things safe and anywhere.SEO it: make Google find your articles more easily.Your blog:Article structure: title, head, body (inverted pyramid).Blogger’s options: tags, keywords, search description...HTML-format it: <title><h1><h2><b><i>,<a href>...Include your bio, social networks links, contact info, an article index…Provide enough text.Decorate it: images, videos, animations, embedded resources (apparently Flash is not welcome).Include options for subscription, sharing…Include information for the search engine: meta, title...Word strategy:Check trending words (Google Trends) and write about them.Analyze buzzwords about your blog’s subject and decide how to use them.Social networks (the relevant ones):Publish your links in Google+ (it’s indexed by Google), Twitter… Use tools as Everypost to publish in several places at once. Use whole links, with the titles on them.Register your blog in directories.Post carefully in sites like Reddit (watch out not to be banned).Make people identify you easily: subject, knowledge, blog, name, brand, colors, logo, quality...Multipublish:For each entry of your blog, republish!: slideshare, issuu, online articles sites… Don’t forget to include your bio on the last page.Link your blog to those sites and vice versa.Signature: include your blog’s link in your mail/forum/… signature.Be just and don’t:Use farm links.Publish in dark sites.Be untrustworthy.Ask people to click or visit your pages.Be offensive.Use proprietary resources.Analyze everything:Google analytics.Blogger’s stats:Audience (countries…): you may write in English but also have visitors from Spain (like me).Sources: important, as you know what publishing sites are proving more useful to spread your words.Social impact:Klout: check your social impact score.Kred.Ads?Adsense.Affiliation sites.Dangers:Loss of credibility.People fed up of ads.Ads not related with your blog’s main subject.Readapt/rearrange/replan/rethink.And to finish, a board with some useful tools (evolving unstoppably):http://www.symbaloo.com/mix/blogging14