As a training professional, I know what makes good online training and what makes boring and ineffective online training. We often get complaints that our training doesn’t present a variety of view points, it doesn’t go far enough, does not present enough practical examples, or that you can’t change attitudes or behavior with online training. These are all valid arguments that training professionals face in making the case for online training. But these days, social media can be used to address some of these issues with communities of practice for learning.
As always, the key to an effective learning experience is to get the learning to continue after the online course ends. Creating communities of practice, slowly generates trust, and turns learners into experts who will create and pass along their experiences, essentially creating user-generated content.
In most online communities, 90% of community members are lurkers. (Institute of Behavioural Research, 2008, Preece, Nonnecke, and Andrews , 2004) Lurkers get a great benefit from the community, as they come to the community for primarily to read and review the content. The trick to growing a community of practice however, is to change lurkers to participants. Lurkers generally do not contribute until they foresee a benefit to their contribution, or an increased social equity; social equity is essentially a raise in trust and status among community members. To increase social equity, lurkers must establish social networks of their own.
Communities of practice have an advantage over other types of communities in that their membership generally shares a common level of expertise or a common experience: for example, cardiac physicians, or people who have passed their CCNA certification, or even participants who attended the same online class. Content generated by the membership of a community of practice can even be perceived as more trustworthy than traditional content , (ITtoolbox and PJA Advertising + Marketing “IT Social Media Index, 2007), as audiences today feel as they can perceive the difference between traditional marketing-type content and user generated content. In a community of practice, this perception may be especially important, as there is a common level of expertise among the participants and therefore an implicit level of trust.
The more that community of practice members can make connections and engage with other members of the community to gain trust, the more they will feel comfortable making contributions to the community. Lurkers may start by simply rating a particular post or blog, but again, the community of practice advantage is their expertise, and shared experiences, which can make lurkers more comfortable in moving beyond ratings to actual postings.
Activity in a community of practice and the creation of user generated content has a strong correlation with the completeness of user profile information, making it easier for community of practice members to find and follow each other. After all, it is only natural that a community member will be more comfortable displaying knowledge and expressing opinions among friends, rather than strangers. Therefore in a community of practice, it is absolutely essential that participants are encouraged to complete their user profile information to more easily find friends and make content contributions to the community.
So take some time today to fill out your user profile and “follow” fellow community members, it’s the first step from moving from a lurker to a full-fledged community member.
Uncle Sam isn’t the first to come to mind when you think of being Internet savvy. But NASA is using social media to rocket into the Twittersphere and other popular social media channels.
After record numbers online watched last month’s Mars Curiosity landing, NASA is wowing crowds — on the ground and online — with flyovers of the retired orbiter “Endeavour” as it travels piggy back on a 747 from Florida to its new home at Edwards Air Force Base in Southern California.
The shuttle flew within 1,000 feet of the ground today at Moffett Field, California — the last flyby of any shuttle as NASA’S 30-year shuttle program comes to an end, with pictures and videos capturing the historic moment.
NASA’s Twitter audience is sharing their Endeavour sightings using hashtags such as #spottheshuttle. And 40 lucky Twitter followers of NASA using #NASASocial were invited to an in-person Endeavour ‘social’ at Edwards Air Force Base. Read More »
Advocacy is a term we have been hearing more often in the recent years. It’s not a new term but one that has been reinvigorated in the context of the online world. Social media is playing an increasing role in the purchase cycle, resulting in more focus on post-purchase engagement on the web.
The Customer Journey Has Evolved:
The post-purchase phase is a key component in building brand loyalty and advocacy. I have borrowed the following graphic to show the evolution of the online customer journey: Read More »
When you think of Thailand, historic Buddhist temples and shrines usually come to mind. However, during my visit to the golden land last week, I was pleasantly surprised by the proliferation of social and digital media. From QR codes to Facebook logos splattered across the many storefront windows, it’s no wonder Bangkok is ranked the largest Facebook city and Thailand ranked 16th largest Facebook country. While dining at a local restaurant in Chiang Rai, it was hard not to do a Facebook check-in when promotional materials were easily visible on tables, walls and even menus. And yes, I checked in and received my 5% discount.
Although Thailand is considered a developing country according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), it’s use of digital and social media certainly makes the country advanced by any standard. According to eMarketer, Thailand is ranked fourth among Southeast Asian countries in the percentage of “likes” and “follows” corporate brands receive from consumers. The top three are Vietnam, Philippines and Malaysia. Here are additional data from an eMarketer report:
47% of APAC companies use SM, and 56% are planning to use SM
47% of APAC companies use SM, and 56% are planning to use SM
This year, Asia-Pacific will pass North America as the region with the most Facebook users
Asia-Pacific has three times as many social network users as North America
For marketers and communicators, this presents a great opportunity to expand your company’s digital and social footprint. At Cisco, we are continually experimenting how to reach customers and influencers in various countries through social media. We currently have over 200 social channels globally, and approximately 12 in APAC. That includes properties on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, as well as global outlets such as Weibo and VKontakte.
Take a look around. Almost everything you see is touched by technology today, sports included. Imagine a spray-on clothing within a couple of decades that repels water or Triathletes could enter a “spray chamber” to change their clothes between events and 3D printing to build kit such as running shoes to suit the weather on the day or compensate for injury before a runner goes out on the track. All this and more will surely work up adrenaline to technology savvy sport lovers.
Technology is the new game changer in Olympic sport. And all sport fans would agree that technology is as much a part of an athlete’s armory today as nutrition, training and coaching. As human pro-thletics advance, science and technology will not only make possible the disabled to compete, but the able-bodied to do better. Do you know, Tiger Woods had eye surgery to improve his (normal) vision. Well, sounds fine to me. But consider this.
In 2009, the swimming regulatory body, Fina, banned high-tech swimsuits after 94% of races at the 2008 Beijing Olympics were won by competitors wearing the LZR racer suit. The suit is said to cut an elite swimmer’s time by around 2%. Michael Phelps himself said, “When I hit the water [in the LZR swimsuit], I feel like a rocket.” Within a week of its launch, three world records were broken by swimmers wearing the suit. (Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LZR_Racer)
Seems to me it’s less likely that poorer countries with less sports budgets can keep up. Is it not surprising that poorer countries compete less in sports involving a lot of technology, such as cycling, sailing and rowing. And lets not forget the amount of investment that goes into training elite athletes is phenomenal.
Dr Emily Ryall, senior lecturer in philosophy at the University of Gloucester and vice-chair of the British Philosophy of Sport Association, says “The Olympics is never going to be a fair competition. So much high-performance sport is driven by technology now, from sports nutrition to psychology to clothing and footwear.”
But enough on technology impacting players…that’s one side of the story. What about technology impacting the fans, the audience themselves and how. One big shift is clearly social media. But why? It’s simple: Four years is an eternity in Internet time and since the last Summer Olympics in 2008, social media has exploded.
2012: Facebook claims more than 835+ million users, is fast becoming a portal to the web at large for many and is a publicly traded company. Its founder Mark Zuckerberg is a global celebrity today. (Source: www.internetworldstats.com/facebook)
2012: On March 21, 2012, Twitter celebrated its sixth birthday while also announcing that it has 140 million users and sees 340 million tweets per day. The number of users is up 40% from their September 2011 number, which was said to have been at 100 million at the time. (source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter)
YouTube
2008: In July 2006, Youtube declared more than 65,000 new videos uploaded every day with 100 million video views per day. By fall of 2008, YouTube users were uploading 10 hours of video to the site per minute. (Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Youtube)
2012: London Olympic moments are sure to go viral and become immortalized on YouTube seemingly as they happen this summer, and it’s easy to see why. Youtube says it receives over 800 million unique visits per month watching more than 3 billion hours of video per month and upload 72 hours of new video content per minute.
Just looking at the staggering numbers of these three social networks reveals a sporting scene and world at large that have been transformed by social media since the last Summer Olympics.
And did I miss to add that I have’nt taken into account services like Pinterest, Foursquare and Google+ — none of which even existed in 2008. This summer, expect news to break, social sharing records to fall and moments to live on as never possible before, all thanks to social media!
One wonders to think — will all this pale in comparison to what 2016 has in store? One can only imagine.
How innovatively did you leverage social media during the 2012 London Olympics?
Please note:“The opinions expressed in this blog are my own views and not those of Cisco.”
