You know what they say about never being too late to teach an old dog new tricks? It seems there’s truth in the adage after all.
This old dog has attended a digital content marketing course run by Econsultancy. I won’t attempt to dissipate the digital nuggets of wisdom picked up during the day, that is the job of course tutor Tim Tucker.
But I can provide seven reasons why ongoing training if good for staff morale and performance, no matter how old or experienced the course delegate may be.
A bit of background is required here methinks. I am a dyed in the wool old school journalist who likes fine words and accurate grammar. I revere printed matter and old fashioned things like rustling newspapers and books with real pages.
Even good friends have described me as a digital dinosaur. While I do my best to write content that people want to read, that answers their questions and is a reliable source of information and entertainment, I tend to leave it to my younger, more digitally dexterous colleagues to deliver what I wrote to a specific and targeted audience via social media.
But that is not to say that even an old dog like me cannot benefit from regular external training.
Here are seven reasons (in no particular order) why I think ongoing training is good for staff morale and performance:
It’s good to meet people from different disciplines and different industries and learn that you probably share the same problems. It enables you to swap ideas, consider effective work protocols and share best practice. What works well in one business environment might just work in yours too.
The digital landscape changes on a daily basis. Regular training enables you to keep up with trends and newly-developed analytical tools at your disposal. If gives you a chance to take a breath and consider what has worked in the past and what hasn’t worked and, more importantly, to consider why.
Most good training courses are punctuated with what I like to call light switch moments. Moments that illuminate and thrown a little clarity on the world in which we work. They make sense of the things we are doing and the things we should be doing.
Good regular training does not come cheap. Short of a surprise pay rise or more holiday, there is nothing that inspires more than the feeling that your company is investing time, effort and cold hard cash in your development and wellbeing.
In content creation, for example, it provides evidence that things we do and the reasons that we do them have a direct effect on our audience. And it offers techniques for us to do things slightly differently which will optimise that effect.
Again, taking content creation as an example, it may even reverse the process. Instead of thinking, “what do I want to write?” think, “what does my audience want to read?”, “what will be useful for them”. Doing things the other way round won’t necessarily mean we are working harder, but we will be working more effectively.
And, if you complete the course without having a nervous breakdown, you might just get a certificate, like I did. OK, you might not want to frame it and hang it on the wall, but all successful training is something to be proud of.
By the way, if you are wondering why I came up with seven reasons… web analytics provide evidence that an odd number in a list will be read and trusted more than a round number such as 10 or 20.
If you use those round numbers people tend to imagine your list is artificially filled simply to hit the target, whereas a number like seven suggests you wrote it as it is.
Out of interest, the most read lists contain 29 bullet points, though I fear if I had padded out to hit this magic number you may have already stopped reading.
To The End is passionate about empowerment and ongoing development, that’s why they organised my training course and my colleagues are often off training too.
But the company also holds regular Sessions offering training to other companies on all aspects of digital marketing, from content creation to search engine optimisation.
If you are worried you may have fallen off the end of the digital learning curve, find out more about our Sessions.
