So you’ve decided that you like the idea of blogging and want to make a blog that will enhance your employee training. Well, first and foremost you have to determine if a blog is the right tool for the job. The best way to do this is to take a look at the data you have collected through your needs assessment. For a blog to qualify as a possible tool you should be able to answer “yes” to the following questions:
1. To meet the identified learning gap will you need to introduce a good deal of content to the learner?
When you begin a blog you are basically promising your readers a series of information on your subject. Therefore you need to make sure that there is enough content to make a blog worthwhile. If you don’t feel you have enough content to make a blog worthwhile you might want to pursue other avenues for getting your message out.
2. Is it acceptable for the training on this subject to stretch over a period of time?
Blogging is different than constructing an ebook or running a one time training session. The content that you create should come in small chunks that you post at least twice a week. For example this is good when training a sales team on a new product that is in the final stages of development. Since it is not quite finished they don’t need to be prepared to sell the product at that instant, however the blog posts are a great primer for when they will need to have a full training in preparation for when the product does launch.
3. Are your learners engaged in the subject matter enough to access the blog and read the content?
As any teacher will tell you it is hard to get a class to read anything you assign to them unless they are motivated. This doesn’t seem to change much as we become adults. Even as a learning professional I still look at “assigned reading” and think that I’ll just get to it later, but later never comes. If you are solely relying on your blog to educate your learners you must ensure that the content engages them. While it is helpful to have an exciting topic (like the new product I talked about in #2), but I have also seen blogs be engaging for topics like Compliance training. In this example the blogger wrote about cases where people were confronted with Compliance issues. The cases were either funny, extreme, or peculiar, but always brief. In some of the cases the individual acted appropriately and other times they did not. The entertainment value and the fact that the story line wasn’t always about a “boy scout” actually made people look forward to the next post.
4. Does your training staff or subject matter expert (SME) have the time to devote to a blog and the writing skills to support it?
As I mentioned you need to commit to posting at least twice a week. Writing this blog twice a week takes me about three hours. This includes research time, creating an editorial calendar, etc. Three hours may not sound like much, but take a moment to really look at your week. Are you working 40, 50, or 60 hours now? Where are you going to fit three more hours? If you are not the one that will be writing the blog make sure you ask this question to the proposed author because if you start to skip blog posts you will quickly loose your audience. Also, make sure that your author has the proper writing skills. I know that I don’t always put the commas in the right places and have a hard time remembering when to use “who” vs. “whom,” but there is a huge difference between writing an email and writing a novel. Your author should fall somewhere in the middle.
5. Is the subject matter you are training on appropriate for an informal blog?
By nature blogs are relatively informal. They provide a casual, personal appeal that articles in newspapers or magazines lack. Make sure that the subject matter you are training on is appropriate for a more casual setting. Subjects that are too sensitive for an informal blog are few and far between, but it is always better to ask this question just to make sure.
6. Are feedback, questions, or comments from your learners on your blog posts acceptable?
The comments section of a blog is one of the most important features. This is the opportunity for your learner to involve themselves in the learning. They may want to talk about a time they were faced with a situation discussed in the blog and share how they handled it. The learner might ask a question about the content to get clarification. Or, they might say that they tried the suggested method once before and it failed. Even though with most blogging platforms you have the opportunity to approve comments before they are posted, you have to be comfortable receiving all these types of comments. Further, unless the comment is totally inappropriate, you need to be prepared to publish it with your response.
7. Are you planning to incorporate videos, sound, pictures, links, etc.?
If the answer to this question is “no” then it might just be easier to send out an email twice a week and not put the time and energy into maintaining a website. However, if you do plan to include any other type of media with your text content then blogs will provide you with an easy and effective way to incorporate these elements.
8. Are you looking to get both quantitative and qualitative outcome measurements for your training?
This is actually a freebie. The answer to this question should be “yes.” I just threw it in there because I like to talk about the outcome measurements that are available through a blog. Not only do you have the comments section for your qualitative measurements, but you can also include a “contact us” form on one of the blog pages that can be set up to email you directly. Use this to solicit feedback from users about how you can make the blog better or what topics they would like to see covered in the future. For quantitative measurements you can include a poll or quiz in your blog where each learner can submit their answers individually. Easy to use tools are available for most standard blogging platforms that will allow you to add these features quickly.
Blogs are great tools you can use to deliver your content, however they must be the right tool for the job. In most cases a blog alone won’t be the best choice. For instance, you may want to create a blog in conjunction with a webinar or lecture series. In the meantime, take a look at your current programming to see which ones pass the eight question blog test. By adding a blog to an existing training program you’ll be able to get your feet wet and get to test the impact of adding a blog first hand.
Best,
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{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
Glad to see people talking about using blogs for learning. I know they play a _huge_ role in my continuing education on all kinds of topics. And as for the quantitative assessment, we’re actually working on integrating our SCORM Cloud into WordPress, which would provide all kinds of opportunities for tracking and reporting learning outcomes from a blog.
I’ve already started a blog on mentoring that I plan to incorporate into future training sessions for mentors and mentees. Your questions were thought provoking, especially the last one on measurement. Thanks!
Thanks for your comment Susan. It’s great to hear that you guys are thinking of how to expand on tracking outcomes for social learning. There are so many ways that we can support informal learning, but it is important that we understand how informal learning is effecting our employees. Any new outcomes measurements are always welcome.
Measurement is the crown jewel of learning. Without it we are unable to prove that what we do as learning professionals has any impact. But, as you suggest, blogs are a great knowledge transfer tool. I’m not sure exactly how you are using the blogs, but I can see a lot of potential as a mentor/mentee tool. Perhaps once you get farther along in your sessions you may want to write a guest post on how the blog is going!! Thanks for your comment!!