5 reasons why you need a social learning platform

Learn why and how eLearning authoring creation software makes a difference!

1.      Turn your videos into learning

YouTube is increasingly used as a source of tutorials, “how-tos” and acquiring skills. Because videos – when kept short with clear messages – are ideal for “bite-sized” learning, which has been proven highly efficient, compared to traditional training courses.

However, watching videos does not automatically guarantee learning. To ensure the optimal comprehension and mastering of the material in the videos, and hence actual  learning, you need to add functionality like practice and social interaction.

With a social learning platform, which incorporates video material, gamification, and social sharing you can optimize learning speed and impact.

As a major bonus, the publisher of a learning campaign can follow data indicating the progress of each student and communicate and facilitate learning based on this data. ​

2.      Offer learning as a 24/7 resource

As with YouTube, we know that users expect accessibility 24/7 – and that goes for learning as well. You can’t make users wait until you have planned the next face-to-face course – they want and expect learning on demand. Available online, where and when it suits them. That’s why an online learning platform is the basic conditioning for efficient training.

When you have your online learning platform, you can reap the benefits of effective onboarding, long-term learning, marketing, and compliance documentation. ​

3.      Agility

Organizations need to adapt to changes – fast. And the larger an audience you want to influence with your training, the more complex it will be. Speed and agility are important factors. Rather than plan and wait for months to facilitate learning material and courses, you want training ready and deployed in minutes.

This is why video material is becoming increasingly popular in training – Video production and modification are within reach for most organizations within a reasonable budget. All you need is a phone of a certain quality.

With videos, an online, easy-to-manage social learning platform, can facilitate getting your online training up and running in less than 30 minutes.

Don’t have individual e-mail or phone numbers for each of your employees? Not a problem with a modern, social learning platform. If a person is on social media – then they can access your platform and receive targeted training segmented by your organization’s management.

4.      The social marketing ‘side effect’ of training

Companies that rely on sales partners like distributors, agents, resellers, and retailers, rely heavily on influencing the sales or customer service reps of their partners.

There’s no argument that training is key to ensuring that your partners are sufficiently equipped to sell your product against competitors, but with traditional training courses, the process is costly, tedious, simply not efficient, and often not “allowed” by the partner.

Only an online learning platform can ensure that your partners are trained in selling your product in a timely, comprehensible, and cost-efficient manner. And it can be argued, that it is beneficial to all parties involved.

When you facilitate online training for partner reps and make them knowledgeable about your product while applying gamification to the process by available badges and sharing of test scores, then they will not only be experts on selling your product – they will also act as promoters of your product when they share their training progress on social media.

5.      Trained customers = loyal customers

Customer loyalty is part of the strategy for all successful companies. But probably only a few have taken the advantage of training to accomplish happy users, who become product advocates.

Here’s an example: you’re a software company offering a SaaS tool for supporting business processes. You will probably focus on offering competitive license prices to suit the market. Hence, spending too many resources on customer support is not an option if you want good business despite competitive prices.

So, you want – no, you need  – skilled users of your product to make good business.

When you train users in using your product correctly and skillfully and are informed about new features, they are more likely to be happy, knowledgeable, and cheaper to support.

Add in the social marketing aspect above – you may even have them advocate your product by sharing how great they have become in using your product.

Overall aspects of performance and approach

A modern social learning platform has to perform in such a way, that it is easily accessible, intuitive, and easy to use on a smartphone, and has to be based on videos to motivate more effective learning.

​The methods of using shorter videos, exercises, tests, and community gamification are motivating and create a high degree of comprehension, and combined with dynamic communication with users it can provide maximized impact.