Why is ongoing education important to your brand? In one response you invest in what you want to grow.
It doesn’t matter who you are, if you’re not actively engaged in continuing your education you’re missing out! No matter the industry, no matter the position, everybody needs to keep learning. Ongoing education is one of the best things for your brand. It’s probably no surprise that there are many benefits of valuing education in your workplace.
Business (and technology) isn’t static
When you incorporate learning into your business you’ll be able to stay up to date with the latest things, which means you’ll be able to stay ahead of your competitors.
For our own industry, social media and digital marketing, we know it is always changing. And this is true for almost every other industry. Tools we use, new rules of the business, we need to be able to keep up with these changes that often time makes our jobs easier.
Education is also all about making better leaders in your workplace. As a leader when you stay up to date and informed your setting an example for your team. This will hopefully inspire them to follow your lead.
As we mentioned earlier, everything is changing all the time. Whether it be the phones in our hands, tricks of the trade, or our social media pages, everything is changing all the time. Nowadays even business standards change quickly. By making sure you are continually educating you and your team, you are keeping up with changing industry standards. And, it gives you the ability to know what is working for others, and learn from their examples. This sets you up as a cutting-edge business and a leader in your industry.
On the flipside, if you’re not constantly learning you run the risk of getting very behind, very quickly. When this happens it can be very hard to catch back up. Without structured learning you’re missing the pieces of the puzzle that makes your business succeed.
When you combine ongoing learning into your business plan, you are able to really help your team learn the skills they don’t have yet, while keeping abreast of new things. Soar above your combination by being the most educated in your field.
Bring the team together
At NOW we like to schedule in some culture training. Our team has spent days talking about our personal and NOW goals, where we’d like to see the business go, and how to frame our culture. We believe (and have seen) our culture training bring our team closer together.
We also take the time every week to schedule an hour or so to train, giving the opportunity for team members to learn things they are interested in or follow along with our scheduled online training. As a team, we have traveled to conferences together, or group training, and have found that we come back excited to put what we’ve learned into action.
By training together there are so many benefits to your team. It allows them to become inspired, refresh their drive, and re-energizing them.
Of course, we realize there are some entrepreneurs out there. If you are a one man or woman show, education is still incredibly important. Take the opportunity to schedule out learning time. Make a list of the things you know you need to learn, and one hour a week or one day out of the month, learn!
How to schedule your ongoing training
We love to invest our time and money by sending the NOW team to conferences and other educational seminars or group training. Conferences like Inbound or Social Media Marketing World we have found extremely valuable. There are many such trainings for other industries. But we realize that not everyone can get out of the office, or afford conference costs and hotels stays. Luckily, the internet has given us access to plenty of online training courses that you and your team can participate in.
Lynda, a great resource for learning, was recently bought by LinkedIn. You can learn about design, development, even audio or video. Everything relating to technology, creativity, or business skills, you’ll be able to learn easily.
A great learning website, and incredibly affordable option, Udemy lets you master a number of skills. Many of the courses are just $10! You can gain others education from them or share your own trainings. Udemy often has a more personalized feel and gives you free resources to use below the videos.
There is no excuse to not learn, with all of our technology there are ways to learn anything and everything you could want. Put your learning intend into action by planning them out by using online tools like Trello. Work on a plan, and make it more likely that you’ll succeed.
Join us next Tuesday at pm EST for our next session of #MagnetMarketers.
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