Did you know that as much as 40 cents of every dollar spent on training goes towards travel and accommodation costs?
It’s no secret that training your employees gives your organisation an edge in today’s competitive market. In spite of this, the impact of the global recession has meant that companies of all sizes are also looking for ways to improve efficiencies and cut costs.
Online training and eLearning are providing more and more organisations with the opportunity to train their employees more effectively and efficiently. So, when it comes to rolling out an online training program where do you actually start? Here are our top tips to go from the chalk to online talk…
1. Aims: First, ask yourself what problem you are trying to solve and what you want to achieve with your training. Capturing this information can also be done in the planning stages. Have your participants register for each session within your program and ask them what they are hoping to gain from the training. This will ensure you cover all bases.
2. Who are we talking to? Ideally your target market will already be defined by your organisational marketing plan, don’t try to be all things to all people! Defining your market will help you narrow down your message – the more you can reach a definable audience with a webinar geared to their specific needs, the more successful you will be.
3. Resources: Gather all of your resources before you begin – put together timings, speakers, budget, event coordinators, written content and a detailed marketing plan for every session you plan to deliver.
4. Content is KING: Try and create ‘must see’ and unique content by giving information that is current, relevant, informative and important. It should be delivered by a specialist or expert and be full of specifics and examples. Make sure your content poses or answers one of the ‘big’ questions relevant to your participants.
5. Timings: Send timely email invitations to a relevant opt-in email list. Make sure your invitations and reminders feature the name of the webinar and the benefits of participating.
6. Rehearse: Not only will this help with timings but it will enable you to fine tune your content and polish your presentation skills.
7. Record and Promote: Record trainings for improvement purposes. Having available on-demand content will also give you access to new participants who may want the content but have missed the event and help you create a training library.
8. Follow-up: A great online training and education webinar can create excitement about your organisation or business. If you have success with a particular series of trainings, consider repeating them, rolling them out over a longer period or to a different audience – ask yourself which elements of the webinar worked well (e.g. a particularly good speaker) and try to incorporate them into future webinars.