Work Better, Not Harder

If you do any amount of training or facilitating work with customers, you may already be familiar with adult learning models. Teachers use them to prepare insightful learning experiences. The one I'm familiar with is Kolb's Experiential Learning Cycle but there are others equally useful: Learning can start at any stage in the cycle: Concrete experience - encounter a new experience or reinterpret an existing experience Reflective observation - reflect on an experience from a personal perspective Abstract conceptualization - form new ideas (or revise existing ideas) based on reflection Active experimentation - apply new ideas to surroundings, test for changes in the next experience The next time you sit down to write an article intended to teach, consider following this process. Pick the most obvious stage at which to start for the topic you have in mind. Work your way through the cycle, perhaps having a paragraph or two for each stage. Your writing will fl...

For the first time, Halifax will be celebrating Social Media Day in grand style this year. I'm proud to be one of the organizers of the first Social Media Day Halifax 2018 conference taking place on June 22nd. The conference is for entrepreneurs, business owners, and professionals working in social media roles for companies and organizations. Sessions and workshops are for anyone and everyone who wants and needs to improve their social media communications and marketing. Since Social Media Day Halifax is all about increasing marketing expertise on the east coast, recruiting presenters who are both subject matter experts AND excellent training facilitators is key to the success of the conference. Ideally, we’ll find social media professionals who want to help encourage, inspire, train and motivate colleagues in the local marketing community. If you're on the east coast of Canada and do social media marketing, you don't want to miss this conference and the chance ...

Don't you love it when you find a new tool to make your work easier? One of the benefits of teaching is I also learn from the course participants. It's Hemingway that has my attention this time (thanks to Jacqueline). I love it's simplicity! Go to hemingwayapp.com and start typing right on the screen. You'll see suggested edits highlighted as you type. Or you can turn off the editor until you're finished writing and do all your editing at the end. Another bonus for bloggers is you can see your stats: reading time, letters, characters, words, sentences and paragraphs. Start writing your next article using Hemingway and see what you think. photo by Spongehoe / Flickr Click to Tweet this Article

For a long time, I've been meaning to research and find an easy free screen recording application. It just never made it up very high on my to-do list. A few days ago I had an urgent need to explain something to somebody and words weren't cutting it. I needed to record my screen while I did something but I sure didn't want to spend a bunch of time researching and installing and learning. Saying I am  really impressed with  Screencast-O-Matic (aff) is an understatement. In only 5 minutes I had recorded a 30 second video, signed up for a free account, and sent a link to the video off by email. Seriously, 5 minutes... my first time using it! As an example, here's another short screencast I made just prior to publishing this post, which was easy to share to my YouTube channel. It's about how to check your iContact statistics. Click to Tweet this Article

It's been said that the best way to become expert at something is to teach it and I've certainly found that to be true. Teaching forces us to research and prepare, to find the answers to tough questions, and to be open to feedback. This is where you write an article (or more) to teach something but first I challenge you to learn something new that's relevant to your business. If you've already been through Getting Started (Part 1) and Useful Content (Part 2) , you've had some practise. Keep your momentum going with this exercise. First, pick something to learn. This shouldn't be hard but, if you don't already know of something you want to learn, search topics for your industry online. Next, do the learning. This might involve taking courses, talking to experts, online research, and so on. Be tuned in for blog-worthy content. How you choose your learning method can also be part of what you write about. Make notes along the way. Now, teach. Yo...