1. Key Points from “The Death of the Newspaper Industry”
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Social media is not a “future” thing
Key uses cases for SM = training
Most of us are not at the table
We need to be
It’s not too late, but it’s close
We need to invest in ourselves before we’re shut out
KEY ARGUMENTS AND LOGIC
McKinsey and Gartner both report that social media is the #1 spend for IT in 2011
Social Enterprise War in full swing: Oracle, IBM, Salesforce, Jive, Microsoft in it to win it
Industries that have initially resisted social have been consumed by it:
o Newspaper industry
o Marketing
o Recruiting
Business leaders self-report that enterprise social is more valuable than social marketing
Key use cases in enterprise social compete directly with learning value add
The obvious risk is cannibalization of learning spend by social enterprise systems
Learning professionals have not been involved with social enterprise decisions
Learning professionals by and large don’t have the experience to add value
RECOMMENDATIONS
Partner with Marketing groups to better understand how they transitioned
Make friends with IT (a good strategy in any scenario)
Invest in your own skills and knowledge
o Read some social media books – Long Tail, Wisdom of Crowds, Six Degrees…
o Do some social stuff – write a blog, join a Twitter chat, post a video, LinkedIn
groups
Leverage your strengths; you are uniquely qualified to drive key discussions
o Instructional design skills? Everyone needs them now.
o Trust and self-efficacy to build communities? You do it every day in the
classroom.
o Facilitation and group discussion? You do it every day in the classroom.
o Visual and aural communication skills? Multiple years experience with WBT.
o Badging and rewards? Apply your emerging gamification skills.
Make the case that you can add value
o Share what’s going on with social learning
o Talk about the connections and false silos between content, knowledge and
learning management
o Demonstrate a commitment to the big picture and performance improvement
models, particularly HPT models
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