6 Tips for Using Social Media to Stay Up-to-Date on e-Learning

6 Tips for Using Social Media to Stay Up-to-Date on e-Learning
Summary: Social media isn’t just for following your favorite celebrities—it’s also an amazing way to stay up-to-date on e-Learning trends and e-Learning tips. 

The social media world offers a quick and easy way to find up to the minute news. Instead of searching through individual websites trying to find the latest e-Learning trends and tips, you get hundreds of sources from established news publications, industry subject matter experts, peers and friends all in one place.

And with sites like Twitter, the news is updated every second. You’ll discover new articles as soon as they’re posted. Social media makes it easy to share news instantly. Plus, you can connect and communicate directly with the people who are delivering that news!

6 tips for using Social Media to stay up-to-date on the latest e-Learning News and e-Learning Trends

  1. Take the Lead from e-Learning Publications
    They’re the experts. If the leading e-Learning publications are following someone on Twitter, you should be too. A few publications to start with are @eLearningGuild, @learningsolmag and @ASTD. As you build your list, you’ll discover even more helpful tips and tricks on new e-Learning blogs and news sites that you may not have found from a search engine.
  2. Organize Your News
    Don’t waste time searching through all your social media networks every day. Instead, be efficient by organizing posts from e-Learning professionals and thought leaders. One great free tool to consider is HootSuite, a social media dashboard that can manage all your social networks—everything from Twitter and LinkedIn to Facebook. You can track messages, tweets, brand mentions and more.
  3. Connect with e-Learning Thought Leaders
    Following e-Learning experts is great, but now let’s take it a step further. Connect with these experts by retweeting and sharing their posts. Staying active with social media will increase the value you get back from your network, and it’s the best way to stay up to date on current trends.
  4. Search Twitter Hashtags
    Since Twitter feed is continuously changing every second, it’s easy to miss an article in your news feed. Search hashtags like #elearning, #mlearning, #instructionaldesign and #ID to find the most recent articles people have posted on e-Learning trends and tips. Hashtags are also a great way to follow e-Learning conferences that you’re unable to attend, allowing you to follow along with the sessions and see what people are tweeting about. Each conference usually has its own hashtag, which you can find by visiting Twitter for that conference.You can also use hashtags to categorize and get your own information out there, so people can easily find and share your writing with the e-Learning community. If you have an awesome article that you just wrote about the latest mLearning tips, use #mLearning in your post so people can find it more easily!
  5. Join Twitter Chats
    Twitter chats allow you to discus e-Learning topics with other users about trends, tips and how-tos. Each chat is held together by a hashtag. Two helpful Twitter chats to check out are #chat2lrn or #lrnchat, where you can learn from other professionals and developers. In addition #elearnchat is an e-Learning podcast series where people tweet while watching the video. You can also get more involved by submitting new topics on subjects you want to talk about.
  6. Take Advantage of e-Learning Communities
    Meet and network with other e-Learning professionals just like you through LinkedIn groups like The Official Lectora User Group. See what others are posting, answer questions or post a new thread with your questions or advice. These e-Learning communities are an awesome way to share course development tips and tricks with other e-Learning professionals!

Social media is an incredible e-Learning news source because it’s constantly evolving and growing in real-time. On Twitter for example, e-Learning professionals and developers tweet news and articles that were created in the last few minutes or days, giving you the most recent trends, tips and tricks! Thanks to social media, staying up-to-date on e-Learning is easy, fun and exciting.