Nice Meeting You, Instructional Marketers

Future readers and clients, let me introduce you to us — and to one another.

Currently, we have one follower (me), but in our defense, it is only our second day in business.  Although you haven’t found us yet, we know you will.  Millions of you exist and work in every industry — commercial and public, big and small, globally and locally.  You are experts at endless topics and your job is to teach it.  But although you don’t educate employees – you educate everyone else.

Many of you are employee training crossovers with responsibilities that now span employee, channel and customer learning.  Many are business professionals in marketing or operations with training responsibilities but minimal experience in classic learning and development methods and technologies.

Even more of you are dedicated to providing industry and job-specific continuing education, professional development, certification and accreditation programs.  Many of you provide training to federal, state and local constituents or students of any age.  You may be an executive with profit/loss responsibility, an instructional designer using the latest gamification techniques, an LMS administrator, and ecommerce marketing expert, a virtual instructor, a project manager, an app creator, an LCMS guru, a technology support specialists or anywhere between.

You all have something else in common.  Since your training and learning efforts, of any size, shape, language or complexity, are designed and delivered to non-employees, there is always an element of “voluntary” commitment from your user base.  You must attract users, get them to want to spend time, money or both, and entice them to keep coming back.

This is very different from rolling out a mandatory internal employee compliance program.  In a voluntary scenario, you are no longer good enough to rest on your instructional design background.  You need to be a social media wizard, know that SEO is not an executive position, understand that user experience reaches beyond desktops, bring ecommerce expertise to the table and more.  In short, you must be a Shark Tank kind of training and learning professional.  Your title really deserves to be instructional marketer or business instructionalist or something like that.

Welcome Home Instructional Marketers

In the industry today there is no centralized place to go to get help with all of that.  Until now.  Before today, the greatest and least of us have had to piece together information together from a vast array of sources — scant information from talent focused LMS vendors, HR industry analysts and trade publications, as well as a mind-boggling universe of resources designed for specialists in marketing, ecommerce, web development, user experience and other professional specialties.

But now we’re here to synthesize and filter this fire hose of information and provide clarity, direction, help and trusted advice.

Welcome to Talented Learning

Talented Learning is a research and consulting organization dedicated to the advancement of all aspects of extended enterprise learning solutions.  Our blog publishes commentary on the latest news, technology, case studies, education and vendor research that is useful to anyone training non-employee populations.  Our low-hype, high-value webinars and topical podcasts provide in-depth insight into issues and opportunities that matter most to today’s instructional marketers.

Our specialized research and consulting services help organizations at every stage of the extended enterprise learning technology lifecycle from business case development, requirements and program identification, technology selection, deployment, marketing, advertising and continuous improvement and growth.

We’re the one place on the internet that is dedicated to instructional marketers in all their flavors. Nice to meet you.

Thanks for reading!

 

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Want more insights? Replay the webinar!

Choosing Your Next LMS: How to Kickstart the Process with an Independent Consultant

In a complex market packed with 700+ possible solutions, how can you be sure your next learning platform will work for your organization? What kind of functionality is essential? Do you know what’s available? What budget parameters makes sense? How can you avoid overpaying? Do you even know if an LMS is the best solution?

Where should you start?

Before making your next move, why not tap into the knowledge and experience of a successful independent learning technology consultant? Join John Leh, CEO and Lead Analyst at Talented Learning as he tackles today’s trickiest LMS buyer challenges:

• How to make sense of today’s expansive LMS landscape
• How to determine if you can afford a new LMS
• Why requirements definition is essential to sort through the learning tech “specialist” market
• How to narrow your options from 700+ vendors to a qualified shortlist
• When and how to use an RFP (or not)

Replay the webinar now!

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