Back in the 1996, my first “proper” job after leaving college was at Nat. West Bank working as a project assistant on a high profile project with IBM. I worked among a team of specialists who spoke a completely different language to me – full of acronyms and jargon.

I was responsible for all documentation within a PRINCE2 environment and had to write minutes from meetings; I was awestruck (and slightly panicked) by my lack of familiarity with this jargon. I realised that this was the way things were heading and that I had better get to grips with this new language if I was to survive.

Years later, this digital or online language has become commonplace, so much so, that it has infiltrated the English dictionary. To Google a phrase, or to blog about a topic is ubiquitous in every day speak, even among the less digitally minded.

So in 2009, have we reached a point where being savvy in the online world is not so much a benefit but more of a requirement?

With the UK online audience at around 35 million* which amounts to around 70% of the UK population, you simply cannot ignore the degree to which the web has infiltrated our lives as consumers or businesses. Compared with other European countries, the UK has the most active online audience; on average we spend 34.4* hours per month online (* comScore, Dec ‘08).

Let’s also remember that estimates are somewhat distorted by the fact that some of us use our mobile phones to surf the web, so the figures above are probably understated.

So what does that tell us about getting educated in digital?

As a consumer, whether we are renewing our car insurance, doing our weekly Tesco shopping or researching our summer holidays, it is usually easier and sometimes more cost effective doing it online. Being able to carry out the above tasks is almost a given nowadays. And in the workplace, if your job requires you to be online, being web savvy is completely taken for granted by employers.

At the professional marketer level, having offline marketing skills is rarely considered enough to land a marketing manager’s job. With search engine marketing as the granddad of digital marketing and the newer social media marketing revolution almost at full throttle, the majority of employers will require candidates for marketing positions to fully understand and embrace digital marketing.

In the same vein, “getting digital” in business is crucial. We have long since passed the need to have a website simply because you have to. For a number of years, businesses have been migrating from offline to online as it is more cost effective, easier to measure results and often yields a better return on investment.
Successful businesses know they need to be cleverer than simply having a website if they want to get noticed.

Investing in online marketing in order to better generate sales or brand reach has proven its worth time and time again. If online marketing skills are lacking within an organisation, it is crucial to invest in online marketing training in order to educate staff.

Having worked in web design and development for over a decade, I’ve watched small businesses launch websites with next to no marketing strategy or expenditure. These small businesses soon fell by the way side despite my constant reminders that they required a marketing strategy – be it offline or online!

The Government clearly knows that getting digital is the future. The Digital Britain Report was published in June 2009 as a plan to secure Britain’s place at the forefront of the global digital economy. Giving universal access to broadband, enhancing the digital delivery of public services and getting the right solution to digital content rights are only some of the issues highlighted in the plan.

So, clearly, the mantra being spoken, whether you’re an employer recruiting staff or a business trading online is: “Get smart, get digital”. Ignore it at your peril!

In these hard times, there is a light at the end of the tunnel in the form of funding for training and personal development from the Learning and Skills Council (LSC).

What is the Learning and Skills council?
The Learning and Skills Council is a publicly funded organisation with a remit to improve the skills and competitiveness of the working population of England.

Who supplies funding for training?
In a short answer: The Leadership and Management Advisory Service, a regional service which offers assistance with personal development and training via its own skills brokers, Business link and private or public training providers.

How much funding is available?
The service provides funding for businesses where each business can benefit from up to £1,000 of grant support aimed at either directors or key members of the management team.

This funding is only available to EU based companies of 5 – 249 employees (full time and part time) highlighting the LSC’s desire to improve the efficiency of small to medium sized regional businesses.

How is this relevant to Emarketeers?
This is of course very relevant to Emarketeers as our training courses provide crucial skills required in the day-to-day running of digital marketing campaigns, digital projects or emerging online marketing strategies, some still at their nascent stage.

Employees who are highly skilled in these areas, for example Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) or Pay-Per-Click (PPC) marketing can often see a tangible increase in revenue as a result of SEO or PPC training, and it is for this very reason that the LSC is offering funding for training courses.

See further information on funding for training courses.

Is being the perfect trainer really possible? Whilst mastery of the training course subject matter is a given, what about communication, engagement, entertainment and listening skills?

Read our top 20 recommendations for reaching the ultimate heights of training perfection:

1. Establish your delegates’ needs
At the start of every course encourage your delegates to individually introduce themselves, highlight their roles within their organisation and most importantly impart their knowledge of the subject matter. You will then be able to pitch the training course at the right level and make it relevant to all delegates’ needs.

2. Ensure you highlight the course goals and objectives
Spend 10 minutes at the start of every training course to highlight the main aims of the course or workshop. This will set expectations and will give the training course instant structure.

3. Interpret non-verbal communication
If you can perfect the art of reading non-verbal cues from your delegates, you will go a long way in training. Trainers who have a “sense and respond” approach tend to better understand the needs of their training course audiences.

If your delegates look confused, tired or bored, do something about it! Take a break, engage the delegates more or initiate some sort of dialogue – anything to rectify the problem as soon as possible.

4. Ensure your presentation material hits the mark
Creating training material is often an arduous task. Firstly it requires a good attention to detail, but it shouldn’t be so detailed that it forces your audience to read your content without listening to you. Secondly, you need to order the course contents so as not to introduce complex subjects too early on. And finally don’t introduce new topics right at the end of the day.

5. Keep the energy up
There’s no doubt that training is tiring both physically and mentally. This applies to the trainer and the delegates. If there’s a hint of tiredness from your audience recommend a quick break. Sugar and caffeine can go a long way to help although they aren’t always the answer as their effects are often short term.
Engagement, interactive dialogue and fun are usually good tools to reignite lost energy.

6. Don’t be afraid to repeat
If you want to emphasize a point throughout a course don’t be afraid to repeat yourself on more than one occasion. And there’s no harm announcing this fact to yet further highlight a point. Delegates won’t be expected to retain every nugget of information, so the repeated point may hit its mark if it didn’t the first time round.

7. Mix your training styles and content
Presentating your audience with 200 slides of boring bulleted material will do little to inspire them. Similarly talking at them for hours on end will yield little enthusiasm.

Vary your training material with examples, case studies, imagery and research. And intersperse your presentation with exercises, dialogue and question and answer sessions.

8. Sum up after each section
If your course is divided into sections (which it should be) make sure you summarise each section as you complete it. Prompt your delegates for questions at this point as well.

9. Give exercises
Engage your audience with interesting exercises that stimulate and teach material covered in the relevant course section. Exercises can be carried out in groups or individually, on paper, computer or as an open question and answer session.

Make it fun when applicable and avoid putting delegates on the spot.

10. Provide good leave-behind material
Make sure your printed leave-behind material is legible and easy to digest. It could be a slightly more fleshed-out version of the course or possibly further reading or research material.

11. Don’t talk AT your delegates
Consider your training course to be a two-way dialogue where your delegates are constantly giving feedback and hopefully asking questions. Talking at your delegates for the entire training course will be exhausting for all parties and will not yield good results.

12. Use humour when necessary
Whilst I’m not an advocate of a fully fledged comedy routine, there is absolutely no harm in having light-hearted moments to dispel any tensions. Just don’t belittle the content or reason for being at the training course in the first place.

13. Ensure the environment is conducive to good learning
There’s nothing worse than a stuffy overcrowded room with little light or oxygen. Where possible use a space that is stimulating and has good light and ambience. A good venue will contribute to better learning and will make the whole experience more enjoyable for your delegates.

14. Arrive at the training venue in good time
Don’t arrive at the training course 5 minutes before it is due to start. There’s nothing worse that presenting to an audience flustered. Arrive in good time, set up and acclimatise to the environment.

15. Pace yourself
Controlling the pace of each training course is highly important. Burning through slides at a light speed only to finish 4 hours early will not impress your delegates. Equally, you cannot reach the end of the day with over half your content still to go.

If you aren’t 100% familiar with the course content, work out approximately how many slides to get through per hour so that you can at least keep track of your approximate progress. Be prepared to subtly vary the pace of the course to balance the content over the allocated time.

16. Keep the agenda flexible and be prepared for change
With inquisitive delegates you may find that the training course starts to err in unexpected ways. If you find the course is digressing you may want to suggest to your delegates that the agenda is modified slightly to meet their needs.

Don’t be afraid to suggest this to your audience. It’s more important to meet their exact needs than to follow your course structure precisely.

17. Don’t sit down throughout the course
Sitting down throughout an entire course can send the wrong signals to your audience. Whilst it isn’t always possible to stand in front of your delegates, doing so will convey confidence, leadership and dynamism.

18. Admit when you don’t know an answer
You will always find one or two delegates who ask questions for which you don’t have the right answer. Don’t try to worm your way out of difficult questions. You will probably regret doing this when you get caught out.
Admit when you aren’t sure. Trainers are fallible after all.

19. Treat your delegates!
Giving your delegates treats goues a long way. Great food and snacks has always worked wonders for me. But equally a treat can be in the form of a really useful leave-behind or nugget of exclusive information.

20. Remember everyone’s name
Referring to your delegates by their first names will create a better bond between the trainer and the group. If your delegates aren’t wearing name badges, make a quick sketch of the room layout and write down names next to where each delegate is sitting. That way you can refer to your sketch at any point throughout the session.

Whenever I visit my accountant, we have a one hour session where he clearly explains my current set of accounts as well as the whys and wherefores of my latest tax bill. I listen to him carefully, absorbing everything he says and nod knowingly.

Whilst the accounting jargon is crystal clear during the meeting, you can bet your tax rebate that the minute I walk out of his office, I have forgotten everything I’ve learned and will be on the phone to him later that day.

The parallel with training non-technical delegates technical material is phenomenally similar. Take an SEO training course as an example. Whilst we often train technically literate developers or IT staff, our delegates are often made up of marketing or operational staff. Whilst their enthusiasm for improving search engine rankings knows no bounds (and rightly so given that SEO is such a topical subject), their technical grounding is limited.

So, how can we engage such delegates and ensure that they absorb and apply learned skills over a 7-8 hour course? And how can we ensure that their nods of approval actually translate into a permanent understanding of the subject matter?

Real case studies
Any training course that focuses entirely on strategy without citing real examples runs the risk of putting attendees to sleep very quickly. Learning strategy followed by an identifiable case study provides the perfect reference point or benchmark especially when the strategy is intangible. This applies to technical and non-technical material.
So, using our search engine optimisation example, when learning about on-page optimisation techniques or link building strategy, cite good and bad approaches using real-life examples in order that the delegate can understand the implications in real terms.

And of course, if the training course is carried out in-house (versus a public training course), use material directly relating to that company or the company’s clients or suppliers.

Exercises
Providing exercises not only allows the trainer to gauge whether or not the delegates have grasped the material, but it also allows the trainee to test their own knowledge and ask questions accordingly.
Don’t fall into the “all chalk and talk” trap where you talk at the delegate for 8 hours in order to impress them with your vast knowledge.

Exercises can be carried out in small groups or as a whole depending on the group size. It is important to pitch exercises at the right level so as not to intimate or patronise.

When training delegates who are real beginners, we often refer to exercises as “quizzes” to appear less intimating; equally we might offer multiple choice answers to make the whole experience more enjoyable and less of a chore.

Technically competent delegates prefer to be challenged and will often be more than happy to get the answer wrong in order to learn an additional soupcon of information.

Audience participation
Audience participation tends to vary according to the group dynamic and whether the training course is public or in-house; the latter often being better for audience participation as delegates usually know each other.

Non-technical attendees on public courses often shy away from asking “obvious questions”, so it is very much down to the trainer or facilitator to spot that confused look in delegates and assess their understanding of the material.
Trainers or facilitators should also be wary of the more demonstrative delegates intimidating the more reserved ones – irrelevant of whether the subject matter is technical.

Drawing parallels
As mentioned earlier, technical material is often intangible and therefore hard to grasp if the delegate doesn’t perform technical tasks relating to the subject matter day to day. Drawing parallels with every day examples that are more tangible is a good technique to promote understanding.

For example, when discussing the importance of information architecture in web design and SEO, why not apply it to real architecture where the foundations of a building compare to the underlying technology, and the bathroom fittings apply to the on-page components that enhance the user experience.

Summing up and listing objectives
One of the most important things I learned at University was that the content of an essay or paper needed to be summarised in the opening paragraph in order to set the scene for the reader.

The same applies to training courses. Not only should you introduce the structure of the course from the outset but you should summarise learned material at the end of each section or module. Equally, when it comes to technical material, draw an overriding conclusion about the main technical components.

Also highlight the underlying objectives of that section, and if required, remind the delegate to perform a number of tasks relating to the technical material, in order that they can take away an action to perform not just knowledge.

Impromptu questions
Whilst no trainer wants to appear intimidating, it’s a useful to keep your delegates on their toes by asking them impromptu questions about learned material. We wouldn’t recommend picking out individuals but rather posing questions to the group to ensure they have understood key technical points. It’ll then be easy to assess whether their nods of approval actually translate into real understanding.

Frequent breaks
Last but not least, allow your delegates to take frequent breaks and supply lots of refreshments. Absorbing technical material to the technically illiterate is challenging at the best of times and losing concentration is certainly not going to the help the delegates’ engagement levels.