An ELLN perspective

Anna Francis, our wonderful ELLN trainer/assess sends her congratulations to everyone for their hard work, especially during the holidays!

"I am glad you are all doing so well in posting Blogs, Twitter, creating LinkedIn and YouTube profiles.

Writing for the virtual reader can be tricky. Often one is not exactly sure how to word things, how to express what we really want the world to know and how to protect our privacy. Still it is a two-three step process: generating ideas/key words; drafting & editing; and producing a final version. I’m old fashioned and use a Word document to get me through the writing process. 

I am looking forward to meeting again in a week. I hope I’ll be of help to anyone who needs writing support. There were only a couple of people who needed help so far, but I’m here so use my time and skills!

The 4C's and social media

With everyone setting up their social media sites for their home based business, our community centre has also been inspired to develop a social media profile as well. Several staff members joined in on a great Webinar with Lance Scoular on the 16th April, where he presented an overview of the most popular social media sites – LinkedIn, Youtube, Twitter and Facebook and how our organisation might best use them.

For most of us it was our first Webinar experience, so we were a bit nervous, but pleasantly surprised how easy it was to connect online. We look forward to learning more about how to set up a Facebook page and Twitter account to advertise our activities more widely. I’m hoping to attend Lance’s class on setting up a Facebook Page, so will catch up with most of you then!

Getting to know social media tools

Week 6 has crept up on us.  I can’t believe we’re here already.  The group are diverse and have a range of small home-based businesses.  Some are already quite online savvy with a website or presence of some kind and others have yet to go online.  The common thread amongst the group, apart from being small business owners, is that they are all interested in: understanding the range of social media tools that will help them to grow their business;  developing a social media strategy and  creating an online presence.  

There have been many discussions about avatars vs photos;  what to say in a blog – online language and how it is different; what to do with 140 characters, etc.

So far we have spent our time exploring Twitter, LinkedIn, Youtube and Blogger.  Facebook will be the final technology and we are waiting for Facebook for business to be finalised.  In the background the group are busy writing blog posts and tweets in preparation for the launch of their online presence

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The learning has been delivered in a training room with webinars in between, and a Bloomfire social learning platform has been used for asynchronous discussions between sessions.  The Bloomfire environment has proved to be a safe environment in which to practice talking with text or video.  Slowly but surely we are starting to see some activity in there.  In face one participant has posted a video of herself telling a story about a women’s network she found online!

Now we having a break during the school holidays. When we go back in early May we hope to see more of our small business women posting online.

Creative Thinking possibilities...

I'm very excited about the possibilities of using creative thinking to enhance a social media strategy...and also to get to know our students. Can't wait til I get started in week 3.

In the meantime, here's a question to think about: In a perfect world, what would be your biggest, most exciting, audacious goal for your social media strategy?

Welcome to the Social Media for Home-Based Business Blog!

This project supports migrant women from the Lakemba area of NSW to develop a strong and creative social media presence for their home-based business. The project is design and delivered by a partnership between Canterbury City Community Centre and Sydney Community College and is funded by the National VET E-learning Strategy's Partnerships for Participation program.

CALD migrant women in the Lakemba area are motivated to improve their families’ lives by starting or improving a home-based business and require training and support to realise their ambitions.  Social media provides home-based business with a low-cost or free platform through which to promote products and services.  Our program aims to provide the skills required to plan and implement a creative social media strategy. 

The program will be delivered over 10 weeks and we’ll use a combination of face to face training and social media tools to connect, communicate and learn.

Let’s meet the team!  Click on their names to learn more about what they do when they’re not working on this project!

Left-right:  Lance Scoular, lead trainer and social media guru, Joanna Maxwell,  creative thinking trainer and expert small business coach, Anna Francis, ELLN support, highly experienced trainer and assessor

Left-right:  Kate McLean,Community Development Worker -4C's, Ramana Waseem, Student Support Worker,  Ann Brady, project mgr/tech support and e-learning consultant

We start next week (29th Feb 2012) so we’ll keep you posted on our progress!