Another guest post by a fellow nerd… read more about how to help people in an audience keep learning and engaging.

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Keep the Learning Alive

“It does not matter how slowly you go so long as you do not stop.” ~Confucius

You stood in front of the audience. You inspired them. You gave them a call to action. And then you left. How do you help your audience continue to learn and grow once you are gone? Here are a few ideas along with some online services that can help.

Share Their Successes

Provide your audience with a “hotline” where they can share their stories of how you helped or inspired them. Then at the end of your next blog post, article, or video; take a moment to share one of their stories.

Audio – Services like Google Voice [free and easy] or Twilio [Price per usage. Requires some setup] can create a phone number for your audience to call in and tell their stories. You’ll receive an email with the recording attached and a transcription of the message. It probably goes without saying, but automated transcriptions should be taken with a grain of salt and checked against the recording.

Written – You can create an alias email address (e.g. ideahotline@mydomain.com) that will forward to you. Invite your attendees to write about their experiences and your mail client can highlight the alias messages so you can easily separate them from your regular email.

Social – For pictures or short blurbs, create a hashtag for use on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook where your audience can share their successes with you and your community.

Create a Community

The Roman philosopher, Seneca, said that “while we teach, we learn.”

In the technology world, many companies encourage their customers to form “user groups” in their areas where they can share ideas and build on each others’ experiences to enhance their own.

Online – Create an online community using a Facebook Group or Google Group [both free to create] where your audience can take what they’ve learned from you and share it with others. You can choose to moderate the group or designate someone to keep conversations going.

Local Groups – Encourage your audience members to create local groups where they can share ideas.

Meet-ups – If you regularly travel to certain cities for other clients, you could create a Meetup.com [9.95/month and up] event where people can come and share.

Contests & Challenges

It’s one thing to listen to a presentation and another to take action yourself.

Create a challenge or contest where your clients can try out their skills themselves while reinforcing your lessons themselves. If you teach Powerpoint skills, have a contest to create a slide deck around their favorite movie. If you teach social media, challenge them to write a haiku about your talk.

Whatever challenge you come up with, make sure it’s fun and easy. The point is to get them comfortable trying out their new ideas and skills. Creating a haiku is fun. Writing an essay is homework.

What other ideas do you have or use to keep your audience engaged and learning after you’re gone? You can call my “idea hotline” at 414-206-1331 or email me at ideahotline@chadlawson.me. Haikus optional.

Tech savvy and user friendly, Chad Lawson works with companies to close the gap between people and the technology they use daily so employees can feel empowered and companies can have happier, more productive employees. Find more at chadlawson.me.