Have You Stopped Learning?

Have you gotten too busy to learn something new? Are you so overwhelmed with your current commitments that you don’t have time to read another book? Do you feel like you just don’t have the time to do some more training on the tools you already use everyday?

I know how it is. Between a full-time job, building a personal brand, personal commitments, and still trying to find some down time, it can be hard to fit in another thing. But I do, every single day. That may seem a little overwhelming. But let’s be realistic, I’m not taking a 3 hour class every day… sometimes, it’s just reading a couple more articles on a topic. But I make a commitment to keep learning every single day.

Especially when it comes to Social Media. This field is still so young and the information is changing every day. If you’re not keeping up with the newest changes or latest releases, you could be leaving your brand behind your competition. It’s important that you stay up to date but I’m sure you don’t have time to spend your whole day researching the latest Facebook press release. Here’s the trick, you don’t have to! There are plenty of very smart people out there who have done all this work for you. You just have to follow them and reap the rewards of their hard work.

Here are some of the ways in which you can learn from these people every day:

Blog Postings

I suggest you find a couple great Social Media bloggers and follow their blogs. Find people who consistently provide new information and who write in a way that is easy for you to read. By following their blog, you will get regular email updates whenever they post a new blog so you can make sure you don’t miss anything important. Some bloggers post daily or multiple times a week. You’ll be amazed at how much you can learn from reading a few extra articles every week.

Twitter

If you follow my blog, you probably already know how much I love Twitter. But Twitter really is an endless supply of educational material. Now to be fair, it’s also an endless supply of time-wasting, useless information. The key is to find good Tweeps who regularly post and share valuable Social Media related tweets. You can even put these people into a specific list so you can easily isolate their postings from your main feed. Follow a mix of industry leaders, local companies, and international companies that specialize in Social Media. This will give you a good breadth of information from around the world and help you to decipher what is working and what isn’t.

LinkedIn Groups

If you aren’t already a member of at least 5 LinkedIn groups, I highly recommend you go over there right now and join some. Ok, after you have finished reading this, then you should go over to LinkedIn! Join groups that are related to your industry or profession. Join groups that focus on Social Media utilization. You will get daily emails with all of the new posts that have been shared with the groups. You can quickly scan the titles and determine which articles you want to read. Many of these articles are great educational bits that will keep you well informed of current changes.

Webinars

I absolutely love webinars! I participate in at least 2-3 every month. They’re so easy to join and can be very informational. I frequently sign up for any webinar on any topic I’m interested in. Even if the webinar is a basic educational level and I think I know everything they’re going to cover, I still sign up. Why? Because it’s someone else’s perspective and they might have a different way of approaching the issues at hand. It never hurts to learn another way to do something.

I am always learning, every day. I have always believed that education is the greatest currency. It’s an investment in YOU. It’s something that cannot be taken away from you. The more you know, the better you can be at your current job and set yourself up for growth into future positions. I hope you will take a couple of these tips to keep learning every day as well.

Do you have any other tips for how you keep learning? Add them in the comments below!

Photo credit: Petr Kratochvil