How Social Media Can Help Increase Learner Engagement

Last month, we surveyed 250 people to investigate how social media is used in a learning capacity, specifically regarding their learning preferences and habits. We aimed to discover the links between learning and formats inspired by these platforms.

We’ve noticed social media (think #LearnTok) is a burgeoning area for self-led learning. We wanted to establish whether individuals would be interested in using engaging videos to learn and how short-form content can be incorporated into corporate learning.

The key results

• 92% of our survey respondents find short videos on social media an effective way to learn.
• 83% of respondents already use social media to learn
• 52% intentionally use it for this reason, and 31% say they unintentionally learn while using it
• 89% of respondents would be more likely to engage with technical learning (e.g. Microsoft training) if supplied with short informal videos

They speak for themselves! 

Personalising the Learning Experience

Social media-style learning can personalise the experience to meet each individual's needs and preferences. Tracking, either through an LMS, LXP, or other software, can be useful when identifying areas for development and seeing what content is being used most frequently. 

Community-Based Learning Environment

Social media can foster a community-based learning environment, as workers can share the content they’re consuming and help engage other learners. It can also help foster continuous learning by providing them with content in a form they are used to and is easy to consume. 

Collaboration becomes a solid foundation when using social media when completing workplace learning. 

Cost-effective L&D 

Social media-style learning can be a cost-effective way of disseminating your content across the business. Whether you are chopping up existing long-form content into bitesize chunks or creating a podcast recording for individuals to watch instead of just listening to, there are many ways to use social media to benefit you. 

Engaging Disinterested Employees with Social Media Learning 

As the workforce is becoming younger, more employees are using social media to stay connected. However, as the CIPD research report states, “it has the potential to completely transform how learning and development are delivered within the organisation.” By sharing learning resources naturally, employees are more likely to be interested in their personal development. This could be because it’s not mandated by the organisation or because it’s coming from their colleagues. 

Social media-style learning can help engage your employees with L&D in many ways, including Assemble You’s new TikTok-style Microsoft Office Resources. You can try these free for 30-day now.