Do You Want To Get Involved In Getting Or Giving Digital Skills To Others?

This month, I thought I would give an overview of some of the projects that I feel BNI members could benefit from, whether needing more skills in their own business, or wanting to be part of the digital skills shortage solution!

Networking is a key part of my life, I join up dots and see opportunities whilst joining up the gaps. Over the past 3 years I have assisted with ‘funded skills programs’, placing young people into work and providing ‘free’ training to small businesses, specialising in digital skills.

The past 16 years have been a test of my tenacity and passion (sound familiar?) and I sense now that the need for digital skills is reaching a point whereby those that don’t have the skills are very worried, and those that have them and want to share this knowledge are being well paid and reaching a saturation point in their own capacity. Is this a demand outstrips supply scenario? It soon will be I believe.

The issues of above:

1. If you need it, who do you trust and how do you pay for it?
2. If you have the skills to train others, how do you build a business beyond your own time capacity?

So looking at each of these:

1.     You need more skills and not sure where to turn

If you employ less than 250 people, you are eligible for a Funded Program called Skills Support for the Workforce. Here is a link to this, it’s a bit heavy, so if you want to know how to access Digital Skills Training and not pay for it, contact me (details below).

Secondly, you can have a website built for you for free, under a programme that Digital Youth Academy are running to give work experience and a qualification to 16-24 year olds, called Youth Web Builders.  I have used this and it is amazing, my new company website has been built by a young person on this two-week programme.  Contact me below and I will connect you.

Finally, you can hire a Social Digital Apprentice - they will work for one year under a great Apprenticeship and set up all your social network, run your website, (create one – as above) and also provide analytics and SEO (see below for my contact details).

2.     You have Social Media Training Skills and would like to get involved

I am creating a list by town/city of Social Trainers and selecting those that I feel have credibility and critically understand that social marketing is very different to the traditional transactionally led campaigns. If you are a Social Media trainer, please Tweet me or email me (details below), as I would like to invite you into a group on Facebook. I want to be able to share more of the opportunities I see and feel that associations between people would help increase capacity of sole trading trainers.