This is the fourth installment in a series on developing and delivering social media training for employees.

So far in this series, I’ve covered the need for a social media training program in your organization and why it should be based on a foundation of solid research. Based on the results of your research, you’ll need to determine what to include in your training program, whom to train and how to present the training.

In this post, we’ll cover some of these considerations as they apply mainly to core social media training; we’ll look at other components of a complete program in the next post.

Policy is the obvious element to include in any training program, but you need to present it in context. The examples you create would be different for a company that sells shoes than from one that provides healthcare services.

The reserach outlined in the previous post will help you make other important decisions, but you’ll need to weigh other factors, as well.

Mandatory or Voluntary?

As many employees as possible should take a core training program. Employees at every level use social media, so they should be familiar with the guardrails that define the company’s policy. Remember, research reveals that companies with employees trained on the policy encounter far fewer crises than those that simply prohibit use of social channels or any discussion of work. (Denying employees the ability to talk about work could also violate labor laws.)

The question becomes whether your mandate the training or make it available for employees to complete voluntarily.

If the organization has a volunteer culture—one where employees take advantage of company opportunities—a voluntary program could work fine. At PepsiCo, around 7,000 employees have taken the core training voluntarily, with a growing number of regions outside North America requesting the training in local languages.

In other cultures, for whatever reason, employees won’t spend time with any training they don’t have to. The organization may have a history of pointless or mind-numbing training programs. The culture could support the belief that taking time to do anything other than departmental work is not valued by the organization.

Requiring every employee to complete a training course—even a lively 45-minute program—also depends on systems. If the training is online, how can you verify an employee actually took the training (rather than absently clicking through the screens)? If your company has a system that records completions, it’s likely to be an internal system, blocked from outside access. If you don’t have such a system, will you require employees to complete a test or survey to prove they absorbed the material? How well would that go over in your culture?

Employees whose misbehavior online could violate laws or regulations should be required to complete the training. Healthcare workers in the U.S. are subject to HIPAA; to protect themselves and the organization, they need to know what not to do. For these employees, (as well as union or factory workers), this can often be covered as part of an annual training program (such as safety training).

Live or Online?

A lot of employee social media training takes place online. That’s fine, if it’ll work with your culture and systems.

If you do post the training online, will it be inside or outside the firewall? Odds are, there’s nothing secret or proprietary in your policy or your content. Posting it openly could be the best way to ensure all employees have access. Companies like Intel (below) and Telstra have opened their training modules. (Hundreds of social media policies are also posted publicly, again because they contain nothing that needs to be kept secret and public posting makes them accessible to the greatest possible number of employees.)

Live classroom training can be unbeatable. If your training program targets volunteers who want to share the brand online—a brand-ambassador class of employees—you can take your training on the road to various company locations or bring employees into a central location. One of Dell’s social media training offerings takes place in a classroom environment with much of the agenda given over to discussion of issues and sharing of scenarios.

In smaller organizations, you can run most employees through in-person training, then include the training after that to new-hire orientation.

As great as face-to-face training is, it could create problems of scale, particularly in larger organizations. The core training will probably make more sense as an online course. In this case, you’ll need to find out if your company has a Learning Management System (LMS) and if your training program needs to comply with LMS standards. SCORM—Sharable Content Object Reference Model—is currently the most common set of elearning standards and specifications. You’ll also need to know which version of SCORM your system uses.

If training does need to be SCORM-compliant, you’re looking at something beyond just videos. What platform will you use? There are several; I’ve been using a package called Articulate to develop interactive training programs for Ragan Communications and PepsiCo, among others. (I’m just a customer, I have no relationship with the organization.) Alternative programs include the likes of Adobe Captivate and Lectora from Trivantis.

These days, a mobile training solution is an even better way to ensure employees will take the time to complete the training.

In the next installment, I’ll cover ongoing training beyond the core curriculum. The previous installments in the series are here:

• Part 1: Introducing a series on social media training
• Part 2: Getting buy-in for social media training
• Part 3: Research is at the heart of social media training