Content Strategy & Curation Journey

Big-picture thinking stretches beyond the short term and considers how an organization can succeed in the long term. By thinking strategically about a problem using the bigger picture, you can elevate your perspective and get a better idea of the forces at play within your organization. This course describes how systems thinking can help you become skillful at making sense out of opposites and contradictions and better understand cause and effect while managing your department according to the business strategy. It explains actions you can take to encourage creative thinking and come up with solutions that take into account the bigger picture. You'll also learn how understanding your organizational value chain can help you connect to the organization's strategy and implement it more effectively.

Risk taking can revolutionize business, but you need to know when and how to take a strategic risk when the opportunity arises. Managing risk means effectively assessing a threat by recognizing the probability of that risk occurring and evaluating the impact of the risk should it occur. In this course, you'll learn to define strategic risk taking, what holds individuals back, and how to make calculated leaps of faith.

To succeed in competitive markets, all organizations need to strategically plan and manage their products and services. Much of the responsibility for doing this lies with operations management. An organization's operations section deals with managing products and services and delivering quality using efficient processes. In this course, you'll learn about the product and service life cycle, the process for developing new products, and strategies to manage the sale of existing and mature products. You'll also learn about a process and best practices to improve efficiency for new product or service development. Finally, you'll learn about strategies, such as Lean processes, for managing existing and mature products and services.

Business execution is the "how" of getting things done. As a leader, you must be skilled in driving performance and strategy in the right direction through business execution. In this course, you'll learn about the characteristics of business execution cultures. You'll also learn techniques for fostering a business execution culture. Finally, you'll learn about the three elements needed to execute your business strategy: planning, people, and practice.

Business execution is the "how" of getting things done. As a leader, you can use business execution to drive performance and strategies in the right direction, to solve problems, and to inspire others. In this course, you'll learn about the characteristics that define effective business execution culture. You'll also become familiar with the three elements needed to execute a business plan: practice, planning, and people. Finally, you'll learn actionable strategies for fostering a business execution culture.

Most organizations have strategic plans that articulate their goals, but frequently, those goals are unknown to everyone except the executive team. This lack of transparency clouds the organization's ability to synchronize their goals and hobbles their ability to work successfully. In this course, you will learn how to synchronize organizational, team, and individual goals to maximize opportunities for success. You'll also explore how to get everyone on your team pulling in the same direction, reducing employee dissatisfaction and increasing productivity.

When goals and targets seem to shift daily and there's never enough time to get everything done, it's hard to achieve goals consistently. Good time management will help you work smarter - not harder - so that you get more of the important things done in less time. The first step in working smarter is making sure you're going in the right direction. In this course, you'll learn how to accomplish more through effective time management. You'll learn why it's important to align your goals with your company's goals, and how to do it. You'll also learn how to differentiate between urgent and important tasks, how to pivot between conflicting priorities, and how taking the time to make improvements can save you time in the long run.

No one can add an extra hour to the day to get more done. But anyone can make better use of the 24 hours you do have by becoming more effective at time management. All it takes is deciding to seize control of your own time, and then taking small steps in the right direction. In this course, you'll consider how you're spending your time now and what techniques you can use to spend it more wisely and productively. You'll learn to block the time stealers that interfere with your productivity, use to-do lists and schedules to organize your time and tasks, and develop a regular habit of checking in with your plans to make sure you're getting them done.

Even when you know your priorities and have an organized time management routine, you'll still be challenged every day by distractions, temptations, interruptions, and procrastination. To avoid causing internal time management detours, you have to develop ways to stay focused, and this often means using personal and interpersonal skills in very specific ways. In this course, you'll learn strategies to manage challenges to your personal focus, techniques to help you shut out distractions and manage time conflicts, and ways to regain focus and develop mental resilience when faced with change.

Too much to do and too little time? Everything is urgent? Modern technology means our employers can reach us 24/7, so schedule management and goal setting are more important than ever. When you're under pressure to deliver, you need to know your priorities. Meeting targets and achieving goals consistently regardless of the business situation isn't easy. And this means managing your time effectively. In this course, you'll learn about aligning each goal with your employer's expectations, clarifying your goals, and prioritizing your most important work. You'll also learn how to ask questions to clarify goals, and how to establish and schedule priorities based on these goals.

If you want to manage your schedule and make your time count, you have to be organized. But to stay organized, you need to check your progress. This mean developing schedule management skills. The stress and potential for mistakes grows when you don't spend time organizing your time. In this course, you'll discover how schedule management can help you regain control of your time. You'll learn how to leverage your personality to boost your productivity and explore techniques for dealing with time stealers. And you'll learn how to create practical to-do lists and keep them relevant and realistic.

Even if you know what's important to do, losing focus can stop your progress. No matter who you are or what job you do, focusing at work can be hard. Even with great schedule management and organizing skills, it's easy to get off track if you're not careful. In this course, you'll learn how to stay focused and stay on top of your schedule. You'll learn strategies for dealing with focus challenges and distractions at work. You'll also find out how to beat fatigue, manage your time, and decline work-related requests. And you'll explore how to adjust your focus to deal with change, and how to regain focus when you've lost it.

In the modern business environment, it's easy to feel overwhelmed by the volume of written communication that you need to process every day. To keep up, you need strong communication skills to sort, file, respond to, or delete all emails that you receive during your business day. In this course, you'll learn some vital communication techniques for managing and writing emails effectively. The course covers email etiquette tips on how to use folders and filters to organize emails for increased efficiency, as well as guidelines on what emails to delete. You'll also explore how to recover important information should you lose an email.

In order to make the best business decisions, you need to confront - and overcome - your cognitive biases. In this course, you will learn techniques for identifying cognitive bias, as well as strategies for overcoming specific biases.

Solving problems requires strategic thinking. You need to ask the right people the right questions to get to the source of the issue and find the solution. In this course, you'll learn about identifying stakeholders, gaining their input and trust, and using analysis techniques to get to the root cause of a problem.

Before you start looking for solutions to a problem, it's helpful to know what people want in an ideal world. This will give you some direction and aid in the strategic thinking needed to create alternative solutions. In this course, you'll learn how to define ideal states and generate and evaluate problem solutions. You'll also learn how to recognize and avoid common pitfalls when solving problems.

When the time comes to make a final, critical decision, you need to be able to understand the reasons for making that decision, as well as its possible consequences. You must also assess the effectiveness of your decisive action in solving a particular organizational problem. In this course, you'll learn techniques for making decisions based on key criteria, such as costs, time constraints, and organizational goals. You'll explore different decision-making styles, and how each can help in problem solving. You'll also learn how to plan, manage, evaluate, and celebrate solution implementation.

Systems thinking allows you to understand how systems work, as well as your role in them. Systems thinking affords you the ability to see the interrelationships among all events, putting you in a better position to address problems.

When struggling with a difficult problem, it's easy to become hemmed in by traditional habitual thinking. Learning to leverage the power of analogical thinking allows you to think creatively and gain fresh insights through the exploration of unexpected similarities. In this course, you'll learn what analogical thinking is, when it's best used, and how to use it. You'll also learn under what situations it can fail, and how to avoid superficial analogies so you can make better strategic choices.

Spelling errors are all too common, and are one of the main culprits behind poor business writing. A wrong letter here, an extra letter there, and your reader may lose confidence in your communication skills and overall competence as a professional. That's why writing well doesn't just mean writing persuasively - it also means knowing the rules, as well as the exceptions, of spelling. In this course, you'll learn how to spell words with prefixes and suffixes, and how to form the plural and possessive forms of words. You'll also learn general rules on how to spell correctly, as well as some handy tips for better writing in general.

Writing well is not just about constructing logical sentences. It also involves the correct use of abbreviations, capital letters, and numbers in your business writing. Knowing how to use them consistently is a strong asset to have as part of your communication skills. In this course, you'll learn the basic rules of capital letters, abbreviations, and numbers. You'll learn how to correctly abbreviate titles, names, locations, and countries, as well as how to capitalize direct quotes, titles, names of organizations, and product names, among other elements. In addition, you'll explore other key elements for better writing - the forms and uses of numbers with dates and time, money, fractions, and symbols.

Punctuation is the collection of marks used to separate sentences and their parts. Although appropriate punctuation is an undervalued part of your communication skills, it can make your business writing clear and less likely to be misinterpreted. In this course, you'll learn the standard rules and guidelines for using punctuation marks, including the correct use of periods, question marks, and exclamation points. You'll learn a crucial aspect of better writing that often causes much confusion - how to correctly use commas. The course includes rules for better writing such how to use different connecting and separating marks, like colons, semicolons, dashes, and hyphens. In addition, it shows how to properly use apostrophes, parentheses, brackets, and quotation marks.

Syntax is the grammatical term for arranging words to create logical phrases, clauses, and sentences. Well-constructed sentences express an idea by using the parts of speech in a logical order, and are essential for effective business writing. A misplaced modifier might get a chuckle out of the reader, but it reflects poorly on your communication skills. In this course, you'll learn some of the fundamentals for better writing - the parts of a sentence, such as the subject and predicate, as well as phrases and clauses. You'll examine subject-verb agreement, as well as agreement between pronouns and their antecedents. You'll also discover some techniques for writing well, such as how to identify and fix common types of sentence errors.

The many nuances and conventions in the English language make it diverse and interesting; however, when it comes to writing well, they can also cause some difficulties. For better writing skills, you must familiarize yourself with some of the most common errors of usage. In this course, you'll learn how to use commonly confused words correctly, including word pairs that sound alike and those that have related meanings. You'll explore often misused verbs - for example, affect and effect or apprise and appraise - that can impede professional business writing. You'll also learn some idiomatic combinations of verbs and prepositions that can be confusing and will put your communication skills to the test.

Email has become an indispensable communication tool for organizations, and plays a vital role in how they conduct business and maintain their operations. As a result, one of the most important communication skills to have in the workplace today is email etiquette. It can help ensure you get messages across quickly, appropriately, and concisely. In this course, you'll learn some tried and tested guidelines for writing emails. You'll explore the fundamental elements of written communication that every email should contain, and the importance of keeping emails concise. The course also covers the etiquette associated with using instant messaging programs as an extension of email.

Today in the Age of the Customer, competitive advantage has been redefined. Customers are in control. They have more choices than ever before resulting in sky-high expectations. The only source of competitive advantage is the obsession with understanding, delighting, connecting with and serving customers. Organizations need people who are customer obsessed. People who are so interested and committed to the people they are creating and designing for that they are willing to spend time, take risks and admit that they personally might be wrong. People who are so customer obsessed that they never settle but are continually trying to understand what else they can do for their customers.

The ability to support a customer is keenly enhanced by a greater understanding of the customer's mood, communication style, and knowledge of the product or service in question. From the first moments of interaction, the customer will be giving cues in each of these areas. Interaction with customers requires planning, active listening, and a conscious effort to adjust your communication and support approach based on your customer's cues. In this course, you'll learn how to recognize and read customer cues, and how to use them to adapt your support strategy to each individual customer. You'll also explore how to overcome common pitfalls customer service agents face in assessing their customer's cues. This course was developed with subject matter provided by NueBridge (www.nuebridge.com) which has extensive expertise in customer experience and management across multiple industries around the world.

CSRs who can identify their customers' priorities are able to make the best decisions on how to serve the customer. A customer's priorities may be both explicit (stated clearly or obvious) and implicit (unsaid or unexpected). Understanding the scope and interdependence of these priorities allows you to better address each customer's implicit needs and help you deliver a higher level of service. In this course, you'll learn to distinguish customer priorities as either explicit or implicit, and to describe how speed influences customer perception. You'll also learn strategies to decrease the amount of effort the customer has to expend in getting issues resolved, methods to demonstrate your presence for customers in service interactions, and strategies to help you balance priorities during a customer service interaction. This course was developed with subject matter provided by NueBridge (www.nuebridge.com) which has extensive expertise in customer experience and management across multiple industries around the world.

Customer needs lie at the heart of every service interaction. In order to fully support the customer, we must be able to identify both their stated and unstated needs. Customer support professionals use a combination of skills to analyze beyond the stated requirements to uncover the full spectrum of customer needs. In this course, you'll learn the service advantages of being able to identify your customers' needs. You'll learn best practices for discerning both stated and unstated needs in a service interaction and how to avoid problems and pitfalls in needs exploration. You'll also learn techniques to help you exceed your customers' needs and you'll explore scenarios that put these practices into action. This course was developed with subject matter provided by NueBridge (www.nuebridge.com) which has extensive expertise in customer experience and management across multiple industries around the world.

Success is both an outcome and a mindset. Professionals who wish to provide a truly exceptional level of customer service approach each interaction with the right mindset and attitude. Without understanding how mindset impacts service ability, you compromise your potential and that of the organization, which ultimately results in a poor customer service experience. Focusing on your service mindset and attitude will ensure your professional values will manifest in each service interaction. In this course, you'll learn how moving to a different mindset can help you deliver outstanding customer service, and what key practices can help establish a good personal mindset for any service situation. You'll also learn to recognize how professional values manifest during customer service interactions, how to develop an attitude of a customer service professional, and what strategies demonstrate a customer-centric service mindset. This course was developed with subject matter provided by NueBridge (www.nuebridge.com) which has extensive expertise in customer experience and management across multiple industries around the world.

More than ever, people are using social media. They aren't just interacting with friends, but with businesses as well. Today, customers expect businesses to reach them on social media. As a result, social media not only gives businesses invaluable customer data, it provides an effective way to promote products and services to grow the business as well. In this course, you'll learn the key features and benefits of social media for businesses, and become familiar with its key concepts and terminology, essential to understanding the role it can play in engaging with customers, providing support, advertising, and generating business. You'll also learn about the most popular social media tools, and how personal branding and an active community can be a real differentiator for your organization, and how it can support your overall business objectives. This course was developed in partnership with the Digital Marketing Institute. (www.digitalmarketinginstitute.com For those who are interested in pursuing a certification, please contact the Digital Marketing Institute directly via this website: https://digitalmarketinginstitute.com/lp/skillsoft

Social media and mobile use are closely linked, which means customers are more likely to connect with businesses for customer service when it suits them. Customers prefer social media for contacting businesses because they can multi-task while waiting for a response. This gives customers more control over the communication channel, so businesses must have a plan to manage expectations and engage with customers on their terms and in the social media platforms they frequent. In this course, you'll learn about the importance of using social media for customer service, the changes brought about by social customer services, and how companies are adapting to this new way of addressing customer issues. You'll also learn how changes in the behavior and expectations of customers have impacted customer service and become familiar with the advantages of social customer service for businesses, gaining an understanding of the importance of other digital tools to support your customers. Finally, you'll explore the challenges of social customer care and the strategic approaches that you can implement to improve customer service. This course was developed in partnership with the Digital Marketing Institute. (www.digitalmarketinginstitute.com) For those who are interested in pursuing a certification, please contact the Digital Marketing Institute directly via this website: https://digitalmarketinginstitute.com/lp/skillsoft

Using social intelligence (SI) is not just about recording the number of likes, retweets, or followers you have on your various social media outlets. True social intelligence involves using the vast amount of raw, real-time data you have at your disposal and converting it into practicable insights to improve customer relationships. In this course, you'll learn about the benefits of social intelligence to your organization's performance. You'll explore how to monitor social media, as well as common sources of social media data. Finally, you'll discover best practices for analyzing that data, common mistakes to avoid, and ways to use social-awareness strategies that deliver real business value.

Social media is one of the most vital technologies companies can use to attract, connect with, and retain customers. If you want to meet customers where they are, that's the place to be. In this course, you'll learn why social media is such an important tool of persuasion for businesses. You'll explore how companies use social media today as a key component of a persuasive communication strategy. You'll also learn how to analyze your organization's social media channels and marketing strategies to strengthen and maintain your relationship with your customers.

In today's business environment, a positive social media presence is vital for success. Having someone responsible for online community management can help ensure that your online communities are getting the most from your social media marketing. In this course, you'll learn about the benefits and capabilities of community management as part of your overall digital marketing strategy. You'll explore the four pillars of effective digital community management and the elements to include in your organization's digital community management strategy. You'll also learn considerations and best practices for monitoring and engaging online communities, and you'll explore digital community management trends.

The growth of mobile devices and social media have dramatically changed how consumers interact online. This has had a profound effect on how businesses market services and products to their customers. The facts about Digital are compelling. People prefer to interact online, mobile devices now account for over 50 percent of web page views, the current worldwide total number of Internet users is 4.5 billion, and social media users worldwide represent 3.2 billion people. In this course, you'll learn how digital provides opportunities for understanding the customer journey, creating sustainable business growth, and fostering more highly functioning organizations, teams, and individuals. You'll also learn how organizations can benefit from applying digital technologies and practices to their marketing plans and strategies. This course was developed in partnership with the Digital Marketing Institute. (www.digitalmarketinginstitute.com) For those who are interested in pursuing a certification, please contact the Digital Marketing Institute directly via this website: https://digitalmarketinginstitute.com/lp/skillsoft

According to recent research, over 90% of business-to-business customers carry out online research before they make a purchase decision. It's clear that it's important for every business to have an online presence. Today, when customers have a need or a problem to solve, the first step is to search for an answer online. In this course, you'll learn about how customers search for solutions to their needs and how businesses can match those searches with the right online presence. You'll also learn how an online presence can be designed to engage and connect with customers, building strong relationships to support your business, as well as how you can increase conversion by optimizing your website content for searches. Finally, you'll examine the role of email marketing, which continues to provide one of the highest returns on investment of any digital channel by examining the key elements of compelling email communications, including how they align to your customer's journey, and how they can help you to achieve your business objectives. This course was developed in partnership with the Digital Marketing Institute. (www.digitalmarketinginstitute.com) For those who are interested in pursuing a certification, please contact the Digital Marketing Institute directly via this website: https://digitalmarketinginstitute.com/lp/skillsoft

With the rise in Digital, businesses are challenged to carefully consider how customer and employee data are captured, stored, and retained. Because data security risks such as data breaches and cyber threats regularly affect organizations, businesses do well to plan, manage, and mitigate against these internal and external risks. Without careful management, risks can easily get out of hand, especially in a social media environment. This can cause serious damage to a business or its brand. In this course, you'll learn about the risks that can affect organizations online, how, without careful management, they can grow beyond control, and ways to manage and mitigate against them. You'll also review the potential impacts of various risks related to Digital, such as a data breaches and cyber threats, and how proper planning can prevent them. You'll explore how the rise in social media increases the likelihood that small events can quickly become a global issue for a company, and how issues that arise must be treated with care, using pre-defined guidelines. In addition to these risks, you'll examine various business challenges associated with Digital, such as lack of digital skills faced by many companies, the need for innovation, and difficulties related to an organization's structure. Finally, you‘ll review evolving regulations around the use of Digital, and how to ensure that your approach is aligned with local market requirements. This course was developed in partnership with the Digital Marketing Institute. (www.digitalmarketinginstitute.com) For those who are interested in pursuing a certification, please contact the Digital Marketing Institute directly via this website: https://digitalmarketinginstitute.com/lp/skillsoft

Every company knows that to attract new customers and retain existing ones, they must be able to harness the opportunities that the internet provides. To reach this target market online, you'll need an effective digital marketing strategy. In this course, you'll learn about marketing communication strategies that will help you connect with your customers. You'll explore the digital marketing funnel, which can lead your customers from considering your product or service to actually buying it. In addition, you'll learn about digital marketing planning and the role of social media in marketing.

Social media pages, user review sites, and online communities are some common digital marketing tools used to connect with your target market. These tools, however, can also be used by customers to rate - and complain about - a company's products or services. Without proper online reputation management, your relationship with your customers may be irrevocably damaged. In this course, you'll learn how to build and maintain relationships with your online customers to protect your corporate reputation. You'll also learn how to use digital PR, blogs, and online user communities to drive your brand.

Today's digital customer is a new breed, no longer easily defined by age or generation. They are digital natives, online savvy, and using multiple channels to conduct their day to day affairs. In this course, you will learn the characteristics of digital customers and how the online world shapes their expectations. You'll learn how to utilize data and analytics using tools like conversion rate optimization and funnel analytics to build a better customer experience. You will also come to recognize the value of data privacy and the trust involved in holding customer information. Finally, you'll learn the value of maintaining the human connection online and actions an organization must take to foster the innovation necessary for meeting customer service customer experience expectations.

As humans, we've been using narratives to share our knowledge and experiences with others since the beginning. But effective storytelling, specifically within a business context, requires thoughtful preparation and effective delivery. With practice, using storytelling can improve the way you communicate with key players inside - and outside - your organization. In this course, you'll learn how to plan and deliver effective stories that engage your target audience and help you accomplish your objectives.

The right story narrative can persuade and enable company leadership to make smart, informed and intentional decisions about their business. In this course, you'll learn how to build a compelling, data-driven story that adequately answers the framed problem, and motivates action among key stakeholders. This course was developed with subject matter provided by the International Institute for Analytics. (www.iianalytics.com)