What To Say: How to Find Material To Fill Your Seminar or Small Business Management Course

Running a seminar or a small business managementcommands to cut down the amount of work
course can potentially be a labor intensiverequired.
undertaking. You want to ensure the ROI. A majorFor example, if you enter the following words into
part of that effort will be in researching developingGoogle -income taxyou will be presented with every
your materials for presentation. How do you do this?site that has the word 'income' and the word 'tax' in
The following acronym (SOAP) sums up the processit and from sites throughout the world.
and the result:reSearchleads to OriginalityandWhereas the following phrases -
Authenticityin Presentation"income tax" date:3 IRSwill pull up recently searched
Essentially, if you research your topic thoroughlypages on US income tax increasing the relevance
before you begin, even when it is an area you workfactor by 100% and cutting down the amount of
in daily and are familiar with, you are more likely tomaterial to trawl through (a process called 'data
produce original materials and ideas and present themscraping') by an order of magnitude.
in a fresh and authentic style.You can also use search engines to trawl news,
In addition, you want to get away from the dulldiscussion pages and blogs on the same subject and
familiarity of 'talk and chalk' training. Training should betrack down any multi media information - such as
participatory and your presentation materials shouldcartoons, pictures and training films.
include in addition to standard lecture materials,o IceAnd there are specialist search applications which
breakers such as problem solving and team bondingwork with search engines to make this process
exerciseso Scripts for introducing and runningeasier and more thoroughgoing. However, these
hothouse sessions to generate ideaso Case studiesonormally need a license from the search engine
Role playso Workshop exerciseso Multi mediaowners to run and so are generally only used by
presentationso Supplementary guides and moreagencies or individuals that specialize in this area of
in-depth technical explanationso Where to find furtherwork.
informationWhether you or someone else is doing the research
Researching an area, particularly one where in-depthyou need to be very discerning. The Internet can be
technical knowledge is required can be aextremely useful but some of the material posted
time-consuming process. It also needs specialist skills.can be both out of date and very misleading.
While books and trade magazines supply usefulOnce you have collated your material and selected
background and allow you to ground yourself in thethe most relevant items, you need to structure your
concepts and principles, they are normally out oftraining around them. Here it helps to bring in
date. They also cost money to buy or subscribe sosomeone with good composition and typing skills as
unless you have a very good library (probablyyou need to rapidly and accurately develop the key
belonging to a college) to hand, they not thelecture materials and notes along with supplementary
cheapest or most readily available resource.guides and sources of further information. If they
The best source for fresh and up to date material ishave also participated in the research effort, so much
the Internet. This material can come from severalthe better.
places -o Professional association pageso MagazineIn addition, you also need to script the other types
and specialist siteso Discussion forumso Newsof sessions. Even sessions where you are expecting
organizationsyour participants to generate the material need a
The key to unlock this material is knowing how tocarefully worded introduction and a well thought out
use an Internet search engine.set of rules to structure the session so that it is
Everyone has experienced entering what theymaximally useful to those who take part and that no
thought was a meaningful phrase into a search siteone is put under pressure or embarrassed during the
such as Google only to be presented withprocess.
unexpected and unwanted material or so muchWhat you can be sure of is that the more effort
apparently relevant information that there seems noyou put into research and development and the
possible way of trawling through it all. Experts in themore professionally it is done, the more it will repay
area know how to use specific search engineyou in the long run.