If you are in education, you no doubt have at least heard of Bloom’s Taxonomy. For those not versed in Bloom, it is considered the very foundation of good education and without getting too bookworm on you, the Taxonomy is basically a framework by which you can evaluate your learning, based on levels of understanding. Let me give you an analogy… just like we have 3 branches of government (legislative, judicial, and executive) and we need all 3 to function properly, thus good education has 3 main branches (or ‘domains’) that are needed to function properly too. I believe that just about any business can apply Bloom’s to what they do and I want to tell you what I think is the most important one… the first one: Cognitive.
Here is a graphic of Bloom’s Taxonomy, Cognitive Domain:
Start at the bottom and you can see that you have to remember something first. Then you move up to understanding it. Then you move up to applying what you know. After you do that you enter the level where interesting stuff really starts happening… this is where you analyze, evaluate, and create.
So what does this have to do with social media and your business?
Think about what you are doing with social media. Too many folks get frustrated with trying to use Facebook/Twitter/YouTube/etc to promote their business. And the reason is that they haven’t moved beyond the ‘remember’ phase. They remember how to type a status update and click the post button. But that’s it. They don’t understand how the status update can work for them. They don’t know how to apply it to a business goal or objective. And you can forget about analyzing and evaluating what they have done. They are still stuck spinning their wheels on the first level.
So I’ve convinced you that you need some help. What do you do? Well, you gotta concentrate on the ‘understanding’ and ‘apply’ levels and luckily there are a bunch of places that can help you. Start reading Mashable, Social Media Examiner, Brian Solis, Chris Brogan, and of course… me. Read them daily. Print stuff out. Share it with your co-workers and employees. And start doing what they tell you to do. No matter what your level of ‘understanding’, you’ll learn tons. Trust me.
And to think… I haven’t even touched on the ‘affective’ and ‘psychomotor’ domains of Bloom’s Taxonomy. Sounds like more blog posts to me, eh?
