Who Needs To Know Social Media?

Most marketing analysts agree that social media isn’t a fad, but rather a revolution. Hence, it follows that a fundamental set of social media skills for individuals and every organization is fast becoming imperative. For some, this is learning that intrigues the imagination enough to reset their priorities and, eventually, the skills are learned by trial-and-error. For most, however, there is intimidation and a distrust of their own ability to navigate the seemingly endless possible paths that any Web search for “social media” results in.

For many, the most obvious result of the economic downturn (or one’s age, location, education, or any number of other factors) has been to launch them off into the marketplace on their own. While some dread this, over time most realize there is huge potential in being a free agent. But as with all products and services, the amount of work one can do is most often determined by the number of people who know what you offer, rather than limited by the allowable hours in a day. This is where networking traditionally stepped in. However, keeping in touch with 30 or 300 people does not overcome the odds created by the sudden rise in available talent.

As Daniel Pink wrote in his 2001 bestseller, Free Agent Nation, “… free agency, in many ways, operates by a reverse logic. Loose connections are frequently more valuable than tight ones, the quantity of an independent worker’s connections are more valuable than the quality.” Social media has become the ultimate channel to develop a massive network of loose connections.

These same dynamics affect organizations. Psychologist Peter Kruse speaks of this in part 6 of a wonderful 7-part video interview (watch here) when he references one of the key messages from best-selling “Cluetrain Manifesto” (2000) that markets are conversations and companies cannot ignore the shift in power to the customer. Executives ignoring the power of social media to reveal the concerns, expectations, complaints, and merits of their product or service are putting their companies at extreme risk, placing an unwise bet that their competition is not adapting to the revolution any faster than they are.

How Much of a Challenge Is This?

To gain some perspective on what “knowing social media” entails, the following is a list of recommended tools the individual or marketing department should be familiar with and employing as appropriate for their objectives:

Blogs Bookmarking/Tagging Brand monitoring Content aggregation Crowdsourcing/Voting Discussion boards and forums Events and meetups Mashups Microblogging Online video Organization and staffing

Outreach programs Photosharing Podcasting Presentation sharing Public Relations – social media releases Ratings and reviews Social networks: applications, fan pages, groups, and personalities Sponsorships Virtual worlds Widgets Wikis

Determining the appropriate tools, the proper order to add them to the mix, how to distribute your time and attention to them, and—ultimately—generating the content to publish through each of these tools is what can turn individuals and managers off even before they get started. The reality is that there is a logic and a process that follows the “crawl, then walk, then run” methodology.

Enter Social Media Training by SRD InterActive

SRD InterActive teaches the way to start slow with an eye toward scaling up over time as comfort level increases and the power and influence of social media communities becomes more apparent. SRD InterActive filters that formidable list so that your managers, students, faculty, or employees don’t have to become familiar with all of them in order to then decide what is appropriate. That alone is worth many hours of an organization’s time.

The handouts developed by SRD InterActive are tailored to your organization or, for graduating students, to the challenges expected ahead. These materials are consistently praised for their value long after the seminar or boot camp.

Course outlines are available for download below. For the corporate organization, both for-profit and not-for-profit, these courses are aimed at the senior management to help them orchestrate with their staff the creation of a game plan for implementing social media as a portion of their marketing and sales mix. The half-day and full-day boot camps address and dispel the predominant perception of social media: that it takes too much time away from more valuable work. Students in the boot camp will learn how to integrate their daily output into a social media conversation with prospects, clients and influencers without diminishing their work flow. Application of these courses at differing levels of the organization can educate and empower your team along the complete value chain between raw materials and end product or service, involving your entire organization in dialogs with all your audiences.

In the academic world there are just as many uses for social media. Teaching graduating students on how to use social media to aid their job search, publish their photographs, find buyers for their crafts or music could be the most memorable course any student could learn from their alma mater. New faculty may know about social media, but not how to support their institution in what they post to the world. And senior faculty may be well published, but know only the old school publishing, promotion and distribution methodologies.

Download the Course Outlines

Corporate Social Media Course Outlines (241)

Academic Social Media Training Course Outlines (240)

What is a Boot Camp?

You will notice half-day and full-day courses called boot camps in both the corporate and academic course outlines. This is a hands-on, contextual immersion that takes the team through the thought process of how to define the social media plan, how to implement it, and then challenges the team, working in groups or alone, to take the first steps of implementation. Depending on their current online presence, they will create their online personas, list and agree to categories of expertise, research domain experts in each category, identify blog posts where they can comment and add value, assess their recent work for eligible material, and ultimately create and post few comments in the blogs of current domain experts. A video of a webinar hosted by EditMe Wiki software walks you through some of the steps of this process and gives you an opportunity to see and hear Stephen Dill in action.

How to Schedule this Incredible Training?

We thought you’d never ask! No forms with time frame and budget questions, just the simple email or phone call, both of which are available on the Connect To SRD page.