Social Media Training

Tangled

Hi,

Firstly apologies if this is posted in the wrong place - I went to post in the marketing forum and see that that section has been closed, but want the opinions of business owners rather than 'techies' so am posting here rather than in the Internet Marketing Forum.

Anyway, use soc media quite a lot in the promotion of my business and have been to many seminars and on courses lately on the subject and to be honest I'm often horrified by the standard of speaker. There's usually a broad mix of people at these - complete computer novices up to those who use FB, twitter etc on a daily basis. I know it can be hard to find the right level to pitch a course at when there is such a mix but I often find myself spending time with the beginners, breaking it down for them and giving them a strategy. I have a background in training and am now thinking of setting up my own course where each person would come away from it with a clear online marketing strategy for their particular business.

My question for here is if anyone has been on a similar course, what were the good and bad points for you? If you were thinking of signing up for a course what would be important to you? Would you want to have a recognised qualification?

Also, would there be a business in offering people the service of running their Facebook pages for them - say for someone who is in a business where they wouldn't have computer access all the time but wants an online presence. What would you be willing to pay for this kind of service and what would your expectations be from it?

Thanks for any help!

byrne0f56789

It’s hard to say. I focus on paid ad campaigns and not on social networking. However, if your social networking strategy represents a good return on investment for your clients you could charge a reasonable percentage.

If you get more leads for your client than a half page newspaper ad which costs €13k then you can pitch your work quite high.

Regarding expectations, although I work in a slightly different area, I believe that as long as you provide qualified leads to your client at a reasonable cost per lead then they will be over the moon.

civis_liberalis

I'm looking into developing a social media strategy for a small company (employee number-wise) that I have done some unrelated work for recently.

I'd find this sort of a course/seminar interesting, if not for the company I'm looking at now, but maybe for future projects, as I'm not sure if a company that provides services to corporate and education clients should be that worried about twitter and facebook. Perhaps I have that wrong... but anyway...

OP, the weaknesses and shortfalls you've found in seminars are exactly the type of thing I would be afraid happens at a lot of these types of things... meaning I'd be quite reluctant to waste any time with one unless I had a fair idea it would be beneficial.

I have a background in training and am now thinking of setting up my own course where each person would come away from it with a clear online marketing strategy for their particular business.

I think this could be a runner. I would consider myself quite social media savvy... but I find it difficult to get a handle on how best harness it for business. Someone with experience in that area could be quite helpful. Maybe help people in different type of business understand why certain techniques are a good or bad idea and what flavour of social media would suit getting your message out there.

Tangled

civis_liberalis wrote: »

I think this could be a runner. I would consider myself quite social media savvy... but I find it difficult to get a handle on how best harness it for business. Someone with experience in that area could be quite helpful. Maybe help people in different type of business understand why certain techniques are a good or bad idea and what flavour of social media would suit getting your message out there.

This is exactly the kind of thing I have in mind - certain things suit certain businesses better and I'd like people to have a strategy leaving that they could start implementing.

Thanks for your help and feedback, all good food for thought!

way2tall

Definitely think that there is a niche for this type of seminar - like any new frontier, there are a lot of cowboys trying to take advantage and a lot of snake oil being sold.

I think that some one who could build a course / workshop / series of sessions focusing on building a social media strategy that avoided the 'social media changes everything mantra' and concentrated on the pragmatic side of things would be a success - especially if it were endorsed by some one.

I've been writing up some similar stuff about building a simple online presence .. again mainly because I think that it is fine to get other people to do the work .. but business must understand what is being done on their behalf..

I also strongly believe that there is a business opportunity around managing facebook / social media 'operations' for small businesses - I think a lot of small businesses sign up and start the 1000 mile march but fail after the first couple of steps.. A couple of tweets go out .. a photo gets posted on facebook .. a blog post gets written etc.. and then it kind of goes quiet.. (I'm one of the small businesses that is still stumbling :-)) BUT I think that there really is a service that some one could provide..

Plan
- Work with Small Business to establish strategy (what do they want)
- Build a 12 month plan
- Agree goals / targets and a fair price ..

Execute & Operate
- Break it down in to Monthly 'themes' - Agree broad brushstrokes about content and types of posting
- Provide 3 or 4 'updates' on Facebook/Twitter/ Foursquare etc / Week
- Provide 1 or 2 relevant blog postings / Week
- Monitor and interact as required
- Review and Measure Results
- Plan Next Month Theme

Result - an outsourced social media strategy which keeps its momentum, improves SEO, improves web-presence and builds brand image ..

I reckon if you could get on board a few small to medium size businesses you'd have a good income stream .. you would be competing with PR companies, Digital Advertising Agencies and the like but .. you would be able to offer much lower costs because you don't need too many creatives involved and your are covering overheads like media planning etc..

Anyway .. good luck .. if I can help let me know

Ed

Tangled

Thanks again for the help and input. Looks like I will be going ahead with the course, and will look at the other aspect in the future. I'm talking to a training centre here and we're looking at setting up a series of 4x3hr sessions that will be Fetac approved and work towards having a social media marketing strategy for each participant at the end of it.