SOCIAL MEDIA TRAINING: BRIDGING THE GAP BETWEEN DOING IT AND DOING IT WELL
Social media is such a big byword these days in business circles. Yet when you say social media training, some executives kinda frown upon the idea, especially the ‘old school’ execs who may just shrug it off and tell you ‘what do you need training for, even my 5 year old kid knows how to post status updates and tweets!’.
“We don’t have a choice on whether we DO social media, the question is how well we DO it.” – Erik Qualman, author of the book “Socialnomics: How Social Media Transforms the Way We Live and Do Business”
In this quote, Qualman emphasized the word “DO”, stressing the importance and the necessity of social media in the daily grind of a business’ marketing activities. Much has been written and much has already been proven that social media is now an effective marketing tool for business. But you, as someone who have heard these social media success stories, wouldn’t you most likely ask, ‘how’d they do that?!’ Yeah, you’ve got your Facebook fanpage all gleamed-up, you’ve got Tweets on the hour by the hour…but still at the back of your mind, you wonder if your fans/followers do really care?
Now in this particular instance, let us take a step back and re-read Qualman’s quote, this time, changing the operative word to “WELL”:
“We don’t have a choice on whether we do social media, the question is how WELL we do it.” (Emphasis mine).
Social media is now a given, but social media training is what gives. It is the first milestone to effectivity and success. Social media is not brain surgery, yet it is an art and a science. You should be creative enough not only to catch the attention of your audience, but to take it to the next level where they would “like” and “share”. You should be able to interpret the analytics or statistics of what makes your audience tick, and what ticks them off. Social media training is essential for you to be able to engage your audience, measure their response, and for you to create and/or adjust your game plan.
As an overview, a social media training program or course provides the following essentials in your marketing game plan:
• Setting goals and objectives
• Developing social media strategies
• Defining your audience
• Developing a content schedule
• Monitoring your online reputation and engaging with your audience
• Attracting fans and followers
• Driving leads Yeah, it may look pretty much like the course outline of a marketing class, but this time the main platform are the social media sites all over the world wide web.
As the cliché goes — “Anything worth doing is worth doing well.” Social media is an investment. Adding social media training to your investment could spell the difference of its returns.
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