Incredibly we have been running social media courses since May 2010!
This was the new thing, the new way to reach your customers and promote you and your business and it was free to use!!
I do think a big part of the reason it exploded at the time was because we were immersed in an awful recession and most people had virtually no funds to do anything, let alone promote their business.
So the simple advice was, grab the relevant platforms (at the time it was Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn) and use them to tell your story and engage with your target audience.
In the earliest training that we delivered, it was all about the functionality – step by step we would show all the participants how to do everything on each of the platforms.
As time went on we changed the emphasis on “why” first and then “how“.
This approach was designed to get people engaged with the simple idea that, if you knew what you could achieve with social media and you understood the special role it could play in your communications mix, then you were more likely to dive in and apply the learnings.
I think this approach worked much better but there was still a problem, and I put this down to what I call the “teeth brushing” aspect of social media.
When you leave the half day or full day social media course (or any training for that matter) it is up to you and you alone to implement the learnings and make room in your life for a new habit, a social media habit.
To be effective for you, it should be just like teeth brushing, you just do it automatically as part of your routine.
To this day, I still believe that using social media effectively can be one of the most powerful ways of promoting you and your business as well as a brilliant way to make valuable connections.
So why are people not grabbing the opportunity?
The big challenge for me is getting those who take my courses to squeeze all of the potential from the social media platforms, and for the training to go beyond the initial sessions and integrate into their daily routines.
To crack the “training code” we have invested in an e-learning platform, which has enabled us to create unique follow-on programmes that consist of a series of short, practical exercises on each of the social media platforms.
These exercises are delivered to the trainees over a period of time to ensure that they can really learn, through daily implementation away from the classroom and in their own work environment.
If you want to make sure that you and your team, really, really learn let us know!
Check out our Social Media Training services by clicking here.
