Course details

1. An introduction to social media & a short history of media convergence
  • What is social media?
  • Why is it big now?
  • The principles behind social media and how these impact institutions and business
2. The principles behind social media and how these impact institutions and business
  • Your customers are your advertisers
  • Do what you do best
  • Think distributed
  • Be a platform, or be part of one
  • Life is a Beta – Fail fast
  • Give people control they will take it
  • Or how advertising is a tax on an unremarkable product
  • Is branding for cattle
  • New publicness
3. Current examples of social media
  • Forums
  • Blogs
  • Communities
  • Social networks
  • Video sharing sites
  • Micro blogs, status updates & activity feeds
  • Costumer Ratings / Feedback
  • RSS and XML
  • Bespoke mash-ups using various platforms and API’s
4. What a business can do with social media
  • Listening
  • Talking
  • Energising
  • Helping
5. How to create a social media strategy for your business – know your communications problem
  • The Techno-demographics profile (selecting via demographics)
  • Identify the communications problem
6. New roles in the organisation
  • The importance of authenticity
  • Executive visibility
  • How existing roles dovetail with social media
  • The social media administrator
  • Who’s best for Blogging & Facebook pages
  • Who’s best for Twitter
  • Who’s best for Communities & Forums
7. The power and importance of content
  • How Google Pagerank works
  • How to do SEO research
  • Link-building techniques or so-called “Link-bait”
  • Why Google loves blogs in particular
8. Social media case studies
  • Thought leadership & exec visibility
  • Research
  • Creating awareness
  • Crisis management
  • Brand PR and sales
  • Internal communication, Stakeholder and supplier communication
9. How to blog
  • Starting a blog (including deciding who should write it)
  • Technical requirements
  • Building your audience
  • Video and your blog
10. Using Facebook
  • Starting a Facebook page
  • Building an audience for your Facebook page
  • Difference between Facebook Page and Facebook Group
11. Using LinkedIn
  • Using LinkedIn for networking
  • Using LinkedIn for research
12. How to use Twitter
  • Starting a Twitter account
  • Talking with Twitter (Writing techniques)
13. How to use Listening Tools
  • Google news
  • Google blog search
  • Using RSS
  • Twitter search
  • Bepoke listening tools
14. ROI and measurement
  • How to choose the correct metrics?
  • Using Google Analytics for blogs
  • Using tools like Hootsuite for Twitter