Social Media Strategies for Organizations

Workshop Leader: Jay Goldman

Why let the bloggers and Twitters of the world have all the fun? Learn how your organization (or your clients) can use the latest tools with practical tips and techniques for promoting your products and services through social media. Explore mechanisms to encourage the innovation and experimentation key to successful social media and to opening yourself up to conversations and participation.

We’ll start with the basics of getting a social media program off the ground, will review a number of case studies of successful and not-so-successful campaigns, and will cover the importance of ongoing metrics and postmortems as we go. The focus is on practical, useful solutions you can easily implement, based on real problems participants are facing. Bring your challenges and we’ll make sure you leave with solutions!

Some key concepts we’ll be exploring:

• The importance of transparency and authenticity
• Respecting and gardening your community
• Real products and services for real people
• Being a champion
• Handling the inevitable issues

Some of the tools we’ll be looking at:

• Blogging and RSS
• Facebook, MySpace, and the social networks
• Communicating in 140 characters or less: Twitter
• Podcasting and the rise of rich media
• User Generated Content and media from YouTube, Flickr, etc.
• Collaboration tools (Basecamp, ConceptShare, Google Groups, etc.)