Too often, social media training consists of simply what actions one can take on Facebook or other platforms.
This is to miss the point and to overstate the importance of social media, as if it were the one and only issue facing a business. Social media training needs to include the all-important question of “Why ?”, not just “How ?”. This is about one’s goals, target markets and the strategies to be employed to build an audience and, ultimately, market products to the target markets identified.
Social media training should, therefore, be first and foremost about ‘what to do’ goals, strategy and, only then, ‘how to do’ actions.
The social media goals of a business might include :
- to build a brand
- to increase customer satisfaction and buy-in
- to drive recommendations
- to achieve PR
- to generate leads
- to develop new product / service ideas
- to develop traffic to one’s main website
- to make sales
- etc.
The strategy to achieve these goals includes the “Seven Cs” :
- Categorising audiences
- Comprehending them
- Conversing with them
- Contributing to them
- building a Community
- introducing Calls to action
- Converting
Only after working through these areas and the understanding of one’s target markets and on which social media platforms they ‘hang out’ should social media training get in to the nitty-gritty of how to use Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, You Tube, etc.
Training can then discuss behaviour on social media platforms, like being interactive, inviting opinion, comment and sharing ideas. The importance of some humour and light-heartedness can be discussed, alongside posing questions, sharing video and photo content, etc.
Visitors to social media sites are looking for connection, information, entertainment and they seek authenticity from Pages. Social media training looks at how to behave, the question of etiquette and what fab content to provide to bring those viewers back, ultimately making of them an army of advocates.
Please do get in touch, if you feel your business could benefit from social media training that puts these promotional tools into their strategic context and helps you with real-world actions to achieve your digital and over-arching business goals.