Social Media Boot Camp

Businesses and brands don’t need Social Media PR. Let PR firms handle PR, both traditional and social. Businesses that are struggling to find the time, energy or resources to begin engaging social media need to get caught up quickly.

What businesses need most right now is Social Media Boot Camp. They need a quick and intensive consultation and training in social media. They need someone to come in and sit down with them for a series of conversations so that they can make informed decisions about what their business needs out of social media.

They need someone to listen to the story of their business from start to finish. Where are they now? Where have they been? How did they get there? What do they want? What do they need? Who are they?

Then, they need to begin training. They need to get an overview of social media, from soup to nuts, how it started, how its developed, where it is now, and of course, where its going. They need to talk about all the areas that social media overlaps with: PR and marketing, customer service, IT and technology, branding even human resources.

Then, they need to craft a plan together integrating the results from the series of conversations. That plan needs to be managed by the consultant with the business owner or manager heavily involved on a day-to-day basis. Meeting once a week just isn’t going to cut it. Too much to cover, and if you only have a month, you need to get things done. Businesses need to see results. And they should. If you stretch a social media consulting arrangement over a period of months, the business owners don’t see the results. And they lose the immediacy of having to devote time and resources now. Why would they? When they have 3 months ahead of them.

It just doesn’t work.

So I am changing how I work. I am still very happy to help a firm with their social PR needs, but the real value I can provide is in providing firms a jump start into the world of social media. Spend a month with me and you’ll be ready. You’ll have a new website and a blog. You’ll have Foursquare specials. You’ll understand how Google, Yelp, Chow, Citysearch fit into your business and how you can take control of your online presence.

You’ll have a sophisticated listening and monitoring system in place so that you can track the conversations, both good and bad, your brand is generating.

You’ll have the essentials of a social media marketing campaign, with a blog, a Facebook account, Twitter, YouTube channel.

You’ll have a content marketing strategy in place for the next 3 months.

You’ll have the tools in place to measure your success.

You’ll have the confidence that you have done the right thing for your business by taking control of your destiny and the future success of your business.

You’ll finally prepared to leverage social media.

Image Source: Jayel Aheram on Flickr

Tagged as: Social Media Boot Camp, social media education