What Should You Expect From Corporate Social Media Training?
Many brands, organizations and non-profits are looking to learn how the social media space best fits with their company’s existing goals. A plethora of firms and individuals offer corporate social media training packages, enabling you to comparison-shop and choose training that maximizes benefits and minimizes cost. It’s important to look for the following when choosing corporate social media based training:
Credibility of Both Company and Trainer
Trainers come from a variety of backgrounds, but one thing you want to be sure of is that the trainer is from a credible company, is a credible speaker on their own, or both. Look for solid social media credentials by asking questions like these before you sign up for a training:
1. Has the trainer trained previous clients in social media?
2. Does the company or speaker have references from other organizations?
3. Does the trainer have any existing videos or webinars of prior experience?
4. Is the company highly involved in social media?
5. Can the company provide examples of past social media based trainings?
An Industry Thought Leader
You want the company/trainer teaching you about social media to be a thought leader in the industry. Find out if the company/speaker has spoken at other industry events, conferences or expos. Some examples of these type of speaking engagements in the social media world are SXSW, WOMMA or through HubSpot. Research to see if they’ve been published in industry publications and social media news sources citing their insights about the field and about recent developments across a variety of platforms. Social media news sources like Mashable, AllFacebook, OPEN Forum, HubSpot and others are the types of websites where you want to see a social media expert published. This is an important step in determining if your trainer is a credible source for your corporate social media training needs.
Actionable Tips, Tricks and Techniques
One of the most important things to expect from a training is that you’ll leave with lasting tips, tricks and techniques for marketing your organization via social media. Define ahead of time which platforms matter most to your organization (like Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare or others). This will help give the trainer clear focus in their training, which in turn will give you as the trainee a more valuable training session. Every training you attend should provide you with at least 5 tips, tricks or techniques per platform that help you measure, market or better optimize your social presence. For instance, learning to add call to action keywords such as tell us, comment, share, like, etc. to your Facebook Page posts will help increase engagements per post. Insights like this are the kind of things you should be taking with you after a training, which is important to measure whether the training was beneficial or not.
Teaching By Example
Giving examples of other organizations, brands or non profits utilizing social media is an essential way to learn best practices. This is something you should come to expect from a training because it is so helpful in teaching what to do and what not to do, depending on the industry under discussion. Case studies give a face to best practices recommendations and help people comprehend tricks and techniques in comparison to something they understand, like another organization or brand.
Interested in social media training that’s got credibility, thought leaders as instructors, advanced techniques, and case studies highlighting best practices? Sign up for social media training with LunaMetrics this October!
