Social Media serves many different purposes for both business and personal use. Before MySpace, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube we all relied on sources like TV, newspaper, magazines and billboard ads for the latest information on businesses. Then we all got DVR’s and TIVO’s and well you know how that goes. We now can easily choose what we wish to watch or see and this is where Social Media becomes so important. Social Media is the bridge back to your client, but don’t let that bridge fall down or be burned by spamming your potential new clients. Instead try being social, heck that is why they call it Social Media, right?

Social Media allows you to:

• Find your target audience
• Find out what your target audience wants and is talking about
• Answer questions pertaining to your brand or services – you then are seen as a leader in your field providing quality content
• Engage with your current clients and soon to be clients
• Share information about your brand and services
• Create a positive image Online
• Build a community

These are just a few things that Social Media is good for. In future posts I will share more secrets to using Social Media, why you need to be and how to follow through.

LinkedIn is a great tool to use and build upon.
In this class you will learn:

*Tips to setting up a LinkedIn account
*How to create a LinkedIn Group for your business or blog
*How to create an event through LinkedIn
*Tips to building a community on LinkedIn
*Feeding your Tweets

Online video hosting and posting sites are very popular both when it comes to distributing and watching content.
In this class you will learn:

*Creating your Youtube account
*How to upload a video
*How to get more viewers watching your content
*How to build a community around video hosting sites
*Tips to help you overcome your fear of video
*Ways you can use video without being “on” video

Bookmarking sites are most commonly used for creating another place to index and link content, but are you getting the full benefit from these sites?
In this class you will learn:

*Which Social bookmarking sites are the most commonly used
*How to properly bookmark your content
*How to build a community around Social bookmarking

Policies and Procedures for Business Social Marketing will highlight examples of policies and procedures for social marketing including business privacy and risk management issues. Examples of policies to be placed in Human Resources files and signed by employees to protect the business from potential risk management issues radiating from blogs, Facebook. Twitter an other social networking sites.

Microblogging is a very popular way to drive traffic to content whether it be your blog, squeeze page, website, images or video, however microblogging is more than just posting links. It’s about engaging in conversation, listening, researching, following and building the trust of your “community”.

In this class you will learn:

*How to set up a Twitter profile
*The art of following individuals
*Listening and researching
*How to positively reach your target audience
*Twitter applications
*Twitter lists. How to create them and how to use others
*Additional Microblogging sites

Facebook is consistently within the top three sites Online which makes this a great site to utilize for your Brand. You will learn:

*How to get started on Facebook
*How to create a fanpage
*How to create a group page
*Adding events
*Creating ads
*Adding boxes and FBML to your fanpage

Blogging has become a way for people to voice their opinions, tell their story or promote their brand. In this class you will learn how to properly create a blog post and promote it.

You will learn the importance of:
*Alt-text
*Opt-ins
*SEO for blogging
*Adding images and video to blogs

and so much more

An intro to the Social Web and how it can make your business stand out.

Social Media uses Internet and web-based technologies to transform broadcast media monologues (one to many) into Social Media dialogues (many to many). It supports the democratization of knowledge and information, transforming people from content consumers into content producers.

In this class we will introduce various Social Media platforms and discuss how to get a Social Media Strategy started.