education

Workshop

Develop and implement an integrative approach to social media

Program

9 January—23 February

The training curriculum is designed to provide participants with the foundation they need to apply social media to the work they conduct on behalf of their employers or clients. It targets mid-to-senior-level communicators who are tasked with developing and implementing strategy as well as developing and executing tactics.

The course consists of six basic components:

• Asynchronous training (Self Paced)
• Real-time interaction (Live sessions)
• Assignments
• Community
• Testing
• Feedback

9 January 12-1 pm PT

Introductions with students online live—Instructors meet with participants online to give overview of course, instructions and answer questions.

9-18 January: Participants completes modules 1 and 2 (Self paced)

MODULE 1: OVERVIEW OF SOCIAL MEDIA’S ROLE IN COMMUNICATIONS AND PR
This introductory module provides the foundation for the rest of the training program and ensures everybody is on the same page. Addressed in this section are the following elements:

• A brief history of social media
• A review of statistics and research that explores how people use and react to organizational social media efforts
• The key means by which communicators need to adapt in order to engage on behalf of their organizations
• The primary categories of ways organizations are employing social media

MODULE 2: THE KEY CATEGORIES OF SOCIAL MEDIA
Digging deeper into content first presented in the first module, we will explore the key categories of social media and the market-leading tools in each category. These include the following:

• Conversation-enabled publishing platforms — Blogs and podcasts, primarily, but also including Facebook pages; by the time the training is being developed, business pages will also be available in the new social network, Google+

Social networks — We’ll look at three categories of social networks:

• General (Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, MySpace, Orkut, etc.)
• Niche (special-focus social networks for people who share a common interest)
• DIY (networks anybody can set up for specialized purposes using a range of tools, from open-source software to hosted sites managed by community management specialists)

Democratized content networks — Networks in which the content is determined by the participants, such as Digg, Reddit and Delicious

Microblogging — Twitter and similar services

Content sharing sites — Services that let individuals and organizations share content with others, including video sharing sites (YouTube, Vimeo, Viddler), photo sharing sites (Flickr, PhotoBucket), presentation sharing sites (SlideShare) and document sharing sites (Scribd)

Virtual networking platforms — Second Life is the leading virtual network, but it has competitors; additionally, there are virtual worlds specifically for conferences and meetings, for educational purposes and for other activities. Analysts generally agree that the Web will incorporate virtual networking functionality within the next 3-5 years

19 January 12-1:30 pm PT: Module 3 (Live event)

MODULE 3: MONITORING SOCIAL MEDIA
Listening is the first activity in which organizations embracing social media should engage. This module will cover the various means of monitoring social media, ranging from free and do-it-yourself solutions to the range of fee-based services available, as well as what to do with the intelligence gathered. An introduction to social media analytics will be included.

26 January 12-1:30 pm PT: Module 4 (Live event)

MODULE 4: STRATEGIZING AND MEASURING SOCIAL MEDIA
Social media must achieve business goals; it’s no different from any other communication channel in this regard. This module will review the strategic planning process for social media efforts. Since strategic planning is based, in part, on setting measurable objectives, the module will spend considerable time on how to measure the effectiveness of the effort against those objectives.

The strategic planning model will incorporate the IABC Gold Quill and Accreditation portfolio examination evaluation model.

2 February 12-1:30 pm PT: Module 5 (Live event)

MODULE 5: THE CORE SKILLS COMMUNICATORS NEED TO ACQUIRE
As social and digital media become more common and even dominant, communicators must learn new skills. Key skills covered in this module will include the following:

• Content curation
• Video production
• Audio production
• Use of smartphones for communication activities
• Community management
• Mobile communication, including the following:
  • App development
  • SMS (text messaging) as a communication channel
  • QR codes
• Search engine optimization (SEO)

9 February 12-1:30 pm PT: Modules 6 (Live event)

MODULE 6: SOCIAL MEDIA BEHIND THE FIREWALL
Given that a large number of IABC members work in employee communications – and others may find internal communications added to their responsibilities – it’s important to include a module that covers social media for employees. This module will provide an overview, since the topic could fill an entire training curriculum of its own.

The module will include the following elements:

• Adding social media to intranets
• Internal blogging
• Internal social networks
• Internal microblogging

16 February 12-1:30 pm PT: Module 7 (Live event)

MODULE 7: ADAPTING THE CORPORATE CULTURE TO EMBRACE SOCIAL MEDIA
This module will explore three core dimensions of an organization’s entry into social media:

• The culture itself (and whether employees will have access to social channels)
• Structuring social media within the organization (including a review of the models used in organizations today)
• Social media policies

23 February 12-1:30 pm PT: Module 8 (Live event)

MODULE 8: SOCIAL MEDIA DURING A CRISIS
While the fundamental principles of crisis communication remain unchanged as a result of social media, the methods by which organizations communicate, ranging from the channels they use and the speed with which they must react to the updates that qualify as “news” during a crisis have changed dramatically. Since social media can make an organization or break it during a crisis, it’s important to break this one organizational communication activity out as its own module.