I love a good seminar as much as the next gal. I learn a lot, I leave inspired, and I make new goals that I promise myself I will execute. Fortunately, there are a lot of educational opportunities for social media right now. A good Facebook presentation can entirely turn your marketing strategy into a more streamlined, modern, and effective strategy. I rush to attend these meetings-of-the-mind regularly, however, I sometimes discover a common misconception among attendees: that they’ll learn almost everything they need to know about their business with regard to all social media platforms.

With hosting such presentations myself, I do know that one of the limiting factors of presentations is simply TIME! As you may have heard me say before, when I host a Social Media Breakfast at Horton Group, I often explain that this will be a ‘tip of the iceberg’ kind of summary. I could talk about social media for weeks straight and still have more to share to help along your path to social super-stardom. My primary goal is to make sure our guests leave feeling informed and inspired, and leave with useful guidelines on best practices, but it scratches the surface. When you look at each social media network as an individual platform with differentiating capabilities, and look at each marketing strategy as specific to industry and client, the suggestions will vary. I have uniquely different social networking suggestions for, say, a nonprofit organization, than I do a local bakery.  

…So what will you learn from social media seminars, presentations, or webinars?

Some of the more common take-away’s from an hour-long social media education:

  • General best practices on engagement and interaction
  • Basic how-to’s as far as functions
  • A distinguishing explanation of each social platform (or at least the bigger/main ones) and their capabilities
  • Some helpful statistics to put things into scope
  • And hopefully, an effective Q & A segment

What’s missing?

On occasion, potential clients will express their desire to “hold off” on professional social media set-up, application building, and integration of platforms, until they attend a scheduled presentation that will teach them things, when, in reality, the presentation is best as a Phase 2. The first step in going social (Phase 1),is to build a professional presence in a consistently-branded, and well-functioning way. This might include custom graphic design that mirrors your website or your current promotions, custom static html Applications, or the integration of your other social networks with one another. Each of these steps solidifies your brand visibility and allows for unique functionality capabilities and specific to your business’s needs. Perhaps you need a Store Application on your Facebook page, a Slideshow of your products, an Events Calendar, a Form of some kind, A collection of Press/Media your business has received, or a formatted Testimonials tab presented in an interesting and static way.  

The how-to’s for designing, coding, and building these Applications are not typically going to be explained in a general presentation, and will in most cases require that you get help from a professional social media designer & developer. Having a customized, smoothly-functioning social media campaign can work wonders! Once those elements are in place, you’re ready to soak upall the presentation tips you can get your eyes on …and run with them.