What did the man say, if you give someone a fish you feed them for a day, but if you teach them to fish you feed them for life?
Well, the Social Media Action day does both. We not only give you fish, we teach you how to do some fishing for yourself.
OK, so we don’t actually give you fish, but the emphasis is very much on fishing. OK, not fishing exactly, but action certainly. Specifically, a social media plan by 5pm.
And by ‘we’ I mean myself and Neesham PR, a very good client to work with that has some extremely interesting insights into social media. Their take on it – and mine, fortunately – is that social media should be about actions rather than words. So, with this in mind, we devised an itinerary that takes people from where they are now, to where they want to be, to how they’re going to get there, throughout one day in the admittedly stunning environment of the F1 Williams Conference Centre in Wantage.
We’ve worked on seminars before but we knew we needed something interactive. I used to teach English as a foreign language and I know all too well about the post-lunch slump, and I’d seen this happen with other sessions I’d given for various clients including the Social Media Academy. So we looked at ways to combat this and as well as copious infusions of caffeine, we realised that what people really need is to be doing something. They need to be active, not passive*. Hence: the Social Media Action Day.
We took attendees through how to audit the social media landscape, looking at what people are saying about them and their competitors, how they feel about you, and how influential they are. It was fascinating to build this picture throughout the morning and see how real insights emerged, as people found new things (people they hadn’t heard of, issues they hadn’t considered) as well as having some of their preconceptions confirmed, which is still a valuable insight in itself.
Then we showed how to figure out what makes audiences tick, and how to match social media to real business objectives. Not vaguely stated goals or woolly aspirations, but real objectives with dates, values and targets. So they started the day with a blank sheet – actually, a blank Excel spreadsheet and Word template – and ended it with a complete, understandable, accountable strategy that they could point to and know why they were going to set up a blog, work with a LinkedIn group or help support people through Twitter, and how they were going to get business value from it.
Not bad for one day.
It would be terribly remiss of me not to mention that there’s going to be at least one more day planned in February 2012 (good grief is it really that soon?) so if you’re interested in walking the walk as well as talking the talk – and maybe even some fishing thrown in for good measure – then hop on over to Neesham PR, email Peter van der Sluijs and get yourself registered for the next Social Media Action Day. See you there!
* PS As a bonus we also realised that a tour of Williams F1 cars dating back to the 1970s might also help stimulate them…
