Social Media Intro Class – what are the basics to social media? Now you know.

So I’m kinda nervous today. I’m giving my first social media training class at the University. Normally when I’m doing this type of work for an outside company, I’m just super excited that people want to learn about this.  But this is different.  These are colleagues and peers.  These are people I’ll see almost everyday both in and out of work.  You see, now I’m on the hook to be this type of a resource for the rest of my career here at Notre Dame.

It’s kinda like being the live-in tech support for my family and relatives.  Once people know you can do this sort of work, there’s no reason to call for outside help.  Just talk to Don, he’ll know what to do.

Julie Flory is that person as well.  She’s the director of social media and public relations.  And we’ll be the university’s go-to people for as long as we’re at ND, which means we’ll probably be getting tons and tons of questions about how all this stuff works.

Now when you see this slide deck below, you are probably freaking out about 102 slides. Let me tell you, it’s not that big. It’s a ton of screenshots from the different programs so I can walk people through the exact set-up and how things work on these programs.

And this is a workshop. This isn’t a presentation on the theory of social media and it’s not a defense of using social media. Defending social media is what I did for the first part of my career in marketing. Now that everyone’s using it, I don’t and won’t do it. If you don’t want to use SM, then don’t. I honestly don’t care but you will find that it is harder to maintain an audience using only push communication vehicles. If no one shows up at your website or event, don’t blame me. Blame your one-sided communication plan that focused on posters, direct mail and emails.

For my workshop attendees, please feel free to email me with any questions about what you learned. You will also be ready for more advanced courses. Here’s my initial layout of social media education at the university.

• Social Media Intro Class
• Blogging Intermediate Class
• Facebook Intermediate Class
• Linkedin Intermediate Class
• Twitter Intermediate Class
• Google+ and other social media networking Class
• Video and Photography Social Network Class
• Overall Social Media Integration Class
• Social Media Advanced Class

I’ll be rolling these out over the course of the next few months and then working with HR to help get them integrated with the professional development courses they already provide.

This is gonna be great. I think I might go throw up a little. Still a little nervous.

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