This past weekend I taught a great Social Media 101 class here in Fort Collins.  It was held at the Education and Life Training Center out near New Belgium brewery (unfortunately we didn’t have beer… maybe next time!).  The ELTC provides an array of classes to the general public on a variety of topics at affordable prices.  The mission of the ELTC is to “empower through education” – an idea I can totally get behind.  The facility is well maintained and I would definitely recommend it for workshops or classes doing computer based training.

Social Media 101 Class - Oct 2010

The class was held in a computer lab and was hands one all the way!  Students walked out with two checklists completed during class.  The first checklist walked students through the act of listening online.  We did Google searches, Google Blog searches, Twitter searches, YouTube searches, etc..  We refined our keywords and did them again.  Listening is an essential and ongoing practice that you should do before you begin actively participating online using social media.  Listening online will help you discover the community that already exists.  Kate Bladow of Techno.la said to me just this morning as we discussed an upcoming presentation at the LSC TIG conference in January, 2011, “Social Media is a lot like attending a party – you wouldn’t spend the whole time just talking about yourself”.  You listen to what other folks are saying, learn about them and then get a sense of what you have to add to the conversation.  In that way, you support and foster the community you want to be a part of and help make it stronger.

The second checklist was the basics of a social media plan – the where, what, and how of promoting a single product, service, or event.  The idea behind this checklist is to help you lay out on paper what you are going to do once you get back to your office.  We all know how easy it is to go to a class or workshop and come away excited to implement some great new idea or strategy only to get bogged down once you return to your office.  My class focused on ensuring that students had a plan and a direction setup and ready to go so that they could jump right in back at the office.

My students were great –full of energy and ideas and I learned as much from them as I hoped they learned from me – click this link for a copy of the powerpoint -Social Media 101 fb class -from the class, I’d love to hear what you think.   And watch this space for more information on upcoming classes and events!

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Blog by Joyce