How to get social. Stat.

By guest blogger Michelle Ryan.

Social media. Sick of hearing about it? Well, you'd better get used to it, because it's not going anywhere but up.

In fact, regardless of what business you're in - whether in financial services, retail, manufacturing, FMCG etc - the influence of social media is growing, and its impact on your company shouldn't be ignored. Or if you do, you do so at your own peril.

That might sound dramatic. But you need only look at where most news is broken these days - via social media - to realise this is where consumers are living and playing. So to not be part of it would be to ignore your current and potential customers.

So how to get up to speed with social media quickly?

You may have heard us recommend using social learning to get yourself, your colleagues and, ultimately, your business comfortable with using social media ... for the benefit of your company.

In this post, I want to take a very quick look at 'why' you should explore social learning.

What's in it for you?

If we take the impact of social media as a given, then our next step is how to make social work FOR you - and not the other way around. And doing this involves one key element: training. When it comes to training, social learning is pretty much best practice. In short, it allows you to combine expert teachers, with your own home-grown 'experts', otherwise known as your staff, to teach and learn from each other. 

This great info-graphic goes through what such training might involve for different people in the business. Remember: not all employees are created equal. So in order to train them effectively it might be best to separate them into groups based on their web literacy i.e. the digital native vs. the digital contrarian.

Where to from here?

In terms of the benefits of social learning - don't just take my word for it, take that of some of the absolute global best practice in this space.

In this article, Dell, Intel and Constant Contact talk about building social media through this kind of training. In particular, Dell talks about its 'unconferences' which it has used to train more than 5,000 employees - using experts and employees to drive the session topics.

Meanwhile, PepsiCo call their training Social Media and Responsibility Training - or SMART U. Employees said they'd love to share their PepsiCo pride, but they wanted Pepsi to explain the social media policy first. So they did. And they also educated them on social media tools such as Twitter, giving them lots of examples to help them tell the story. Which they then did.

If these examples inspire - and you are keen to give your own internal social media conference a try - this post will give you some tips on how to get started.

Michelle Ryan is an Account Manager for BlueChip Communication.

Looking at social media? Then start with an internal media conference

By guest blogger Michelle Ryan

Recently my colleague, Carden Calder - BlueChip Communication founder and social media aficionado - posted a blog about social learning. It looked at the benefits of sharing knowledge and experiences in and out of social media, with a special focus on financial services firms.

Rather than give you the complete low-down on the post, you can read it for yourself here, but I did want to expand on one of the points it contained.

Top ways to kick off social learning...

In her blog, Carden listed three key suggestions to help financial service firms, that want to give social learning a try, get started. 

One of those suggestions was to hold an internal social media conference.

What is that, you ask? Allow me to explain ... in 140 characters or less. No, kidding, I will need a few more words than that, but here is a brief outline.

Get started on social learning by running your own internal social media conference...

An internal social media conference involves presenting relevant information about social media, stimulating ideas and inspiration among staff members. It's a safe, fun, social media training ground, that ideally should work as a springboard for lively discussion. It's also a great opportunity for staff to get their hands dirty and have a 'play' with various social media platforms before they launch into the 'real' virtual world on your company's behalf.

Five steps to hosting an internal social media conference

1. Decide on the topic and develop some guidelines for content
• Be very specific about topics you want covered. Choose, say, a social media channel, concept or service.
• Choose a topic that is directly relevant to your staff and your social media goals - if you're not going to use Facebook, don't go there, but if you are launching a Twitter handle at a conference, you need to get your staff across the who, what, when, why and how of this before you launch it.
• Invite staff to send questions ahead of time so speakers can tailor their presentations or run Q&A sessions if appropriate.
2. Find an external speaker and brief them
• A quick search online for social media buzz words will show you a number of people who purport to be, or in fact are, experts in social and digital communication. Ask around, check references and other bona fides to be sure you get the real deal.
• Use your conference topics as starting points in your search and look for an external speaker with direct capabilities or experience in this area.
3. Get staff involved and have them present
• Yes, engage the speaker, but don't overlook the capabilities of your own staff.
• Do you have someone already on staff who can share their knowledge and experience? If so, do what you can to encourage peer-to-peer, or social learning - for example, appoint that person as a champion or ambassador of your social media campaign. This is a great way to fast track results and keep the all-important conversation alive in the office once the internal conference has finished!
4. Review
• Ask your staff and any external speakers to rate the conference so you can improve or build on its lessons. A quick Survey Monkey questionnaire (incentivised if you are serious about getting a response) will allow you to get this information quickly and easily.
5. And rebook
• Once you have the feedback - use it! Book in another session (perhaps aim for one a quarter) to discuss a different topic and to hear from different 'experts'. With social and digital media changing constantly, you'd be unwise to believe you have heard or learnt it all before.

Michelle Ryan is an Account Manager for BlueChip Communication