Social Media for Social Media's sake...

First of all, apologies for the huge delay since my last post... there are no plausible excuses, yet I promise (pinky promise) to post more regularly from now on.

I have recently got my first marketing role (thanks for the applause) with a creative agency in Manchester (Emerald). One of the main aspects of my new role has to been to give the agency a presence within the realms of social media.

As social media is now THE 'buzz' word, it seems every man and his dog is trying to climb aboard but many have no clue why, how or what they need it for. I have recently attended various business workshops/networking sessions and have had the same outcome in most. For those who haven't already embraced social media in a logical and practical way for them and their business, there is a surge of people adopting any type of social network medium they can get their hands on, without any thought into suitability or what they want it to achieve.

Based on what I have seen at these workshops/ networking sessions, the general consensus among the people eager to incorporate social media into their business model without any knowledge of the uses of each medium seems to be that EVERY company needs a Facebook page. It is becoming increasingly frustrating listening to people putting the emphasis on purely creating a Facebook page for their business in order to successfully integrate social media into their business model.

It is no wonder that a huge amount of people do not understand why or even how to use mediums such as Twitter etc. because they have not been taught that the content they provide (and the relevance of that content) is king!

There are now a few workshops dealing with this problem and actually providing people new to SM with a very helpful beginners guide. Instead of just jumping onto the confused bandwagon, they give people a chance to really understand SM and therefore be able to tailor it and use it to its full potential for their own area and objectives.

A few cropping to mind are:

Manchester Social Media Surgery - #mansms - Free (Free tea/coffee & biscuits too!!)

Intro to social media - £150 per person but seems a lot more practical based stuff

Social Media Masterclass - £45 + VAT - This was actually recommended by my Dad who attended recently and found it extremely helpful

For any more people know of you can just post below.

Rant over :)