Yippie! You are the jack-of-all-things social media, the social media guru in your team and are ready to stoke the social flame across your organization. Congratulations.
Create a social media training program to share the awesome power of social media. You cant fly solo with social media. Here is how to get your organization onboard.
Develop a Social Media Certification Program. Share and promote your social media vision, strategy, best practices and principles. Offer ongoing, multilevel trainings to all interested team members, across departments.
Create a curriculum with an introduction to address basic questions such as:
- what is social media?
- why does social media matter?
- how do I use social media?
- what is our social media policy?
- how do I engage with our community?
Follow up with a more advanced training that addresses topics such as:
- How different departments use social media
- The brand’s overall social media strategy
- What it means to be a social institution
- Dealing with a social media crisis
- Long-term relationship management
- Community management
- Internal collaboration using social networks
Advanced social media training of everyone in your organization is not necessary. However, team members (who may not be using social media) should still have a general understanding of your reasons for doing so.
To plan your social media trainings begin with a strategic conversation to establish: who will be using social media, task assignments and evaluate general comprehension so that you can accommodate various user levels.
One option for implementing training is to develop a social media training team. To build a training program framework include the following elements:
- clearly stated purposes for adopting social media and the training program
- clear, measurable goals and objectives for each piece of the program
- different course levels with varying opportunities for achievement
- tactical how-to-training, conceptual training and example scenarios
- testing to gauge the progress of employees
- a review process to evaluate program and trainer effectiveness
- program updates
- a library of published educational resources
If the team is selected across departments because of their enthusiasm for social media this will ensure a more adept level of understanding and greater accessibility. Selecting enthusiasts across sectors will ensure a comprehensive approach to sharing varying perspectives and departmental needs.
Know Social Media 