Social Media Workshop buzz hots up

By James Bennett, Managing Online Editor, Melcrum

The one-day Melcrum Social Media Workshop on June 24th is getting closer and closer. Not, admittedly as close as my face has been to several dozen commuters' armpits on a number of London’s buses in the last 48 hours thanks to the Underground strike, but very close nevertheless. 14 days to be precise. And we’ve got a great day for those clamouring to join us here in Hammersmith at Melcrum’s training centre.

In fact our trainer for the day Benjamin Ellis, director of Redcatco and social media expert extraordinaire, and Abi Signorelli, director of internal communications at Virgin Media, got together this morning to finalise the agenda for the event. Not only that, they also produced an AudioBoo - a 3 minute recording via a special application on the Apple iPhone. Abi also joined myself and Melcrum founders Victoria Mellor and Robin Crumby on Wednesday afternoon Boo’d us, so to speak and then I turned the camera back onto Abi to ask her what delegates can expect from the day and how she has used social media to great effect at Virgin Media. She’s the kind of person that if she hasn’t downloaded the latest ‘app’ onto her iPhone within 30 minutes of being developed and added to Apple’s gigantic library of applications she gets upset. You can’t blame her, social media is fascinating and I’m as caught up the excitement as her and many other internal communicators.

So what can you expect on June 24?

• The day is designed to be a very practical and hands-on series of interactive sessions complete with a number of exercises specifically created for internal communicators.
• It will set the context and go from where you, as communicators using social media, are today to using the technology, and gaining the necessary skills and knowledge for you to take it back to your teams and improve communications within your business.
• It will examine the great places in which to use social media and the areas where you shouldn’t using real-life examples and case studies, including the huge successes Virgin Media’s internal communications team has had using a variety of technologies and social media platforms.
• It will dispel the myths and fears that some internal communicators may have about social media and show you how, with the right tools, knowledge, skills, business culture and technology, it can open up a whole host of new opportunities to communicate with your stakeholders.
• It will show you how the technology behind social media is among the most user-friendly and interactive we, as professionals and internal communicators, have ever seen and used allowing you to tap into possibilities you never knew existed.

I hope you can join us in 14 days. I look forward to seeing you then. Meanwhile, please follow me on Twitter via iether @Geskey or @Melcrum.