Observations from Social Media Boot Camp: Chennai
A few weeks ago, I attended an amazing “Social Media Boot Camp” organized by Digital Vidya and led by Kapil Nakra, one of the popular digital marketing trainers. With 16 full hours of social media training and discussion, it was simply not another “You should be on Twitter” and “What are the best practices in using Facebook?” kind of discussions. It was a wee bit different.
The participants were from multiple industries in senior positions. Their aim was to learn new age digital marketing concepts and apply the same in their companies. Some of them came up with interesting examples from their industries on how social media marketing can be used in an organization.
As most of you might expect, this boot camp covered all the basics of social media and networking: right from how and why to write a social media plan for a business to how to use the most popular social media tools, and the best methods for developing your network and growing your business on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.
Kapil started the first day of the event on the right foot, informing us that social media is just another tool for reaching business goals and then, continued with the explanation on social media marketing framework. As there were many first-time users, the session was really basic – starting with how to tweet, retweet, what is a mention, how to create a Facebook page etc. which was actually needed, since few of the participants had just created their Twitter accounts for the boot camp.
The case studies shared in the next session were really useful. The success stories of the brands like Dell, Ching’s secret etc. showed the way on how social media can be made to work.
In the afternoon session on Demystifying Community Building on Social Media, the trainer tried to explain on the importance of the VCR concept – Visibility, Content and Relevance concept. He stressed on why understanding the needs of the community and acting accordingly is crucial to social media success.
The ultimate aim of the camp was to explain the basics of Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and the rest of what’s out there.
Day Two included the follow-up of the first day’s session and a Twitter session which explained tweets, mentions, retweets, followers and so on. A large number of statistics was exposed to the participants to illustrate Twitter’s game-changing role. That part actually worked as the session was more interactive, and the participants received information available on the slides.
The highlight of the training for me was the social media planning chart. The last session was focused on how to use LinkedIn to drive more business to the company.
Kapil gave a whole new perspective to ROI in the social media – as not “Return on Investment” but as, “Return on Engagement.” The Trainer added, engagement is the most important factor in community building. This is what he called as engagement without an exact measurable ROI.
Some parts of the Boot Camp weren’t relevant to me, but I’m sure it was to others. Not only did the training help participants understand the reach and role of social media, it also helped them to get familiar with social media platforms and gain insights on creating a working social media strategy.
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