Social media training for agencies

(One of my favorite Hugh cartoons. You should read his blog and, while your at it, buy his book - it's fantastic.)

I spent the day this past Friday in Edmonton conducting a full-day “Social Media for Agencies” training (that’ll need a better title, but you get the picture) for the good people of Calder Bateman. 

Calder Bateman is an integrated ad / PR agency serving clients most often based in western Canada. And, well, they’re a seriously talented bunch. Good creative / PR / GR chops all around. You might want to check them out on twitter (@KiannM, @Jadelikethegem, @kiriwysynski, @justin_archer) or LinkedIn. Seriously lovely folks. 

To add more background, Colour has been collaborating with Calder Bateman on a project over the past 6-months – we’ve been providing the social media counsel and digital work, Calder Bateman the 'traditional' ad and PR stuff. It’s worked out well, and we’ve gotten on nicely. 

I’ve told a few friends about the seminar and they seem to find it sort of interesting. The idea being that doing a seminar for Calder Bateman amounts to training my own competition, so to speak. Canada’s a relatively small market, after all. 

But ya know, it’s been a lot of fun and rather challenging. It’s one thing to be sort of in the middle of it all as you’re building social media into an agency over time (as I’ve been doing at Colour for the past 3+ years), and quite another to endeavour to compress some of that learning into a day long seminar on building social media in while outlining the business model, etc. The feedback has been extremely positive thus far, and it’s certainly been a great experience for me. 

As I think of it, we didn’t really ever talk about the tools much. Calder Bateman is well beyond that, first off, plus the actual social media tools really do not matter all that much do they? (it’s the human interaction that matters, isn’t it?) The day started with a brief keynote – a sort of outlining of how I view things, just so people understand the built-in biases up front. We then moved through a social media planning framework that integrates across PR, customer service and marketing. Work in a host of case studies, some Q&A, breakout sessions, etc. and before you know it, it’s beer o’clock. 

So I don’t know, maybe there’s something to this. Working with agencies on baking social media into the agency – not just one-off seminars, but perhaps an ongoing arrangement, etc. Something to think about. What say you?

Comments

[Ben]

Good point of note in this post: there's no sense in dedicating too much time on tool-specific training when the technology could be obsolete, irrelevant or the social equivalent of MySpace within a year.

The higher-minded perception shift of interacting and engaging the consumer (audience, public, whatever...) is what's driving the social media bus - not the technology. Sorry developers.

[Kiann]

Hey - thanks for the kind words about us folks at CB. And by the way .. we never would have invited you if we didn't think you were pretty amazing at what you do and generally a decent guy.

K

[cpirie]

@Ben - exactly. Technology is lovely and necessary, it just isn't what it's all about.

@Kiann - high praise indeed. but, why do I feel like this is yet another cheap attempt at getting a lobster shipment in YEG? ;)