Lara Wellman and I are bringing back our one-day Social Media Workshop to help (even more) individuals and small business owners delve deeper into their social media presence: Twitter, Facebook, and having a strategic plan!

What's on the Agenda?

In the morning, we'll focus on learning the two biggest networks. Whether you're a beginner trying to figure out this social media thing or experienced and wanting to jump to the next level.

Intro to Twitter
Learn about the basics of Twitter, including: what it is, the unique language of Twitter, where and how to find people to follow, the art of following strategically and the most pertinent question of all: what to tweet about.

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Twitter - what comes next?
Ready for more advanced use of Twitter? You’re tweeting but taking the next steps seem overwhelming. Streamline and organize your use of Twitter by learning about the use of tools like HootSuite and Tweetdeck, how to schedule tweets, how to use lists, and how to host and take advantage of Twitter chats.

Facebook 101
With over 800 million active accounts, Facebook is an ideal location to connect with your audience in a space they are already regularly visiting. In this session we will go over how to set up a business page, what kind of content works best, the importance of engagement, and how to get more people to like your page.

or

Facebook 201
Take advantage of the power of Facebook to create a more robust marketing campaign for your business, products or services. We’ll talk about the options available to you, including page customization, plugins, extra tabs, applications and creative uses of the platform to increase brand awareness on Facebook. We’ll also touch on EdgeRank and the impact it has on Facebook Pages.

Social Media Strategy
After lunch, we're going to devote the afternoon to discussion and strategizing. The key to really successful use of social media is to have a plan! Most social media tools are free, but time is not, so you want to use it wisely to achieve the greatest benefit. That’s where the plan comes in. Together we will go through a general template to use to put together your strategy and then we will break into smaller groups, giving you time to brainstorm and to work on your plan.

If you'd like to sign up for this, visit our Eventbrite page. We look forward to seeing you there!

In my first post about hashtags, I covered five reasons you want to use them. But what are the best ways to incorporate hashtags into regular twitter use? And what tools do you use to manage them?

Hashtags are the easiest way to search for tweets on twitter. When you click on a hashtag in the twitter interface (or any twitter client), it automatically brings up a listing of all the recent tweets that contain that hashtag. There are three ways that hashtags can help you follow relevant content.

Community - This past summer, I was on the organizing committee for the first annual Social Capital Conference, Ottawa's first social media conference. We set up our twitter account, @SoCapOtt, and then decided to use #socapott as a hashtag as well. All of our tweets about the conference went out with that hashtag in it and it was a huge success in raising awareness and building an audience. That audience turned into a genuine community through the interactions at the conference. We're carrying on with #socapott meetups and our attendees know to check the hashtag periodically for news.

Chat - Twitter chats use hashtags to follow a conversation for a set period of time. There are many regular twitter chats and many, many more occasional chats. If you want to connect with like-minded people or others with a common interest, twitter chats are a great way to do so. You'll find many new people to follow and likely gain some valuable insights from the chat session. Most twitter chats happen using the web-based tools TweetChat or TweetGrid. My advice? Try them both - everyone has a different preference. Also, be prepared for large chats to go very fast. That's okay. You don't have to catch everything. You can always use a tool like Twapper Keeper to archive the tweets from the hashtag. General wisdom is that doing one regular twitter chat a week is a good frequency.

Note: If you're going to do a twitter chat, you might want to let your followers know when and for how long before it starts so you don't get unfollowed. The volume of tweets from twitter chats can be overwhelming to some people if it starts clogging up their stream.

Conversation - My biggest argument to companies for why they should be involved in social media is that the conversation is going on - with or without them. Hashtags are a useful tool for monitoring the conversation. In my day job, I monitor one major hashtag and about half a dozen other additional hashtags. All are relevant to the organization I work for and all have constant chatter about various aspects of my organization's services. Watching these hashtags gives me the ability to see what people are saying whether I follow them or not. It's a goldmine of information that can be used to make note of and respond to issues.

Monitoring hashtags on twitter.com isn't the most friendly experience. If you plan to watch any hashtag regularly, I highly recommend you use a twitter client like Tweetdeck (desktop) or Hootsuite (Web-based) for easier management.

What are some other uses of hashtags that you've seen? Have you seen any really creative uses of hashtags?