After the training seminar in Glasgow, Dennis Brown, of UK4Business, and I travelled down to Chester by train for the two training seminars to be held there.
Our journey down was a little fraught as the Virgin Trains carriage had no heating and we almost missed our connection at Crewe.
The first seminar on the 25th was LinkedIn at the MacDonald Hotel in Chester.
No room re-arrangements were needed but instead of a room with a screen we had a large screen TV and and their conference wi-fi connection was down, so we had to resort to using BT Openzone’s internet instead.
These were the issues raised by attendees as we started the seminar:
How to use LinkedIn to improve communication on the business?
Is it possible to ensure security of company secrets?
How can damage to a brand be prevented?
How to use LinkedIn for recruitment? Or head hunting?
How to use LinkedIn as marketing and selling tool?
How to increase awareness of your company using LinkedIn?
How to generate Business Leads using LinkedIn?
I had to zoom in on the LinkedIn live screens for everyone to stand a chance of seeing what was on the screen – a bit frustrating and time consuming, so it was a good job we had started 15 minutes early.
A larger screen would have been useful
Feedback comment on the venue from an attendee
Just as in Glasgow, the day before, a couple of attendees came equipped with iPads but thankfully had keyboards, so by using Safari browser on the iPad they were able to replicate the screens that I was demonstrating.
LinkedIn have made a series of changes since I last gave this seminar in August, including a new format, endorsements and the facility to ‘Follow’ someone that you are not linked to and see their updates. (Note this feature has since bbeen disabled).
Very useful event
Simon www.selcia.com
At lunchtime, I managed a short walk around into Chester itself . I have been a few times to Chester on business but this was the first time that I had actually been in the centre of the town. The afternoon training seminar was on Twitter.
UK4Business’ policy on cancellation is very customer friendly but it can be frustrating for me as a presenter, as we had a group-booking ‘postpone’ their Twitter seminars to another date.
Concerns raised by the attendees were:
Can we Twitter use for Information / Communication?
What are hash tags in Twitter?
How do we use Twitter for business rather than for personal use?
How to use Twitter as a Sales and Marketing tool?
As with LinkedIn there have been a ‘few’ changes to Twitter since August mainly in the area of graphics.
The mainly graphical slide deck was OK, but the problems in the seminar came when I was doing the live demonstrations using the Twitter client.
Bigger Screen ! !
Comment on venue from an afternoon attendee
Using BT’s Openzone service in a venue usually means Dennis is kept busy and sure enough after an hour all our Internet connections failed.
I particularly enjoyed demonstrating Advanced Searches and finding Tweets in Mumbai that related to products sold by one of the attendees.
Very good overview of the capabilities & shortcomings of Twitter @GaryBowden
Great! Learnt lots I didn’t know. Will now have fun implementing.
Nicole Heath www.shoesatgoody2shoes.co.uk
The feedback forms used by UK4Business now include some extra permissions allowing us to quote the web address of attendees’ companies – see above and the blog for the October Glasgow event.
Our journey home was via Manchester Airport after a 40 minute taxi ride. Only downsides before our flight back to Heathrow were the queue for security checks (over an hour) and this airport actually charges £1 for plastic bags to ‘declare’ liquids (these are free at Gatwick and Heathrow.)
I would like to thank the two attendees who went to the trouble of tweeting their comments:
@socmediabureau Great seminar in Chester today. Can highly recommend. Learnt loads – just hope I can remember it all !
— Nicole@Goody2Shoes (@NicoleSHeath) October 25, 2012
Thanks to @socmediabureau and @ian_hardacre for the course yesterday in #chester
— Expac (Preston) Ltd (@expac_preston) October 26, 2012
I have posted a version of this blog on The Social Media Bureau website.