In July I went on a rail trip around the UK presenting LinkedIn and Twitter seminars, with Dennis Brown of UK4Business, in Edinburgh, Manchester and finally in Birmingham.
The journey to Birmingham went smoothly with hardly any time to gain FourSqaure check-ins at stations en route. The good news was that a 3G signal was available for the majority of the journey so lots of work done on way down.
This is a note about the training seminars in Birmingham along with some testimonials and comments from the attendees.
The last day’s seminars were at etc.venues (Maple House) and started again with LinkedIn. This is another venue that we used for seminars before and it specialises in providing seminar space and by our start time the place was heaving with students attending the multiple seminars taking place.
For those of you who Follow me on Twitter I noted that my first course attendee amused herself by reading “Fifty Shades of Grey” while we set the room up and waited to begin. I tweeted out for advice as it was difficult to see how any seminar could be as interesting as that particular book!
I received a lot of advice (most of it useful) and without ever reading the book I now know which word to say that will make anyone who has read it smile.
There were particular requests to cover how to use LinkedIn to find potential clients and equaly important how to approach them.
Taken me from a complete novice to understanding how to use & benefit from LinkedIn
from Jon
Enjoyed the back to basics approach – very beneficial
from Jill
I have never used LinkedIn before, now I feel I understand it
from Kimberley
The final session was on Twitter and a quick poll indicated no-one used Twitter for business but a couple of attendees tweeted personally.
Useful, practical advice which I can action as soon as I’m back in the office
from Beth
Understand Twitter in a business way and feel I can now use it to its full potential
from Kimberley
Very good
from Jon
As in Manchester one of the comments received was a request to position Twitter with all the other social media platforms and with websites on a slide rather than just verbally.
Dennis spent time during the break and after the session helping an attendee set up their Twitter account and after the session had ended we gave 1-to-1 coaching as this attendee was having difficulties with not only the course but with their laptop.
The journey back to Reading and then onwards passed off without any problems thanks to Cross Country.
All in all it was a very informative six sessions and from the feedback all were very well received. We also had lots of suggestions for future seminars and requests to go to other UK towns but all of that is for another trip.
An earlier version of this note was posted here on The Social Media Bureau.