Social Media and Social Networking Training by Reachd

Rodney and Stephen from Reachd Training

Last week I had the opportunity to do something I haven’t done in a while. I had the opportunity to sit through 3 half days of training on social media and social networking facilitated by Reachd training. I asked Stephen Jagger co-founder of Reachd to meet with my client Builddirect.com and have a brief discussion with the executive team about how they go further engage their customers using social media and social networking. After this initial discussion it was decided that Stephen Jagger and Rodney Bartlett would run a 9 hour ( 3 half days ) bootcamp with the team. Because I’m working with the sales team I wanted to understand what they learned and how we could integrate it with the sales process.

As someone who has sat through a lot of training sessions and seminars I was impressed. The training was relevant and customized for the client. Here’s briefly what they covered:

Day 1 – Video Blogging

Although I already do some vidoe blogging this day re-inspired me to do much more of it. In fact it opened my eyes to many other positive applications. They covered everything from what good content is right through to how one can get massive distribution for their online video blogs. We even watched a video of Ian Watt take his pants off on Tom Everitt’s show. Ian was named as a top 10 Real Estate Blogger by Inmann News, and I don’t think he did it by being safe

Day 2 – Twitter, Twitter and more Twitter

Great day. Twitter is a micro-blogging and social networking / communications tool. This day was focused on how to create valuable conversations with your clients, customer, partners and even the media using this tool. Companies like Zappos and Comcast as examples have used Twitter to directly engage their customers online. Mostly early adopters, thought leaders and of course chatter boxes of all types. Steve and Rodney were great and outline clear strategies to use the tool to engage customers, increse blog traffic and offered revenue generating examples as well.

Day 3 – FaceBook for business and Blogging

FaceBook has entire blogging communities devoted to it’s mutiple uses. In Canada in particular it has high numbers fo subcribers compared to MySpace and in the US it basically is tied in regards to the number of users. Most people reading this have probably been on FaceBook for a year or more. So I’ll spare you “What is FaceBook” rant. With that said Rodney shared innovative ways to use video, photos, the events function, groups and pages to engage and grow your client and fan base.

Blogging – This was a great overview of how to write to create a following and an engaged client base. The core message was blog and blog often. Also focus on shorter posts with a single focus this also helps with search engine optimization and you don’t tend to lose the readers interest. One other good tip was when people comment on your blogs, answer them back, even drop them a quick e-mail to let them know you replied, this stimulates levels of engagement and personalizes the interaction.

This was a very brief review (I have 9 pages of notes) from the training but it was comprehensive yet down to earth and easy to understand.

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