Social Media 101 with Darren Barefoot and Julie Szabo

If you are on BC’s coast, are interested in social media (or need a refresher), here is a one-day workshop you can’t afford to miss. Darren Barefoot and Julie Szabo of Capulet Communications are presenting their  Social Media Marketing Bootcamp in both Victoria and Vancouver.

As Julie writes in a recent blog post, “adding social media into the marketing mix is increasingly important for marketers who want to establish an online presence for their businesses.” As a full-time PR and marketing professional, I would say that anyone who ignores this important medium is in danger of missing their market altogether. The full-day workshop will teach you to:

• Bring more visitors to your website
• Increase your company’s visibility online
• Approach bloggers and other online influencers about your products and services
• Get your website social media ready
• Craft a potent social media pitch
• Incorporate online channels like Facebook, YouTube and Twitter into your marketing programs
• Avoid campaign killers and online faux pas.

Julie and Darren are old friends (well the friendship is old, but they aren’t) who were pioneers in the social media world. They have such wisdom and experience to share based on experience from Canada, Dublin and other wonderful, exotic locations. All for only $299, which includes a copy of their first book and many useful templates.

The Victoria workshop takes place Thursday, April 30th; Vancouver’s is Thursday, May 28th. Go to their website, Capulet Communications, to register. And hey, let them know that you heard about it here. Like all good marketers, they will want to know what worked.

Hope to see you there!

Finding Blogs Online

Tonight I had the honour of discussing social media with the great group of women who belong to the Victoria, BC chapter of e-Women.

My best analogy for social networking was doing what they already did so well in that room: gave each other leads, introduced each other to new members, and built their networks based on needs, knowledge and expertise.

If you are a woman in business, in a job, or looking for connections, look for an e-Women chapter near you. I was very impressed.

I promised I’d post a couple of great tools for finding blogs of interest. Here they are:

Technorati describes itself as “the leading blog search engine and most comprehensive source of information on the blogosphere…we index more than 1.5 million new blog posts in real time and introduce millions of readers to blog and social media content.” This is a great tool to search for the topics you are interested in.

Google Reader is another great way to search for blogs, and it allows you to bookmark or subscribe to your favourites. Rather than having to sort through tons of bookmarks in my Internet browser, I have them all in Google Reader and I can read all my fave blogs at once.

There are lots more tools – please feel free to post your favourites. If you were at the talk tonight and have any questions, post them here and I promise to answer.