Social Media for BusinessA hands-on training course Course Description: Social media is always changing and changing rapidly, yet it delivers powerful results for many businesses. This workshop will help you better understand which social media tools might be right – or wrong – for your industry, and specifically how to utilize them in a time efficient manner. Part I Selecting the Correct Platforms This section explores the important and difficult question of which social media channels work best for your particular business in terms of resource allociation and effectiveness. It is not enough for a business to simply ‘get on facebook’; it is important to develop and implement a social media strategy. Evaluation of social media platforms includes considering whether your target audience is other businesses (B2B) or consumers (B2C), or a combination of both. Do you have a particular service area? Do you need to market locally or nationally or a combination of both? What degree of repeat business is typical in your industry? This section will also introduce Semrush, Similarweb, Alexa and other portals that you can use to discover the various and always growing group of social platforms available for businesses. Part IIUtilizing Specific Platforms Hands on work and instruction on the specific social media platforms most relevant to each participant, including: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Snapchat, YouTube Google Plus, Google/MyBusiness, AdWords, AdMob, Trends, Alerts, Analytics Bing and Bing Ads, Yahoo, Flickr Blogging with WordPress, Blogger, Tumblr Meetup and Eventbrite Profinder, Gigmasters, Gigsalad, Fiverr, UpWork, Thumbtack Amazon Merchant Accounts, Amazon Services, Alexa, Etsy SMS, MMS, Twilio, Whatsapp Semrush, Similarweb, Moat, Archive, Wordstream, Hoovers Part IIITime Saving Strategies Social media can be extremely time consuming. It is essential to adopt best practice strategies and simple tools to limit the time spent on social media. These tools include dashboard services such as HootSuite and Buffer.