Throughout July and August I led a three-part seminar series on Social Media. The presentations were hosted by Studio Crossings, a wonderful little collaboration space in Waltham, MA. Because the audience invited was comprised of baby boomers who were unfamiliar with the medium, each of the three segments focused on a relatively basic aspect of social media. The first presentation (embedded below for reference) introduced the Five W’s of social media, the second focused on the available outlets and the third was a workshop to help get the audience members started.

After working as a social media marketing consultant for over two years, I thought developing this series would be a piece o’ cake. After all, the point of the whole project was to introduce the fundamentals of social media to those unfamiliar with it. However, I soon learned it was less a piece o’ cake and more like trying-to-bake-a-cake. A three layer cake. Before I dive in, here’s the first layer, free to check out in Slideshare format:

Social Media: Is It For Me?

Although the series went well, I ran into a couple problems as I attempted to get it off the ground:

1. Where do I start? This was perhaps the toughest nut to crack. Social media is so robust that it can be difficult to pinpoint where to start– and where to end. If I wasn’t restricted to 45 minutes to present and an hour for discussion, I could’ve made this a serious pow-wow.
2. Assumptions: Being part of the millennial generation, I oftentimes assume people understand elements of technology that are innate to me. My audience probably understands email, but is most likely unaware of the difference between a Facebook personal profile and a fan page. Then there’s the oh-so-difficult-to-explain functionality of “Liking” a page as a fan and “Liking” a piece of content. That was a tricky one to cover.
3. Gauging my Audience: This was more for my own preparation, but I did anticipate that each audience member would have different levels of (basic) social media mastery. I wanted to ensure that the content I delivered would strike a fine balance between the newbies and the not-so newbies. I needed the latter to not be bored and the former to not be lost. Easier said than done.

So considering these challenges, how could I introduce social media, keep it relevant and engaging for all audience members and ensure that all (or at least most) who attend garner some value from the presentation?

My Answer: The Business Conference scenario. Using this analogy, I explained the etiquette, function and value of social media. I told my audience members to picture the social media universe as an online, digital business conference. Both scenarios have plenty of interesting people who exhibit multiple opportunities for engagement. Just like the online social landscape, how you find and approach these people at the conference (and determine what opportunities they present) is completely up to you.

This connection worked especially well, since social media etiquette was a popular question theme (i.e. how often do I tweet? How do I respond to a question? etc.). Social media newbies have trouble determining the answers to these questions on their own, simply because the tools are foreign to them. My audience members understand their businesses better than I do, so putting the social sphere in perspective for them really triggered a light-bulb moment. Sure, there will be annoying people that won’t shut up. Yup, there will be people who talk about themselves. A business conference has a social dynamic–just like social media. Making that connection made social media easier to explain and really cut down on the challenges that we preventing me from kicking this thing off. In retrospect, I baked a pretty tasty three layer cake.

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