My goal with yesterday’s workshop was part of a broader strategy to help raise awareness of the valuable services offered by PICS. Since PICS already has an informative and easy to use website, my main focus was to find the best way for PICS employees to get the word out about it.  With statistics showing that more and more people are spending time on social networks these days, it only made sense to start there.  Although there are many to choose from, Facebook is the king of social networks. With 500 million members and growing (from all age groups), Facebook has rapidly become an integral part of our culture and the way we do business.  Recent research has shown that 25% of people use Facebook to share media with their friends and colleagues, compared to 11% for email. This is a significant shift in the way we communicate and behave online, owing largely to the fact that it is so viral in nature.

When it came time for the workshop, it was great to see everyone so motivated to learn – even after some technical glitches and an unexpected fire alarm!  Instead of a generic overview of Facebook and it’s various moving parts, I tried my best to provide information and training that the PICS workers would really find useful. After a quick introduction to business pages and how they differ from a personal profile, we dove right into the interactive portion of the workshop.  By guiding the class to set up their first Facebook business page with me there to answer questions, I think it provided a very comfortable experience free of the fear of “screwing up.”  Another amazing thing about this was that everyone could see the dynamics of a business page and it’s viral nature in real time!  For example, Kam joined a page that Pardeep created for her department, and the rest of the class was instantly able to see this in their newsfeeds!  This is the key to a successful social media campaign, as the viral nature of social networks helps to spread your brand organically and efficiently through groups of people.

For anyone that wants to revisit some of the topics, tips and tricks that were covered in the workshop, feel free to download the slideshow below.  I’ve also included a link to the video from the presentation that I think does a really good job of showing how important social media is today.

Social Media in the Workplace (PPT): Download

Social Media Revolution (Video): http://youtu.be/lFZ0z5Fm-Ng

PICS Website: http://pics.bc.ca