social media roadmap :: Thinking Home Business | Practical Tips For People Who Work From Home

Two weeks ago I launched my free, monthly Social Media Roadmap webinar series.

As I wrote in a pre-launch post on my Des Walsh dot Com site:

More and more business people and freelance professionals are starting to think about how they can tap into what is going on with Facebook and Twitter and blogging and all the rest of it. Part of their challenge is knowing what questions to ask.

The Social Media Roadmap Webinars 2011 series is aimed at, first, helping provide a practical path for asking manageable questions about social media and developing useful answers.

Some of the questions and answers will have general application. Others will be more specific to individual participants’ businesses or careers.

The idea is then to use the webinars and the associated community space to help participants create their own social media roadmaps.

There is a diverse group of people who can benefit from these webinars:

Generally, people working on their business or career social media strategy
Anyone already developing a social media roadmap and looking for ideas and feedback
People who prefer interactive webinars to being lectured at
Anyone looking for frameworks, ideas, or tips on effective use of social media
Anyone who likes the idea of hype-free monthly updates on the state of social business
People who like the idea of interactive webinars, rather than being lectured at

Details

When: every fourth Tuesday Australia and New Zealand, fourth Monday for US/Canada, except that in February they will be on the third Tuesday/Monday respectively

Times: Australia 12 noon (AEDT) Tuesday, New Zealand 2 pm Tuesday; USA/Canada 5 pm PST, 8 pm EST Monday

Where: my online conference room – details to be sent to those who register.

What if those times don’t work for you?

They are not set in stone. If there is a case made for a different time and perhaps even for a different day, I’ll be as receptive as I can. Also, the sessions will be recorded, so if you register you will be sent details to enable you to download them and play them at a time that suits you.

In particular, I realise the times just don’t work for Europe. We’ve already had people sign up from the UK, the Netherlands and France. If there is enough interest I will certainly consider repeating each month’s webinar at a more Europe (and points east) friendly time.

More information

You can get more information and register at this link. If you want to contact me directly to ask questions or get further clarification, send me a message via the Contact page.

As the subject line of this post says, it’s not too late to register. Also, the audio recording and the slide deck from the January webinar are accessible at the community site I have set up.

I’m excited about this. I hope you’ll come join us and help make this a great ideas exchange and fruitful learning experience for all of us.

I’ve been on a new learning curve over the past several days, having said blithely to some colleagues that a recorded Skype video would be forthcoming. Sooner said than done.

The video was needed to help promote the one day Social Media Roadmap workshops I’m presenting next week and the week after, in Brisbane (Sept 29) and on the Gold Coast (Australia) (Oct 2), in tandem with my friend and colleague, Associate Professor Michael Rees of Bond University. The workshops are being coordinated by Bond University’s Centre for Executive Education (CEE) and there are more details on the CEE website. (Update: Brisbane event now postponed to a date to be fixed; Gold Coast event proceeding as planned.)

The video up on the web now – and embedded below in this blog post, but there were definitely some anxious moments and while it is quite short there have been literally hours of learning and experimentation in turning the idea into reality.

One thing we learned was that Skype wasn’t up to the task – our pictures “froze” with our voices still going – but ooVoo was (there was a fee, but it was worth it). I’ll write more about the whole “adventure” in a separate post.

In the video we talk about what the workshop participants can expect and we emphasise that the day is focused on helping those attending acquire information and tools they can put to work immediately.

In a separate post I will be sharing some of the things I learned about the practicalities of recording and uploading the conversation.