Social Media Marketing 101

In my search to find social media experts, courses, seminars and workshops in Toronto, I found a course offered by the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) Canada: Social Media Marketing.

With all the talk of Social Media I set out to find out if there were any formal courses based on this very topic from social media 101 to advanced levels of this digital channel. Although social media has been around for years it was becoming apparent that the channel is still in its infancy as I couldn’t find any courses or instructors in the Toronto area who were teaching about the topic. There were an abundant number of courses for website, email, search marketing and so on but few, if any, for social media. I then "dug" a little deeper for experts in the field and came up with a few names:

Mitch Joel - http://www.twistimage.com/blog/
Chris Brogan - http://www.chrisbrogan.com/
Jeremiah Owyang - http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/

I finally came across a course in Toronto offered by IAB Canada titled Social Media Marketing. I also noticed that the course instructor was Mitch Joel thus I registered knowing that one of the experts in the industry would be the instructor. I attended that course on April 6th and felt rejuvenated by Mitch's passion for social media. I have been working in marketing services for almost a decade and to be honest web, email, search, etc. were becoming a bit familiar/stale. While taking the course, there seem to be a renewed buzz and energy among several hundred marketers who attended, the same level of excitement that I felt when I entered the email space a decade ago. I personally feel when we look back in 5-years, companies who best leverage social media into the culture of their organizations, will definitely have an advantage over competitors who do not.

I recommend picking up publications, attending courses, seminars and workshops presented by these individuals if you ever get an opportunity. If any of you have any experts to recommend, please do share in the comments section.

In a follow-up post, I will share some of the fundamental learning from the course that will hopefully get you excited about the prospects of social media and its impact on businesses.

Colin Bhowmik, Digital Marketing Consultant, Open Rate
colinbhowmik@openrate.ca
http://www.openrate.ca/