One of the best things about my job is that I have various opportunities to inform and enthuse people about the benefits of using social media tools and services to support their existing processes. In order for social media to be genuinely useful, it has to become part of a person or organisation’s everyday practice. If it’s not, then it just becomes an additional burden – something extra they have to do rather than something that helps them to achieve their goals personal or professional objectives.
Readers who follow my twitter feed or dopplr updates will know that I’ve recently been traveling around the country a lot. Most of this has been to provide the 10 finalists of NESTA’s Big Green Challenge with social media training to help them use photo-sharing, video-sharing, mobile phones, social networking and blogging to inform a wider audience about their work, reach out to new supporters and likeminded groups, and to better organise their own efforts. It’s been great fun – I’ve met some wonderful people along the way, learned about some wonderful projects, and seen parts of the country I’d never otherwise have the opportunity to see. Here’s a map showing where I’ve been or will be going over the remaining few weeks of the training:
I’ve also been authoring blog posts – a sort of beginners guide to using social media – on the Big Green Challenge Blog. Here’s an index to the posts I’ve published thus far:
- Introduction: social media and the whole web as your canvas
- Reaching new audiences with photo-sharing
- Sharing your videos online
- Getting started making google maps
- Taking the internet everywhere
- Live and direct with your mobile
There are at least two more posts to come – blogging, which should appear next week, and finding and keeping track of content, which will cover social bookmarking, RSS and searching for blogs.