Do you have social media skills you can teach to business owners? Business owners need your help! Social media is still a hot topic and many local businesses don’t know how they can take advantage of social media. Live workshops are a great way to help these business owners and make money but how do you get started? Before you dive in, take a look at these quick tips.
Design Your Social Media Workshop for Maximum Attendance
To design your workshop answer these basic questions:
- Full day or half day? Many people have trouble taking off an entire day for a conference but it’s hard to pack in the material you might want to cover into 3-4 hours. Plus if you have a full day workshop you need to factor in a lunch (either breaking for lunch and allowing enough time for people to get it or including it in the price). My advice is to start with a 3-4 hour slot. You may even consider the evening time for people who can’t get away during the day.
- One social site or many? Of course you want to stick with your strengths on what you can teach. If you know LinkedIn inside and out then stick with that subject. And if you are running more of an advanced workshop, you may want to stick with one subject so you can dive deep. But if you are first starting out, you may want to give people an overview of several social sites and how they can use each one for their business. Give specifics about what they can change right now to be more effective.
- Free or paid? Free – wait I thought you were telling us how to make money? You can run a free workshop and still make money. You can go for a higher attendance and then sell your products or services at the end. If you decide to do that, you will want to offer a really special one-day (or 3-day) deal that is only good for the attendees of the workshop. Maybe you have a social media training product you can sell, or a bundled set of your consulting services. You will get more attendees and maybe in the end make more money. But you will need to make sure you have a full house because only a certain percentage will take advantage of the deal.
Once you have that down now you want to work on the title and content of your workshop. Make sure you have a catchy title that appeals to business owners. “How to Become a Social Media Ninja” might be a cool catchy title but many business owners don’t want to become a ninja, they just want to make money from their social media marketing.
One of my most requested topics has a very long title but it is compelling: “Secrets to Using Social Media to Get More Likes, Links, Followers, and Fans and Ultimately Make More Money”. It’s a mouthful but it speaks to the business owner’s true concern – making money.
Then make sure your description of the workshop is always focusing on the benefit to the business owner: “In this workshop, you will learn how to use Twitter tools that will save you time and take away your overwhelm.” You get the picture.
Pricing Your Social Media Workshop for Profitability
Ahhh the pricing question. Always a tough one to nail down. We talked about the option of offering it for free but that doesn’t feel fun when you have to pay for a venue. Finding a venue should be your first priority to determine what your costs will be.
Many times you can Google meeting rooms in (your city) and find a good list of names. Other cities have co-working sites that have a good meeting room or venue. Another good source of meeting room ideas is Meetup.com. Take a look at local groups and see where they are meeting to find some possibilities. Hotels typically have conference space but it can be a little more expensive.
Other expenses may include handouts, snacks or lunch, and projector rental. Then factor in your time for the workshop, and the time to prepare the slides. Divide by how many attendees you expect and see what your workshop price works out to be. Is it reasonable? Is it in line with other workshops offered in your area? Again, Google is your friend when answering these questions.
Consider also what you may sell at the end of your workshop. Have an offer that people can’t refuse to work with you further. This will help boost your profitability of the workshop itself.
Promoting Your Social Media Workshop
You have everything lined up, time to promote, promote, promote! Get the word out in a big way. Announce your workshop through your own social media channels and e-mail your list. Create a Facebook Event and invite your local contacts who might be interested (don’t spam everyone you know with your invitation – make the invite relevant to them).
Here are some other promotion ideas that can help:
- Ask some of your own local connections to help spread the word (maybe even give them a free ticket for helping you out)
- Run a contest for a free ticket
- Give some flyers to local business owners (actually knock on doors)
- Partner with your local Chamber of Commerce to see if they can invite their members
- Run a Facebook ad to local business owners
- Post your workshop info in a local relevant LinkedIn Group that you have participated in
- Connect with local networking groups and offer a discount to their members.
Get creative and list all the groups you can think of that have business owners as members and brainstorm how you can connect with them. You notice that this does take some time on you part so make sure you allow enough time for promotion of your event.
Assess Your Results and Keep Following Up
After your workshop is over, take a stock of what went right and what you can improve on for your next workshop. Make sure you have captured the names and email addresses of people who attended so you can put them on your e-mail list and maybe even send them a survey about what they thought about your event and what they’d like to see in the future.
Hopefully you had a fun and profitable event and you can just rinse and repeat for your next one! You can learn more about how you can grow your business as a Social Media Consultant in the upcoming Social Media Manager School. Sign up for the free training available now at www.socialmediamanagerschool.com.
