Tweeps offer advice for my Twitter class

For my Getting Started with Twitter course tonight, I asked some of my tweeps today for advice.

“How do you use Twitter for business, work, fun? Your best advice?” I asked on Twitter (of course). The answers came quickly:

Jon Konchar, a Cedar Rapids  business broker, tweeted:

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Trying out Twitter for fun and business

I’ll be teaching Getting Started with Twitter this Tuesday and Thursday at Kirkwood Community College. This post is designed to supplement the course. It is an updated, adapted version of earlier tip sheets I have done, most recently the Getting started in Twitter tips I provided in August for my Using Social Media for Business class. Those tips, of course, focused on business uses for Twitter. These will include business and personal uses.

Twitter is a useful and fun communication tool for a variety of business and personal uses: 

• You can follow activities and discussions of people in the community, staying current on issues and events.
• You can connect with colleagues and share ideas with them.
• You can follow the news.

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Help with my lesson plan for Getting Started with Twitter

I will be teaching Getting Started with Twitter at Kirkwood Community College next week (still room in the course if you want to register or to refer friends).

I will probably edit and update the getting-started tips I used in September for my Using Social Media for Business course. This course differs from that one in a three respects:

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My LinkedIn connections offer advice for social media business course

I have continued using social media to gather advice on using social media for business. I gathered this advice from some people in this area who are connections of mine on LinkedIn. I used the LinkedIn question-and-answer function to email them this question:

How has LinkedIn been helpful to you in your business or profession? If you have found LinkedIn useful, I would appreciate a brief message providing an example of how you’ve used it or explaining which feature(s) you find most useful.

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10 tips on using social media for business

Whatever your business or profession and whatever social tools you are using, these tips apply in most social media situations:

1. Decide what your goal is in using each social media tool and reassess from time to time how well the tool is serving that goal.

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Getting started in Twitter

I’ll be teaching Using Social Media for Business three evenings this week, Tuesday through Thursday at Kirkwood Community College (the Marion center). I think you can still register for the course.

The first night, we’ll have a brief overview of why social media are an important development in digital communication and their roots in other forms of communication. Then we’ll spend most of the evening learning about Twitter. Participants will launch their profiles in Twitter, start following people and start learning how to us Twitter in their businesses.

The second evening, we will cover an overview of current social media tools and then split the rest of the evening teaching them Facebook and LinkedIn. Again, they will start their profiles and begin using them for business.

The final evening, they will learn how to create and use a Ning network. They also will spend some time learning to use a social-media tool of their choosing, then report to the class on what they learned and how they might use that tool.

This post will be my tips for getting started in Twitter. It is an updated version of the tips I provided in April for my Twitter for Dummies workshop for Edge Business Magazine.

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My local tweeps share social media advice for businesses

In the spirit of social media, I asked my tweeps for their advice on using social media for business.

I’m teaching a course, Using Social Media for Business, starting Tuesday evening at Kirkwood Community College. I think you can still register for the course. I know a lot about using social media for journalism and I’ve learned a fair amount about using social media for business as well. But I knew the people I follow on Twitter would know way more than I do. So I asked them (I edited their email messages to me slightly; I did not verify statements they made about their businesses or their us of social media):

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Help me plan a social-media class for Kirkwood

I am crowd-sourcing my plans for two social media courses I will be teaching next month. I will be teaching two continuing education courses at Kirkwood Community College in Cedar Rapids: Using Social Media in Business and Online Social Networks for 50+ (Kirkwood offers a series of computer courses geared for people over 50).

I am seeking help from two types of people:

• Active social media users willing to share their experience and advice, particularly in areas where my experience is light.
• Social-media newbies or wannabes (including people planning to take the courses) willing to tell what confuses you, how you want to use social media, what you want to learn. It would be especially helpful if you’re a newbie or wannabe in either of the groups targeted in the class: people 50 and older or people wanting to use social media in business.

Below is an outline of my plan for the course on social media for business (outline for the 50+ class will come shortly), with some questions for you in bold. I welcome your advice on the outline or your answers to the questions. And if this sound like a good course for  you or someone you know, I would appreciate your registration for the class or encouraging your colleague(s) to register.

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