Social Media is Not Scary

When Steve Radick wrote in January 2009 about people’s natural fear of social media, could he have predicted I’d spin his text into a workshop title nine months later?

People have asked me for months when I’d lead a social media workshop in the Boston area. It’s crazy how many times conference agendas were published, my name wasn’t on them, and people–hordes of people–asked me why not. And local events proximate to a 10-mile radius of my zipcode? You should have been a fly on the wall when their eyebrows rose when I responded, “No, I’m not on that agenda.”

The flies are flying now. On Tuesday, October 27 (a week before my name is on Election Day ballots, I should add, although the two events are coincidental at best), my sole proprietorship, Ari Herzog & Associates, hosts a social media workshop.

Here’s the flyer:

Steve writes in that January post:

Social media gives employees an unprecedented ability to use their voice to gain credibility, influence, and power within the organization – for better or for worse. Junior employees can quickly become valued and respected or suspended and reprimanded members of the organization because they now have a voice. Middle managers can lose their power and credibility if they don’t use their voice. Senior leaders can lose total control of their organization if they don’t listen to these voices.

I agree 100 percent–and that’s why I’ve set out to illustrate next week why the employees Steve relates merely need to be shown some case studies and hear some best practices to realize it’s anything but scary.

My thanks to Marsha Finkelstein of Moving Beyond Coaching & Consulting, Rick Littrell of Magicomm, Valerie Sodano of Panera Bread Corporation, Jason Verhoosky of Old Beauty Design, and Bruce Vogel of iContact for agreeing to serve on a multi-disciplinary internet marketing panel to follow my presentation.

Admission is very affordable, at $10 for adults and $5 for students. You can RSVP in advance here. The Twitter hashtag to use if you feel like promoting it is #notscary.

Related posts:

1. Piloting Social Media as an Astronaut
2. Lifting Social Media Marketing with Gravity
3. Social Media: Banning vs Blocking

Tagged as: events

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