Social Media Education

Social Media Education is quite a controversial topic.

The Contra Side:
You can get lots of information in hundreds of free webinars. There are thousands of tips and tricks out in the web. And on top of all that social media people are naturally helpful and get others into the media quite easily. People are social by nature so who needs a social media education?

The Pro Side:
While some may take the time and feel good about educating themselves, other feel more comfortable to get educated in a complete program. People who are very busy may not want to take the time and scan through pages and webinars to distill what is important to them, instead taking professionally prepared classes.

The Certification:
Social Media Experts no longer like to be an expert. I call myself a student of social media as there is so much to learn every day - even so I teach social media and am in the field since its inception. My very personal opinion: If somebody just wants to buy a "certificate" think twice. What are you going to do with it. Say I'm certified? If the certification should have any value - there must be a very clear set of knowledge and experience attached with the certificate to give a customer or employer an idea what is behind the knowledge. I think that is more important than the certificate itself.

For whom is a social media education?
There are so many cases like - personal advancement, learning it for running a better sales or support job or any other special facet of social media - not only marketing. Building a social media practice, starting a social media consulting business, running a social media department and so forth. So to judge or decide about a social media education, everybody should do that in context. Why education what kind of person, what is the time frame for the education, what is the objective (personal or team wise) and what to actually do with what one learned.

Example:
Let's assume you are a senior manager in a company with 600 employees. And lets further assume you are tasked to develop a new and more customer friendly face for business and its 20,000 customers. If you just take 5% of the team to help you (30 people) the company commits to an investment of $4.5 Million in cost. You better know exactly what you are doing. It's no longer about setting up a page in facebook, training the team to polish up their linkedin profiles. It is a strategic corporate initiative.

Social Media Facets
Social media has many facets. One is on corporate initiatives. I believe a good educational base is paramount. We run free webinars to provide more insight into the Social Media Academy.

@AxelS