I didn’t have the opportunity to post yesterday because I attended a Facebook marketing training seminar out east at the Hilton. The seminar’s title was “Facebook Marketing for Relative Newbies.” Since I’m not exactly a newbie, I expected to be bored out of my mind for 5 of the 6 hours, and pick up useful tips in the remaining hour. That was not the case. I was engaged for the entire 6 hours, and took probably 5 pages of notes. The instructor was great about figuring out who the advanced students were in the room and tasking them to help the newcomers.
When she’s not doing corporate training, the instructor, Faye Hill, runs a consulting business helping churches improve their customer service. Many people don’t realize this is an issue, but it is. If your church could use some improvement in that area, by all means check out the Faye Hill & Associates Facebook fan page for more information.
So, toward the end of the day we were sitting at tables of three to five. We had absorbed most of the knowledge by that point, and were given a group exercise. Each group was given a shape, and we had to design a 30-second commercial and Facebook campaign around our shape. This is what my table was given:
We first had to decide what our object was – a spoon, a peanut, and a hairbrush were all tossed around as ideas. Finally we decided it was a scoop. Since it was green, we decided it had something to do with being “green” or environmentally friendly. We came up with a story that our business was a children’s activity center. Parents could bribe their children with frozen yogurt while they learned about being kind to the environment. As a play on Project Green Fork, we named our business Project Green Scoop. I was elected to do our 30-second commercial. When it was our turn, I got up and said,
“Start the new year off right by teaching your kids to love the Earth. At Project Green Scoop, your children will enjoy our delicious frozen yogurt while they engage in a variety of activities that will teach them to recycle, to buy environmentally friendly products, and to live a more healthy lifestyle. “Like” us on Facebook (pointing the scoop toward the “Like” button) and enter your name and email address to get a coupon for your first cup of yogurt, free!”
Those of you who know me personally know that most of the time, I am rather quiet, and I really surprised myself by doing that announcer’s voice so well. After a few minutes I realized where it came from. It came from watching the Poo Trap commercial.
Yeah I know that’s the third time I’ve posted that video, but if you haven’t seen it, take a minute to click Play. It is one of the funniest commercials you’ll ever see.
So anyway, you may think to yourself, “That was kind of a silly exercise.” It actually wasn’t. Besides getting us to use what we learned about Facebook, trainer Faye Hill told us afterward that it was designed to teach an additional lesson. “What if this had been an individual exercise?” she asked us. “No one of you would have come up with anything nearly as creative.” The exercise taught us the importance of having a team to work on social media marketing campaigns.
The class wrapped up about 3:45, and I thought to myself, “Hmmm, I’ve got time to get to the office by 4:30.” And by “the office” I mean “the Second Street Branch Office.” And by “the Second Street Branch Office” I mean “the Flying Saucer.” Nice to have an early start to happy hour yesterday. Also nice to get an extra hour’s sleep in the morning. If I ever get elected president, I’m going to issue an executive order that all corporate training seminars should be 9 AM-4 PM.
Anyway, I’m going to get caught up and see what I missed yesterday and hopefully pull a “Saturday update” post together. Apologies if you sent me an email yesterday and I didn’t respond – I’ve got over 50 sitting in my inbox that I’ll try to get to this morning.