Tag: wordpress

Workshop on WordPress

Published on by mbcoudal3 Comments

One of my New Year’s resolutions was to be viewed as an expert. So I have been teaching a lot since January. Teaching is a great way to find out how much you know and how much you still need to learn.

I’ve been teaching middle school kids comedy and creative writing. Beth Buchanan (on the right) and I’ve taught communicators social media skills at the Religion Communicators Council and at the United Methodist Association of Communicators. (I love team teaching — much less stressful than solo teaching.)

Me and Beth Buchanan. She’s my social media guru. Because of Beth, I got on Facebook and it’s been all downhill from there.

My next (solo) teaching gig is at Word Camp at Baruch College in New York City from June 9 to 10. The title of my workshop is “Social Media and Social Movements.”

My session, one of 80, is hands-on — perfect for beginners, non-techie types, and people devoted to a cause. But there are a lot of workshops that are geared to people who love ideas like digital marketing, shared hosting, HTML5, and hyperlocal. (Attend this conference to find out what those terms mean. What’ve you got to lose? It’s $35.)

I love WordPress for being my landing page — a place to post my resolutions and then achieve them. And along the way, help others to become experts too.

Social Media Mania

Published on by mbcoudalLeave a comment

I’ve been trying to post on one of my blogs every day for the month of June. Yesterday I was dragging. I didn’t have anything to say, couldn’t come up with a good idea, had too many social occasions to attend. One of those occasions was our monthly Lunch and Learn workshop which is a venue for our brilliant Communications staff to share their expertise.

At yesterday’s lunch, Beth Buchanan of the web team gave an awesome Prezi.com session. The title? Social Media Mania. It inspired and informed the two dozen of us there, half of us experts (ahem! like moi?) and half beginners (moi aussi!). After Beth’s session, I felt energized to get through my slog of a daily blog.

Here are a few take-aways from Beth.

Beth's profile pic!

How do we get into social media?

  1. Sign in
  2. Listen
  3. Engage
  4. Evaluate

I’m not particularly good at Numbers 2 and 4, but I am going to be!

Buchanan emphasized a few best practices for social media. Such as “Do onto others as you would have them do unto you.” In other words, think before posting.

Social media is a conversation, not a monologue, she said. So don’t swamp people with your point of view without taking an interest in theirs.

Another novel concept — and why haven’t I thought of this? — Have a social media strategy and make it work for you. To get thinking about this, start with the question, Who is my audience? (How am I supposed to know!)

I loved some of Beth’s quotes (and did tweet them during the session), like this one: “You establish who you are by what you post.”

On Twitter, Beth said if you’re tweeting for a company — for every three business posts, include one personal post. Duh! I microblog on Twitter for New World Outlook magazine @NWOMag and for myself @MaryBethC but I don’t cross-over; personal is personal and business is business. But I’ll try to cross-pollinate, just like Beth Buchanan, the social media maven at Global Ministries, does. Thanks, Beth! @BJBuc and @connectNmission !

Beth is the friend and colleague who got me started on blogging, Facebook and Twitter. And now there’s no stopping me! At least for the month of June!