Tapping into A Global Network - A Workshop on Social Media

As part of our commitment to ensuring that Brickweb clients get the very best from our service, we offer regular workshops focusing on a range of relevant topics. Past workshops have focused on internet trends, the unique Brickweb CMS and HTML5; our next workshop will centre on social media and how it can best be used to drive your business forward.

Social media is pervasive and ubiquitous, with a range of websites offering a plethora of ways for individuals and businesses to connect. Since social media sites have become so popular, entirely new business strategies have been developed to take advantage of the massive global network that such sites create. Our workshop will be focusing on the three main players in social media: Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, all of which can be used in different ways to optimise the internet presence of an e-commerce or m-commerce business. Led by highly trained experts, the workshop will show you how each of these websites can be used to their optimum degree in creating an impact online.

Founded by Harvard student Mark Zuckerberg and originally intended to be used only within that university, Facebook celebrated its tenth birthday on the 4th February and continues to grow in economic importance; Facebook is now valued at more than $134bn, an increase of $30bn as compared to the same time two years ago. With 1.23bn active monthly users, a truly astonishing number, the site is used in thousands of ways by companies to gain publicity through users 'sharing' and ’liking’ information such as product reviews and links. It is important to note that a significant proportion of users (945 million) access the site from a mobile device, proving the importance of maintaining a responsive, mobile-ready site.

Created in March 2006 by Noah Glass, Evan Williams, Jack Dorsey and Biz Stone before being launched just four months later, Twitter is one of the ten most-visited sites on the internet and has in excess of half a billion regular users who, between them, send more than 350 million Tweets every day. Described as 'the SMS of the internet', Twitter was also named as one of the 'most successful start-up companies of all time' based on revenue, market capitalisation, cultural impact and company growth. Advertising opportunities are infinite using the service and a pay-by-tweet service was recently unveiled, allowing users to make a purchase by simply sending a Tweet; clearly, it is essential to know how best to take advantage of this ever-growing website.

LinkedIn is the oldest and most established of the three, launched as it was in 2003. The site has more of a focus on business than Facebook or Twitter which, while widely used for marketing, has more of a focus on personal accounts. The latest figures show that LinkedIn has around 260 million users spanning the globe and the site is available in twenty different languages. Authoritative online publication TechReview described the service as "the de facto tool for professional networking" and, since November 2010, LinkedIn has allowed its users to list services or products directly onto company profile pages and also to recommend and review these products and services for the benefit of other contacts.

Places on this informative workshop are free to all Brickweb clients but advance booking is essential. We will be running the workshop at our Blackburn office from 2pm on Thursday 13th March so please book early to avoid disappointment as places are limited.