Review : Social Media Marketing Practice (SMMP Stage 3) - Advanced Concepts Workshop - University of Technology Sydney

I recently attended this short course run by the University of Technology Sydney. The course outline is here : http://www.shortcourses.uts.edu.au/code/coursedetails.php?sc_code=SMMP-ACW

The course is conducted by Suresh Sood, and you can see his LinkedIn profile here : http://au.linkedin.com/in/sureshsood

I enrolled in this short (one day) course with high expectations, and I guess that's why I've come away not entirely satisfied.

Firstly, the delivery of the course was a bit flaky

-          The course was described as part computer workshop, giving participants the opportunity to try some software hands on. Nothing worse in these situations where not all the computers are pre-loaded with the software, and the instructor stuffs around helping individuals get properly set up.  You expect that all computers to have been checked beforehand, and perhaps a second assistant to be on hand to look after technical issues. Also, why not let participants know they can get individual assistance during the breaks, and in this course, the breaks total 2 hours. The same lack of preparation showed up later on when Suresh attempted several times to install Pagerank with Google Reader.
-          Suresh clearly knows a lot about the subject, and shows his passion, yet I thought he rambled on a bit.  It was only after lunch that I started to get a sense of the key concepts of the presentation.
-          Finally, the course guide could do with a makeover, and perhaps expanded.

Secondly, I felt the course itself was a bit unstructured, and tended to be a bit of a grab bag of internet goodies. After all, the aim of the course is:

The course not only focuses on the strategic outlook for social media marketing activities in 2011 and beyond but tactical advice to immediately participate in successful marketing activities on social media platforms.

                however, there is also a "warning" which I should have taken more notice of : this is an interactive computer laboratory workshop providing access to a variety of free and low cost tools for use in SMMP activities  (my emphasis).

                The focus on free and low cost tools should have alerted me to the possibility this course is in effect targeted at a SME rather than Enterprise level, and that the insights to be gained are "interesting tit bits" rather than a "holistic and      robust understanding". For example, one is not going to gain the

                understanding that might be gained from a product like Prophecy"  (  http://www.forethought.com.au/prophecy/  ).

                The "tit bits" observation can be illustrated by the inclusion in the course of a brief description of Page Rank algorithm, which included the term : eigenvector. If any of the attendees understood what an eigenvector was , I'd be surprised.

Criticisms aside, there were some positives for me  about the course:

-          One of the handouts was an academic paper on "Reflected Glory" . I thought this was a useful concept to help explain why communities and networks form and develop. This explains for me why people become members of a football club.
-          Train of Thought analytics. Not mentioned a great deal, but seemed an idea worth following up. To me, it may provide a way of using data that is not statistically valid or significant, but still is valid as being suggestive.
-          Psychology of influence. Provides an evidence based theory of how different websites can be more successful than others.

These are the concepts I would have liked the course to have focused on, as if we are using social media in business, we want to understand

-          What makes social media successful as a business activity
-          What would we like to measure
-          What can we measure to best approximate that

Some of the tools mentioned include :-

-          Nodexl : an excel addon used to map networks
-          Gephi – an open source program for network mapping.
-          Social API graph : google this and look at the example applications.
-          Netvizz for Facebook
-          Facebook Insights
-          Apps.asterisq.com/mention,ap
-          Social Mention
-          Bit.ly : data can be obtained on how many times link was accessed.
-          Xinureturns.com/[url]
-          Social too
-          Google insights for search
-          Post rank with google raeder
-          Tag crowd
-          Word stat
-          Alexa
-          Social blade

Finally, an interesting example of a good website : garyvaynerchuk.com

It would be interesting to compare this course (which costs $770 GST inclusive for one day) with a two day course offered by the Australian Marketing Institute (for $980 GST inclusive, cheaper for members).

http://www.ami.org.au/Events/Foundation_Workshops/social_media_for_business.asp?src=top