Jump-start your seminar experience by attending these interactive and practical workshops. These information-packed sessions are a great opportunity to network with fellow attendees while taking a hands-on, common sense approach to mastering social media strategies that will enhance your understanding of the informative, case study presentations throughout the entire seminar.

Choose ALL FOUR Workshops for Maximum Value and Learning

Social Media 101: Making Your Organization Social Media Friendly And Understanding The Risks

What exactly is social media? How do I get involved? How do I manage the boundaries of personal and professional use?

In order for you to use social media effectively within your organization, you must first be able to understand it. In this in-depth workshop, you will learn about emerging new communication strategies using social media and explore ways to use them to better connect with your employees, as well as your citizens. Social media can be an excellent addition to any communication plan. If used properly it will allow you to level the playing field, maximize your resources, and provide your organization with the unique ability to communicate with a specific, highly-targeted audience.

After attending this workshop, you will confidently walk away with the ability to make your social media tools useful, professional and personal. Including the knowledge of:

• Social media key terms and definitions
• Understanding of the social structure of social media
• Participation and Engagement - You must be willing to participate and be engaged for social media and advocacy to be effective
• Strategic skills: how to apply critical thought, etiquette, online identity and control
• Flexibility - Hear what is happening; be open to discovering and failing
• Lessons on how to advocate for the adoption of social media in your government organization
• Maximizing your content, product and ideas – ask yourself “how else can I use this?”

WORKSHOP LEADER: Greg FitzGerald is a Consultant with Deloitte. Deloitte is a global professional services firm that has provided Social Media advisory to clients across Canada. Greg is a member of the Knowledge Management practice, with a focus on using Social Media to improve collaboration and knowledge sharing in organizations. Greg has introduced his clients to Social Media concepts and best practices and has helped them to better understand the challenges and benefits of adopting and promoting its usage. Clients include the Insurance Corporation of British Columbia, the Provincial Health Services Authority of British Columbia, British Columbia Liquor Distribution Branch and the Canadian Cancer Society.

11:30 a.m. to 1:00 p.m.
Afternoon break/lunch on your own.

1:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m.
PRE-SEMINAR AFTERNOON WORKSHOP B

How To Blend Social Media And Traditional Tools Within Your Communications Plan

Along with the emergence of social media, a parade of new tools and toys has emerged to help monitor, measure and help make sense of it all. Shiny new toys are fun to play with, but don’t necessarily offer true organizational value. The question today is not whether we should be analyzing social media, but how.

The answer is developing an analysis framework that includes social and traditional media alongside each other, not in separate silos.

After this workshop, you will leave with knowledge of:

• How your organization can take advantage of the unique intelligence available when you analyze social and traditional media together
• Techniques that are being used today by PR departments to improve their campaigns in real-time
• The pitfalls of treating social media as a stand-alone piece
• Benchmarking analysis techniques that demonstrate the business value of PR efforts to government executives

WORKSHOP LEADER: As a Founder and President of MediaMiser, Chris Morrison continues to help shape the media analysis software platform, based on his extensive communications experience with both private and public organizations. Most of his time is dedicated to training and helping customers meet and exceed their media analysis objectives--in additional to identifying new trends in media monitoring and analysis. Chris continues to help shape the media analysis software platform, based on his extensive communications experience with both private and public organizations. Most of his time is dedicated to training and helping customers meet and exceed their media analysis objectives--in additional to identifying new trends in media monitoring and analysis.

These workshops are designed to take your seminar experience to the next level. Post-seminar workshops allow you to take the information you gained from the general sessions, and identify and focus on your individual needs and applications. Make the most out of this seminar by attending these highly interactive, hands-on sessions. Space is limited to ensure interactivity!

How To Incorporate Social Media Into Your Crisis Communications Plans For Improved Operations

Providing timely, accurate and responsive information in a crisis is critical. Thankfully, social media tools provide a new set of options to reach your audience quickly. This workshop will focus on how these new tools can be used as part of emergency preparedness and incorporated into your overall crisis communications plan.

This session will provide you with a structured workshop assessing the opportunities and potential risks associated with social media, and develop tactics that can be applied to a number of crisis scenarios.

This hands-on, interactive workshop will:

• Provide strategic communication context and considerations
• Outline challenges and opportunities, including those specific to government and crisis communications
• Provide examples of applications already in use
• Use structured exercises that will include a strategic review of crisis communication protocols, proactive communications related to emergency preparedness and how social media tools can be applied as new communication tactics to support these operational requirements

WORKSHOP LEADER: Therese Mickelson is an Accredited Business Communicator (ABC) and Managing Partner of Mickelson Consulting. She has managed a wide-range of public relations issues and initiatives in both the public and private sectors over the course of 20 years. As the former Manager of Corporate Communications for the City of Coquitlam, she has an extensive understanding of the issues, opportunities and challenges facing local government. Therese has been recognized with multiple professional awards, has experience in both provincial and local government and has served as a media strategist and spokesperson. Therese currently provides strategic communication advice and expertise to clients in local, regional and provincial government and in the private sector.

11:30 a.m. to 1:00 p.m.
Afternoon break/lunch on your own

How To Use Free Social Media Dashboards To More Easily Manage, Monitor And Track Campaigns

You have your social media accounts set up, you’ve started posting, now what?

Social outreach campaigns require nuance and planning in order to achieve favorable results. Utilizing a tool to schedule your posts, organizing your followers, alert you instantly and allow you to view it all on one single screen shot can make the task less exhausting and more rewarding.

Hear real-world examples gathered "from the trenches" of ways employees have successfully used a FREE tool on a variety of projects and learn ways to integrate them into your own social media strategy.

Specifically, the workshop will dive into best practices for using
social media dashboards including;

• Preparing and scheduling your message in order to improve visibility and maximize exposure
• Optimizing distribution through a variety of locations and audiences
• Amplifying your campaign
• Adjusting and customizing your message on the fly; Look who's talking and what they're saying
• Mitigating PR conundrums
• Expanding your outreach efforts

Maybe you're focusing on marketing and promotions, or perhaps you're interest lies in support and service; whatever your reason, in this workshop, you'll learn best practices and power tuning tips for using social media dashboards.

WORKSHOP LEADER: Dave Olson is the Community Director of HootSuite Media, Inc. HootSuite has been utilized to power campaigns from The White House, Martha Stewart Media and Zappos. Dave was also the Communications Wrangler of True North Media House, a media collaboration campaign to encourage social coverage of the winter sports and cultural events during 2010 in Vancouver. Dave is an experienced writer, podcaster, traveler and marketer adept at taking business and/or artistic projects from concept to completion.