Fourth Annual ONU Social Media Workshop

Last Friday I had the unique opportunity of attending the fourth annual Social Media Workshop here at Ohio Northern University. Over the course of the day, I had the chance to listen to 11 different professionals in the social media industry about what they do and tips for being successful in certain avenues of social media. The workshop was put on by the Public Relations Student Society of America (PRSSA) chapter here at ONU. The event started in the Activities Room of the McIntosh Center with a keynote address from Amanda Todorovich from the Cleveland Clinic. Amanda is the senior director of content and creative services and is responsible for the social media and blog content released by the Cleveland Clinic. Her keynote address was a great icebreaker into what we could expect from the remainder of the workshop. She explained to us the different strategies and tools the Cleveland Clinic implements into their social media usage and why they have been so successful in their social media usage over the last six years.

My favorite presentation from the Social Media Workshop was Daniel Farkas’ presentation

on Making Multimedia Social: Simple Success Strategies for 2019. Farkas delivered five key tips for creating a successful multimedia marketing campaign without breaking the bank. These five tips were as followed: 1.) Don’t fight science, 2.) Don’t overthink video strategy, 3.) Organized hoarding, 4.) It’s time to play the game, 5.) Be lean. Don’t fight science is concerned with creating content that fits the surprisingly short attention span of humans and creating video content that works naturally with the human eye. His next tip about overthinking video strategy contained five subpoints to help simplify your video strategy: remember business goals, understand the sales funnel, actually look at and use an editorial calendar, any article on effective content applies to multimedia content and always measure the success of your multimedia campaign. When Farkas talked about organized hoarding he was just reaffirming that you should save all of your content because odds are, it will be able to be used sometime in the future for other projects. The biggest point discussed with Farkas’ fourth tip was don’t be afraid to utilize user-generated ideas and content. He also discussed using product placement and sales promotions to increase the effectiveness of your multimedia campaign. In his fifth and final tip, Farkas highlighted the importance of efficiency and creating value beyond the video. Farkas also included the importance of using earned, paid, shared and owned media to accomplish the same overall goal for your organization.

I learned a lot of useful information by attending the Social Media Workshop. I have had very limited opportunities to meet and learn from professionals in the social media industry and this workshop provided me with the opportunity to not only meet a significant number of professionals in the field but also to learn a broad range of information that can be used in practices all across the social media industry. I can honestly say the Social Media Workshop is something I plan on attending in the future and would definitely recommend it to anyone interested in improving their use of social media to promote themselves or the organization they are a part of.