How to design a 40-hour seminar series on social media marketing?
Susanne Schaaf, working at the Vienna Adult Education Institute “FUN”, contacts me at the beginning of the year: How about I teach her students social media – on ten occasions, four hours each, over a period of five weeks? Is there even that much to talk about on this topic?
“Watching you teach social media as part of the Austrian Eco-label further education course was really instructive for us. So we thought, maybe you could set up a workshop series like that for our institute, too?” Susanne suggests. I gave social media workshops for the Austrian Eco-label on three occasions, each lasting about one and a half hours.
And now? Teaching social media for 40 hours? “Absolutely,” I answer firmly.
I LOVE a good challenge!
And so does Esra, presenting her experience with the blogging software Wordpress.
Teaching social media: A mixture of “theory”, (a lot of) practice and several excursions over five weeks.
Taking stock ahead of the course, I find that I am actually quite capable and experienced in topics such as social media marketing, content planning, blogging, image and video design, podcasts, etc. (see my references here, for instance). And then, as always when you do something for the first time, (spontaneous) ideas and network partners also come in very handy.
On three out of my ten social media teaching occasions, for example, I take my students out of the course room: We meet interview partners in Vienna teaching us their insights from Facebook groups for marketing, podcasts, TikTok, YouTube and more. We also learn how to “properly” take photos for the social web. It’s fun – and even if it’s winter, we get some good shots at the local Donaupark.
Learning how to take different kinds of photos – photos that tell stories.
What I love about creating this social media course for the Adult Education Institute “FUN” is the opportunity to really go deep with all of my students. Some of them already have their own ideas and social media projects that we can continue working on during the course. At times, we end up discussing one question or another for over an hour, all learning from each other in the process.
Time flies, and after five weeks I can already hand over well-deserved certificates to all of my students!
Teaching about exciting community projects: Viktoria Urbanek’s successful Austrian podcast No Kangaroos, for instance.
Thank you all very much for your eager participation in the course!