PNC Social Media Bootcamp Proves the Importance of Social Media

d-cohn-pnc-classIt’s a pretty safe bet to assume that just about everyone over the age of seven has a Facebook account, or a Twitter account, or a Pinterest account, or… well you get the idea.  Social media has become an integral part of the social landscape among Americans.

Believe it or not social media, if used properly, can be an extremely powerful networking tool. Media ranging from podcasts to old fashioned text can effectively be utilized on social media to promote products, services, events and plenty more.  How do maximize your efforts by using social media, you ask?  Well help is on the way.

Darlene McCarthy Cohn has partnered up with Purdue University North Central to show people how to effectively use social media as a promotional tool, as opposed to just another way to share the latest fad or celebrity baby photos.  Ms. Cohn is the owner D.Cohn Communications, a company that specializes in helping businesses optimize their social media footprint to make them more visible to the population at large.  I was fortunate enough to sit in on one of her workshops at PNC, and in just the one day I learned more about social media then I ever knew. 

Ms. Cohn is a former professor at Purdue North Central University and offers this workshop to students and non-students alike through the Office of Graduate and Extended Learning. The goal of the workshop is to get small business owners thinking about social media in a new way and to get the business set up appropriately on the web. 

Cohn explained, “The vast majority of small business owners have been tasked with doing social media themselves and they don’t even know where to start.  So, what I do is provide the seminar to give them a leg up on their efforts. I also provide a resource so the students can come back and have help, because everyone needs to do it."

Promoting a product or service on social media is not always as simple as one might think it is.  It takes skill, some savvy, and most importantly patience. With the sometimes overwhelming number of different types of social media available now, it’s important to know how to weave your way through the jungle of nonsense that social media can sometimes be. These workshops are designed to teach how to best reach the promised land of effective use of social media as a promotion tool. Even after the workshops are complete, D. Cohn Communications can also step in and lead you out of empty, scary, social media emptiness if things still just aren't clicking for you business.

When you combine her successful business with the infinitely growing Communications career options, and the longstanding excellence in the field of Communications that Purdue offers to it’s students, these workshops can only lead to great things for you, your business, and your social media impact.