This is the final installment in a seven-part series on social media.

First comes the phenomenon. Then come the high-priced courses to study the strange new creature.

And so it is with social online media. With mega-websites such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn occupying a growing presence in the workplace, it follows that financial advisors are asking questions about how best to deploy these powerful new networking tools.

Now, there are some answers, with organizations ranging from new websites to prestigious business schools offering structured tutorials in the use — and how to avoid the misuse of — social media.

Says Livia Grujich, cofounder and managing director of OnQ Communications Inc., a Toronto marketing and public relations firm, and a course co-ordinator at York University’s Schulich School of Business: “With everything that is happening online and the whole state of the economy, we started to pay attention to social media and how people can actually benefit from using these tools.”

Advisors who have never tweeted, blogged or updated their online status may not know where to start, and many may be missing out on business opportunities, she notes: “I find that a lot of my job today is still educating people about social media. Although it’s a hot topic and a buzzword, a lot of people still don’t understand or know what it is. Many tend to write it off as ‘just a trend’ or something for the younger crowd, and think that social media will pass. But it’s not going to go away.”

Grujich, for one, saw the training vacuum early. In 2008, she proposed that a two-day social media course be offered by Schulich, for which she also teaches marketing management. “I found that many of the individuals who were in my marketing course,” she says, “were marketing managers and CEOs of companies, and they were being affected by social media in one way or another.”

Schulich now offers a two-day workshop for $2,395 or a five-day workshop for $3,890. Both courses are popular and provide a basic understanding of social media as well as the beginning of a social media plan. The focus is very much on practical applications, says Grujich, who describes the workshops as “very hands-on courses designed to help people start on a plan that they can use once they are back in the office.”
@page_break@The courses provide recipients with the knowledge of what social media sites are, which ones are suitable for doing business and the key points about each host website. Classes are small (10 to 20 people) and participants are encouraged to stay connected with classmates on LinkedIn after the course is complete — the idea is to maintain support by sharing in success stories and ideas for individual social media business plans.

Grujich spends time on the basics of social media as well as making participants aware that their target audience is already online and talking about them, whether or not course participants have an active campaign in progress. “You need to know that people will be talking about your brand, whether you like it or not,” says Grujich. “And many people today are using social media as an outlet to talk.”

She also assists course participants in creating individual social media plans, which they will be able to integrate into their existing marketing plan. “Social media should go together with what you are already doing,” she says. “It shouldn’t be about choosing one or the other. This is an area where I find clients often tend to make mistakes.”

A U.S.-based option is the Modern Media Leadership Insti-tute in California, which offers similar workshops on social media training and development. It’s aimed at companies looking to get a social media strategy up and running. The MMLI was founded by CEO Linda Zimmer in 2007, who has worked with Fortune 500 companies, federal government agencies and the State of California. The MMLI’s courses range through social media basics, a social media management series, social media strategy, and social media marketing and engagement. The MMLI also offers courses in social media monitoring and reputation management. Courses start at US$895 and go up to US$2,900, and are offered in various U.S. cities.

Although Zimmer is not currently offering workshops in Canada, she does work on a contract basis with Canadian companies that are looking to train their employees. She hopes to offer regular Canadian workshops in the future.

When Mark Hudon, a financial advisor with Toronto-based GP Wealth Management Inc. , decided to learn more about social media, he turned to the Internet. Hudon signed up for an online course with Social Media Magic University, a website (www.socialmediamagic.com) that teaches visitors how to get started with social media.

“There is so much out there in terms of training,” Hudon says. “But through this course, I was able to gain the knowledge and confidence to launch my own blog.”

But Hudon adds that he also finds mastering the area to be an ongoing task: “It’s always changing, so you have to stay on top of it.” IE