Conventional media has a strange relationship with social media. Although social is a great way to distribute content, it’s pretty clear that reading headlines and summaries on your social feed isn’t going to drive revenue for the publisher. To be fair, it’s mainstream news that seems to have the biggest problem with social: the B2B trade press generally has a fairly productive relationship with Linkedin, twitter and the like.

There is still the concern that paid social is going to pull B2B advertising budgets away from traditional magazines and website, so even in B2B there’s an uncomfortable relationship. Ignoring the influence of social, however, isn’t the best approach, and so I was delighted to hear that Process Industry Informer is doing something positive and running a Social Media Masterclass.

The publication is bringing in social media trainer Jason Squires to teach the course, which they promise will help to improve participants’ knowledge, confidence and performance with Social Media for acquiring new customers, as the half-day course includes the following topics:

  • How To Grow A Large Following Of Potential Customers
  • The 3 Steps To Turn Those Followers Into Paying Customers
  • The 4 Things Needed For A Successful Social Media Strategy
  • How To Stand Out From The ‘Noise’ (And Your Competitors) On Social Media
  • Why Businesses Fail With Social Media – And How To Avoid These Mistakes
  • How To Use Social Media For 30 Mins Per Day – And Achieve Your Objectives
  • How To Deliver A Tangible And Reliable ROI

The course will be delivered online on 28th September 2016. Hopefully it will make some money for the magazine, as the cost to attend is £99 (with an early bird reduction to £49 until 14th September).

It’s great to see PII taking a positive approach to the potential opportunity and threat posed by social media. They’ve got a strong base of advertisers that will provide the attendees, and I’ll be interested to see if they expand this model to offer training to cover a broader range of marketing topics.