Get Social with GoToTraining and make some money in the process!

They say everyone is good at something, I say why not get paid for it at the same time?  Let’s face it, not everyone is lucky enough to have there talent/hobby/passion also be their job, but that doesn’t have to mean you can’t get rewarded for doing it anyway.  With GoToTraining you can hold online classes for up to 200 people, where you teach others what you know about your special skill or talent and charge them for it.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with GoToTraining you can find it’s features page here.  The RevStream feature ties into PayPal, so once you’ve set up your PayPal account you can start charging students that attend your classes.  Sounds pretty simple right?  Well while “If you build it they will come” worked for Kevin Costner, odds are you are going to need to work a little harder, even if you are teaching the secrets of the Universe.  This is where the getting social part comes in and GoToTraining is about to add some new features that will make it easy!

Tweeting Registration Links : GoToTraining organizers can now tweet registration links via Twitter.

The “Invite” button on the Manage Trainings page has been changed to a “Share” button.  When organizers click the “Share” button, in addition to seeing an option to email the registration URL and copy the training information, you will now see options to Post to Twitter and Facebook. 

For Twitter, click the Share button and select Post to Twitter.  If you are not already logged into Twitter, you will be prompted to log in.  Once logged in, you will see the “Share a link on Twitter” page.  The training Title will be added to the default post (highlighted in blue) along with the shortened registration URL.  Once you click Tweet, the post will be added to your Twitter page. Posting Registration Links to Facebook: GoToTraining Organizers can now share registration links via Facebook.

From the Manage Trainings page, click the Share button and select Post to Facebook to share registration links via Facebook.  If you are not already logged into Facebook, you will be prompted to log in.  Once logged in, you will see the “Post to Your Wall” page. 

The training title, description and session date(s)/time(s) will be added to the default post. Once you click Publish, the post will be added to your Facebook page. They hyperlinks in the post, along with the “Register” link will take you to the Registration page for the session. 

If you do this I’d love to hear how it goes so please come back and leave a comment.  Good luck with your new venture!

Social Media for Support – Getting started.

Last year was a big one for Social Media and 2011 is looking to be even bigger.  It’s time you stopped thinking that only Marketing and PR people need to concern themselves with Social Media, if you’re in Customer Support you should be there too.

You may have already set up a Facebook account, which you soon abandoned after the millionth request for help with someones farm or tried “Tweeting” a couple of times about what you just ate, before giving up and moving on with your life.  You wouldn’t be the first to roll your eyes and exclaim “I tried it, and I don’t get what all the fuss is about?” The point is, it’s not really important if you “get it” in the beginning, chances are some of your customers do “get it”  and they’re expecting you to be there listening.  Underneath all of the links to funny cat videos and famous quotes you’ll find many people simply asking questions, I’m going to show you how using a couple of simple tools you’ll be able to find the questions being asked about you.

The first tool I am going to suggest to you is Google Alerts, it’s been around a while and is very easy to use.  Basically it allows you to set up automated searches using the key words of your choice e.g. Company name, Product or Service name.  The results of these searches are then sent to your Email right away, daily or weekly.  You may wonder what is the benefit?  Well it’s a very easy way to find blog and online forum posts that you would other wise miss and redirect wayward customers back to your own Knowledge Base and Support Sites.

The second tool is specifically for Twitter and is a great way for you to see how much activity there is before you setup a dedicated Twitter account.  The site is called TweetGrid and it allows you to set up a grid of keyword searches for Twitter posts, 9 x 9 being the maximum.  Each search box automatically refreshes so you can pretty much set it and forget it.

I only a few minutes you’ve set up an automatic Social Media monitoring station, the next step is to simply watch the results come in and then decide what kind of response is required.  I’ll cover formulating a support strategy in another blog post soon.