While the technology exhibited a few hiccups (the sound sound went DimDim a couple times), the feedback has generally been positive for our first attempt. Of course there’s plenty to learn and improve, but we did manage to cover the high level impact of social media on traditional media, and the essentials of Twitter, in around 50 minutes.

Peter Angione kicked the session off with a charming introduction, then I whipped through a few slides on strategy and tactics.

I recommend Forrester’s P.O.S.T. framework (People, Objectives, Strategy, Technology) as a good starting point for building a social media strategy. Once the framework is in place, I use my own silly acronym, B.U.M.P.P., as a mnemonic to remember what to do tactically – Brand, Understand, Monitor, Policy, and Participate.

Moving from PowerPoint to shared web surfing, I took the audience on a quick tour of the good, the bad, and the ugly of Twitter use by newsrooms and journalists.

I showcased Camilla di Giusseppe’s Twitter page as an example of active engagement with the community. Not only that, but it has all the right elements – a short Twitter handle so as not to eat up too many of the 140 characters, a full name in the name field so it’s clear it’s a real person, a rich and specific bio, a well-formed location (Calgary, AB versus “Cowtown”), and a custom background for bonus points.

We went through the basics of a tweet (a 140 character “micro-blog” entry seen by those who follow you, and generally open to the public), a retweet (“forwarding” someone’s tweet to others – a sign of respect or admiration), hashtags – a bit of text like #YYC that allows for tracking of topics and searching, the “Trending Topics” section, and live search.

We wrapped the formal part of the webinar by showing a glimpse of TweetDeck, a tremendous desktop Twitter client that allows for searching, sorting, and grouping, and Hootsuite, a web-based Twitter service that allows news teams to share one twitter account.

While Camilla’s profile and use of Twitter represents much of what’s good – content, community, and collaboration, but above all, being human, other station pages could barely be differentiated. The worst of the bunch in Calgary has never shown signs of human life, making it more “anti-social media” than the reverse.

Thanks to all who attended, and a special thanks to those who have filled out the survey, we’ll be working hard to improve the platform and bring you the content you desire. An overwhelming majority said “Yes!” to more webinars – we hear you!

Thanks Peter, Cal, and Andy for the opportunity to work with such a great bunch – I look forward to the next one! You can follow me on Twitter at @dblacombe.