The traning course „Social Media and innovative communication for workers’ organisations” took place in Lublin from 8 to 10 July 2021. It was organized in a hybrid form by Europejski Dom Spotkań - Fundacja Nowy Staw, with the support of EZA and of the European Union.
The attendees, representatives of workers’ organisations, came from Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, France, Malta, Poland, Portugal, Serbia, Slovakia and Spain.
MAIN TOPICS
The training began with an opening session chaired by EZA Secretary General – Sigrid Schraml, who welcomed all participants, and the integration session – conducted by Aneta Szczykutowicz. During this session partcipants had the opportunity to present themselves and their organisations – main actvities and general profile. This session gave an opportunity to get to know each other more. It was also a part of creating a good atmosphere during the training from its very beginning.
During train main course attention was paid to the following aspects as:
- Storytelling, narrative psychology and other ideas for audience engaging
- Storytelling – where to look for stories and how to get involved audience
- Creation of posts on social media
- Taking good pictures
- Successful posts in social media
- Podcasting as a way of promotion
- The development of social media and its purpose
- Target group and choice of social media channel
- Practical preparation for running social media
The last day of the workshop ended with an evaluation session during which participants could say what they had learned and what skills they would like to develop in the future.
METHODS
The main assumption of this training was to develop competence in handling social media channels by people responsible for PR in their organizations. Therefore, both the organizers and the trainers put great emphasis on the fact that the training was as practical as possible with the use of active methods of working with a group. Every trainer prepared multimedia presentations which was the basis for the theoretical introductions and the program outline for the each module. Each presentation was accompanied by tasks designed by trainers (both group and individual), which activated participants and allowed them to acquire knowledge based on their own experience. Attention and activity activation methods were as follows:
- integration session
- illusionist trick, metaphors, analogies, curiosities
- giving inspirations – presentations of books and examples of ideas useful in PR tasks
- energizers
- theoretical introduction to each topic – multimedia presentation
- questions to the audience directed by the trainer, group discussion
- individual tasks: creating posts on social media, session of individual taking pictures and group discussion of them ( strengths and weaknesses of each image); creating potcasts and listening to the samples of different types of podscats
- work on training materials - working on the goals we want to achieve, defining the profile of our audience, check lists
- brainstorming
- discussions and summaries of each task
- evaluation session – discussion about skills acquired and proposal of the further developmnet/next similar trainings and our coopeartion in the frame of EZA network if it comes to promotion in social media
Both groups: participtaing in Lublin and those participating online had the same materials and tasks at the same time.
All participants received after training course all presentations prepared by the trainers.
RESULTS, CONCLUSIONS, STATEMENTS
All participants could develop their knowledge and skills in such areas of social media a as:
- principles of good story telling - making the audience interested in our message, unconventionality and cracking the scheme in our communication
- creating interesting content for posts – practical exercise
- knowledge how a camera works and how to take good quality pictures by professional camera and by smartphone
- development of practical photo-taking skills
- knowledge about different types of podcasts and rules of creating good quality podcasts (equipment, content)
- development of different social media, comparison of different channels and its destination
- choosing the right channel in relation to objective and target group
- SMART method in using proper social media channel
- international differences in using social media and creating content of published information
- creating a profile of social media audience (target group)
STATEMENTS and CONCLUSIONS:
Participants during evaluation session had a possibility to speak about topics in the field of social media which they would like to develop in the future and which can be useful in their daily work in workers organizations. Proposals are as follows:
- deepening knowledge in the field of psychological mechanisms of content creation in social media
- creating a common network for the exchange and promotion of activities in the framework of EZA
- human rights and image protection in the digital era
- using acquired knowledge and skills in better promotion and recruitment of new member of trade unions - using modern and attractive methods and way of communication for young people
- statement to organize more such trainings as a continuation