Still Puzzled By Social Media?

A free social media course from the NH Small Business Development Center is helping small business owners and entrepreneurs learn how to effectively promote their companies on YouTube, Facebook and Twitter.

The course, Social Media for Small Business, was launched earlier this year and is one of more than 20 online courses that are part of the center's e-Learning for Entrepreneurs program funded through a U.S. Small Business Administration grant and underwritten by Public Service of NH.

The course walks students through the use of three social media tools and help users build an effective Internet-based marketing plan. It's for people who don't know about social media and want to get into it. Even if you are advanced, you will pick up tips, says Janice Gregory, associate state director of NH SBDC. It gives you the tools to get up and going. It's more geared to the beginner. A second social media course, one which will dig deeper and include information on LinkedIn, will roll out in May. A course on e-commerce is scheduled for September.

Courses are meant to teach entrepreneurs and business owners the best social media tools to use in their marketing. You don't want to start (social media tools) all at once. Take them on one at a time to see how effective they are and decide what you are trying to measure. You have to figure out what's important for your business, says Heidi Edwards Dunn, educational program coordinator with NH SBDC.

The NH SBDC's e-Learning for Entrepreneurs classes are available for free online, any time. Classes are offered in finance, marketing, and business management. Courses can be taken during one or multiple sittings and students can pause a course at any point and restart it later. More than 3,000 e-Learning for Entrepreneurs classes have been taken since they went online two years ago.

For more info on NH SBDC, visit www.nhsbdc.org.