We’ve recently revamped our suite of digital marketing workshops – sprucing up our sessions on writing for the web, and introducing whole new courses on SEO, smartphone photography and video production.

So why should you book a training session with Sookio? Well…

1. We know what we’re talking about!

We’ve been working in social media since the early days of Facebook and Twitter. We have a renowned local photographer running the photography workshop and an established producer running video training who can’t wait to share all his tips on planning, shooting and editing video that’ll work for your business.

Speaking personally, I’ve been knocking around in web content for [counts on fingers] 22 years. Yikes. I must have trained over a thousand people by now – not just small businesses but teams from Sony, Hodder & Stoughton and the University of Cambridge, along with my work for Government Digital Services; training people up on the new GOV.UK platform.

So when you come to a copywriting workshop with me, you’re dealing with someone who really knows what she’s talking about and is keen to share the tricks of the trade!

2. We love sharing our knowledge

This is the thing. As anyone who knows us as a company will tell you, we love learning and we love sharing our learnings. Take a look at our blog, for example, where we’re continually sharing insights into the latest tools and features.

One of my favourite things about running training sessions is being asked tricky questions and coming up with answers on the fly – there’s always an example I can pull out about the way a brand has used social media to deal with a crisis, for example, or talk through a brilliant subject line and why it works.

Because we’ve worked in the industry for so long we have all these examples at our fingertips, rather than being people who are just reading off the slides, with no in-depth knowledge.

3. We make it fun!

OK, so I once ran some social media workshops in a hospice and we spent the whole day laughing.

We really like getting people working together in teams, tackling interesting challenges, and generally create an informal atmosphere where you take time out from that massive to do list and use a more creative part of your brain.

There are lot of opportunities to roll up your sleeves and get stuck in, and quickfire quizzes so everyone gets a chance to join in.

Just ask the people who came along to my marathon fundraising #RunDMSue courses (pictured above), they’ll tell you that not only were the sessions hugely enjoyable, but that they’re still using the tips we shared in the workshops – which were a couple of years ago – today.

4. We make sure it sinks in

No one wants to sit there watching someone droning their way through a 1057-slide PowerPoint presentation with tightly packed text and clip art diagrams – why is there always one of a pyramid that doesn’t make any sense?

So we build in activities from the start that help people put theory into practice.

It’s things you can do on your own, in pairs, or in teams. In our video workshop for example, you get to produce a short film, which, as well as being an excellent way of quickly learning how to storyboard and shoot, is a really fun team-building exercise.

5. We keep you accountable

Don’t be surprised if we set you homework! We like to wrap up the sessions by asking you to set out the actions you’ll take after the workshop. So in a social media training session we’ll get you to commit to three new things you’ll try in the coming week, or in a writing for the web workshop you might be tasked with editing that page you’ve been putting off!

We then arrange a follow-up call, say a week or so later, so we can find out how you got on and you can ask us any questions about things you found tricky.

6. We make it relevant

If we’re running a workshop on social media for marketers in the education sector, we’ll make sure the examples you see throughout the workshop are from schools and universities using Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, brilliantly.

When we run a video workshop we’ll ask you in advance about the sort of videos you want to shoot – do you run a lot of events, have case studies to share, or want to shine a spotlight on your team members? We’ll make sure that the practical activities are designed to hone your skills with this type of content.

And in SEO training we’ll want to know about your specific challenges so we can build the whole session around you and your business objectives.

7. We’re all about best practice, us!

This has always been my approach and I make sure it’s woven into the company culture at Sookio.

It’s easy to sit around sneering all day, saying “Pah, look at those idiots getting it wrong, don’t do it like that”…when you could be saying: “This mix of images and captions is brilliant because of X and can you see how this leads to this business getting lots of engagement. Here’s how you can do it, too.”

So we share examples throughout the sessions of brands doing things well. We think about what our attendees want to get out of it, share tools that will help them be more efficient, plan better, analyse the data, and get a better return on their digital marketing activities.

Your next steps

As you can tell, we really enjoy training people in digital marketing. If your team is looking to up-skill, take a look at our suite of courses and get a workshop booked in!

SEO | Social media | Video production | Smartphone photography | Writing for the web

PS And in the meantime…

We also have a range of online courses at Sookio School – things like how to write a brilliant press release, blogging for business and Twitter strategy.

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