Volunteers are offering social media help to voluntary organisations, community groups, charities, clubs and societies in a relaxed, informal setting.

No boring speeches, no jargon.

Tools like blogs, podcasts, video and social networks can give a real boost to campaigning organisations, often for no or little cost. So these experts are offering you approachable one-to-one help and support because they believe it can help. You might just want to see what is possible and go away and think about it. You might be itching to set up a blog and start using it. Perhaps you think video might help you tell your story but don't know where to start? All is possible.

There'll be no lectures, just people with knowledge, ideas and a passion to help you make best use of the internet for your group or organisation.

Help given at Bearwood Social Media Surgery

• Mark Griffiths helped Janet Thomas to We learnt about Hootsuite, post scheduling on all platforms. Talked about trial and error, analytics, to help you decide on what content to decide upon. Janet said she has been inspired to write a social media strategy. Janet said that It was great to be paired up with someone in the music industry as she is a volunteer for The Bearwood Promoters. It was the first time Mark had helped at asurgery. He said ' I thoroughly enjoyed the surgery, being able to pass on some knowledge to someone else is always good and I managed to collect a few of my own thoughts in the process.' He added 'Learning how others use social media and understanding the problems others face is massively beneficial to my own use of social media.' Recorded on Friday 19 October 2012
• Coral Musgrave helped Fiona Hobbs to We talked about setting up a good Facebook page for the organisation, discussed whether twitter is the right place for them to be, looked at similar organisations to Brushstrokes who use social media. Discussed blogging platforms, and whose blogs to look at for good examples. As Brustrokes work with vulnerable people we talked about safety on line. Fiona also said she may start a blog to record her experience of being a volunteer at Brushstokes. Recorded on Friday 19 October 2012
• Jamie Garner helped Gina Neale to Learn about how to use hashtags. Recorded on Monday 11 June 2012
• Jamie Garner helped rebecca schneider to Set up a twitter account, this has been so cool, so exciting Recorded on Monday 11 June 2012
• Nick Drew helped Jan Jesson to Learn more about twitter with jean. Recorded on Monday 11 June 2012
• Nick Drew helped jean cooper to Understand twitter and how to organise my tweets by using seesmic and a bit about Facebook. Looked a google docs and how to collaborate on documents. Also looking at Eventbrite Recorded on Monday 11 June 2012
• rebecca schneider helped Sally Taylor to Linking up blog, Facebook and twitter Recorded on Monday 11 June 2012
• Lorna Prescott helped Jennie Sandford to Manage her time more effectively in asocial networking way, by introducing me to lists, hoot suite and google alerts Recorded on Monday 11 June 2012
• Jo Burrill helped Sharron Wise to Familiarise me with how blogs may be of use to us at Smethwick Heritage Centre Recorded on Monday 11 June 2012
• David Evetts helped Jo Burrill to Introduced to social fixer addon for Facebook to limit facebooks ability to share unwanted information Recorded on Monday 11 June 2012
• view all 11 assistances