New Forest Social Media Surgery

No upcoming dates

Unfortunately, for the time being at least, the New Forest Social Media Surgery has had to shut up shop as the surgery manager is temporarily working in Yorkshire and a caretaker surgery manager could not be found.

It is hoped that the surgery can be restarted in October 2013.

A huge thank you to everyone who has contributed to the surgery or attended one of our events in the past six months.

JF 27.03.13

If you'd like to learn how to use Twitter for the first time, or get to grips with Facebook or another social media application, do come along and take part in the New Forest's very own social media surgery. Maybe you're a novice or totally new user of the world wide web and would appreciate some 1:1 learning tailored to your own learning style?

Or you've got a problem with content on your website and would like some advice on how to make it work better for your business? There's something for everyone at the surgery - even if you'd just like to share what you know already to help others use social media, email and websites.

A social media surgery is a proven format providing an informal and sociable suitable for all ages between 9 and 99. You're never too old to pick up a new skill! You're guaranteed absolute NO lectures, no sales patter, and no 'death by PowerPoint' presentations. You can learn at your own pace and return to as many events as you like. There's even FREE wifi!

And, best of all for these troubled economic times, there's no fee to attend or for any advice or training you may receive whilst there. We do ask, though, that you actively support our host, The Oak Inn, by purchasing beverages and drinks from the bar whilst at the surgery in a fair trade exchange for gaining access to FREE personal learning and peer support.

Our hosts do not charge us for use of the space so we unashamedly encourage participants to demonstrate their appreciation in a practical way, and to tell their friends about the venue. If you'd like to book a table for a meal during or after the surgery has ended, please make an advance reservation by phoning the pub on the number listed above.

If you'd like to come along to a future surgery it'd be appreciated if you'd first register on this site in advance of attendance (we won't bombard you with mail - promise) and thereafter indicate which New Forest Social Media Surgery event you'd like to attend. We'll then know to expect and look out for you. Advance registration is not, however, a pre-requisite to attendance.

Follow @ShareWhatYouKno

It is ESSENTIAL that you bring with you your wifi-enabled smartphone (eg iPhone) or tablet (eg iPad), or a laptop. As power connections are limited at the venue, please try to ensure your device is charged beforehand.

Recent Tweets with hashtag #

Arby Rahmat Fadillah Thu 28 Feb 2013 12:12PM

#NFSM'13 #NFSM'13 #NFSM'13 #NFSM'13 #NFSM'13 #NFSM'13 #NFSM'13 #NFSM'13 #NFSM'13 #NFSM'13 #NFSM'13 #NFSM'13 #NFSM'13 #NFSM'13 #NFSM'13
Arby Rahmat Fadillah Thu 28 Feb 2013 12:06PM

Ga ada lo ga asik @najibaarram @Dit_Ilham @CosmoNaitomea @Dilazimer @inggiHamzah @ShiIndahLianti Guys, jangan lupain Babel's #NFSM'13
.ℓσรMecคℕเℂσsяβℓσω Thu 28 Feb 2013 3:38AM

A Jugar #NFSM
$eba$ Arroniz ;) Wed 20 Feb 2013 10:53AM

Que craa!!#NFSM

Help given at New Forest Social Media Surgery

John Fox helped Cheryl Maher to Discussed some options for using social media to interact and engage existing and prospective customers. Recorded on Tuesday 12 February 2013
Paula Norris helped Linda and Dave Goodrich to With building interactions for their Facebook Page by explaining how Norris Gifts in Beaulieu has started using their own page to actively engage with established and prospective customers to her shop. Recorded on Monday 7 January 2013
Chris Smith helped Christina Simons to Chris was tonight's superstar helping a large number of folk with Facebook Pages for the business and personal use. A huge, very public, thank you from the surgery manager to Chris for a sterling effort that I believe was much appreciated by everyone he interacted with. Recorded on Monday 7 January 2013
Karen Evans-McDaid helped Pete Gibbs to Get to grips with managing their Facebook Page content and interactions with interested parties. Do check out the link below for additional tips on creating an effective Facebook page for your business. Recorded on Monday 7 January 2013
Marion Langridge helped Linda and Dave Goodrich to Upload photographs to their new Windows 8 laptop in order to add them to their Facebook Page. Recorded on Monday 7 January 2013
Trish Dorricott helped Steve Adams to Linking his personal and professional Facebook pages. We haven't got to the bottom of this yet as both Trish and John encountered difficulties in successfully linking the two profiles together. John will investigate offline and liaise direct with Steve. Recorded on Monday 7 January 2013
Marion Langridge helped Liz Carter to Follow people and get new followers on Twitter. Always remember that to be effective you need to interact with other Twitter users so focus your tweets on the business proposition and associated topics of interest. Tweet or retweet unrelated matters and you'll invariably find that you start to lose hard-won followers who decide that a significant number of your tweets are not relevant to them. Only follow IDs that are of direct relevance to your business proposition in order to maintain the quality of your Twitter feed and reduce dross! I recommend following up the Learning Pool link below which will offer Twitter user reference guide you can download and keep. Although aimed primarily at public sector organisations this is an excellent reference resource for making an effective start with Twitter and developing interactions with people you follow or who follow you. Recorded on Monday 7 January 2013
John Fox helped Linda and Dave Goodrich to Build the audience for their Facebook Page. Social media is just that, social. You build your audience by being social - liking other peoples' pages, their comments on profiles, pictures they publish and so forth. By putting yourself about like this gets your Facebook Page appearing on their profiles and newsfeeds. In time people will click through to your Page to find out more about you. So the other half of the equation is create a destination on your Page that will encourage visitors to click that Like button for your establishment. Once they do that your future posts will appear in their newsfeed. Build your audience by publishing images of the local area and making observations of interest to past and potential customers. Maintaining a good Facebook page involves maintaining the conversation, a dialogue with your audience to keep them engaged and interested in your business proposition. It's all about holding an interesting conversation, a dialogue, with past, current and prospective contacts. Be sure to like the pages of local organisations who are likely to have followers who might be interested in your own business proposition. Check out (and Like) 'Norris Gifts' for inspiration. 'Leyland Country House' is an established NF business with a great FB Page ... definitely worth checking out. For further inspiration, see link below for creating an effective FB page for your business. Recorded on Monday 7 January 2013
Trish Dorricott helped Marion Langridge to To learn how an application such as HootSuite can be used to schedule social media interactions for publication in order to more effectively manage interaction and engagement opportunities. Recorded on Wednesday 28 November 2012
Chris Smith helped Trish Dorricott to Learn how to use HootSuite to manage the New Forest Visitor Centre's social media engagement. Recorded on Wednesday 28 November 2012
view all 25 assistances

All help given at New Forest Social Media Surgery

Karen Evans-McDaid helped Jane Morton to Create a Twitter ID and start tweeting. Recorded on Wednesday 28 November 2012
John Fox helped Paula Norris to Find out about using Foursquare to raise awareness of her shop in Beaulieu (see links list). Recorded on Wednesday 28 November 2012
John Fox helped Paula Norris to Consider strategies for increasing the number of 'likes' on her business's Facebook page (see links list), and creating opportunities to interact directly with past, current and future customers such as publishing high quality pictures of products that can purchased instore, or of local scenes around Beaulieu, or sharing seasonal video material that has been produced to promote the New Forest as a visitor destination (see links list). Recorded on Wednesday 28 November 2012
John Fox helped Chris Smith to Get to grips with the subtleties of following and being followed on Twitter in a business context, eg balancing chatty conversation and comment with productive business-relevant interaction. Recorded on Wednesday 28 November 2012
Karen Evans-McDaid helped Marion Langridge to learn about using hashtags in Twitter and Instagram and demonstrated how other users can find your tagged content. Recorded on Monday 29 October 2012
Jo Holmes helped Kevin Holmes to Explore how the New Forest public authorities could bring new life to out of print (but available electronically) titles by making them available as e-books. Recorded on Monday 29 October 2012
Karen Evans-McDaid helped Marion Langridge to Karen introduced Marion to Dropbox and explained how it can be used to store documents and photographs in the cloud and share them with other people. Recorded on Monday 29 October 2012
John Fox helped Hilary Marshall to Set up wifi on her new smartphone and create a Twitter ID. Hilary will download Learning Pool's guide to using Twitter tomorrow. Recorded on Monday 29 October 2012
John Fox helped Kevin Holmes to Create and login to a new user account on Linked In. They're now connected! Recorded on Monday 29 October 2012
Marion Langridge helped Karen Evans-McDaid to Get to grips with Instagram on a Windows phone. Recorded on Monday 29 October 2012
John Fox helped Davina Staples to Learn the fundamentals of using pictures with Instagram as an additional leverage opportunity for engaging past, current and future visitors to the forest. Recorded on Monday 1 October 2012
Sarah Willats helped Hilary Marshall to Work out a three-way resolution to an event ticket production and retail operation operated by the three closely connected forest enterprises that support the arts and culture locally, taking advantage of recently increased dress allowances and a most welcome injection of cash. (E&OE) Recorded on Monday 1 October 2012
Karen Evans-McDaid helped Trish Dorricott to add lists and other datasets to Facebook Pages content. They both agreed the Facebook Pages help available online was very complicated and we're not at all convinced that we've got the the heart of the problem. Recorded on Monday 1 October 2012
Karen Evans-McDaid helped Trish Dorricott to understand how the Hootsuite application can be used to schedule tweets and Facebook for publication at a set time and date. Recorded on Monday 1 October 2012
John Fox helped Sarah Willats to think about how to 'sell' Facebook and Twitter to local tourism businesses. Recorded on Monday 1 October 2012