Amid a wild, fast changing world, we provide one-hour, three-hour, one-day and three-day hands-on workshops for companies and for professional associations that inspire people to see possibilities, overcome common obstacles, and learn how to create, manage and execute innovative new social media programs.

Our workshops bust out of the bland “talk-at” lecture mode and get you moving, thinking and learning in highly experiential ways, helping to make sure what you learn sticks. Workshop participants consistently give us the highest marks, calling our sessions inspirational, energizing, motivating and filled with real-world, hype-free advice.

To learn more, contact Beeline Labs partner Lois Kelly, lkelly@beelinelabs.com or 401-333-5464.

Some of our popular workshops:

Beyond buzz & blogs: Succeeding in a marketing 2.0 world

People are tuning out companies and their marketing messages in record numbers, partly due to distrust (almost 75 % Americans distrust corporations) and partly due to boredom with the style, tone and ideas in most marketing communications.

To try to get consumer attention marketers are turning to some cool new techniques, like writing CEO blogs, creating online communities, trying to influence the influencers, and hoping for a viral breakout success. Yet these “new” techniques are also failing.

What’s a marketer to do in this new environment? Is there anything that works?

Join Beeline Labs for this one-hour workshop where we’ll help your team understand:

• Why many popular social media techniques may be cool for us as individuals, but won’t work for business.
• How to infuse social media principles into existing programs, like lead gen, events, public relations, CRM and word of mouth marketing, to dramatically improve performance.
• How to create the type of content that gets attention and gets talked about (Hint: There are nine themes people always like to hear about.)
• 10 new inexpensive tools and resources that no marketing organization should be without.

Marketing in a social media age: Realizing the possibilities; burning down the obstacles

For: marketers, public relations and advertising professionals who want to more quickly realize the possibilities of social media, get re-energized about the power and potential of marketing, and overcome the management, resource and talent obstacles that often get in the way of change.

People are tuning out marketing and tuning into one another using vast new social media options that pop up every day, from Wikis, blogs, and communities to social networks, Twitter, You Tube, HubDub and Digg. It’s downright overwhelming for those of us with day jobs to keep track of what’s new, a never mind find time to see how to make it work for our work.

In this high-energy, highly interactive workshop you get to step out of the noise and clutter to see what’s possible for your organization and how to more easily create the types of new approaches that will deliver the greatest value to your organization. Most importantly this workshop will help you get your mojo back, reminding you of why you went into marketing in the first place. Be ready to move, to think, to share and to get out of the usual marketing, media and PR boxes.

You’ll come away with:

• The two guiding principles of today’s new marketing environment
• Clear vision of what’s possible - and pragmatic — for your organization
• Ideas on how to overcome common obstacles
• New ways to tap into the social media digital conversations for research, customer service, innovation and reputation management
• How to create powerful blog and online community programs that take thought leadership, lead generation, public relations and customer relationships to a new level
• Strategies for where and how to change traditional marketing functions and budgets
• 10 cool tools and resources that no marketer should be without

The tribalization of business: Realizing the transformational possibilities of online communities and social networks.

For: marketers interested in learning how to develop and manage online customer communities to advance business goals like customer insights, product innovation, customer advocacy, CRM and reputation management.

Every company wants to be more connected to its customers and prospects, and Web 2.0 is opening up vast possibilities to do so through online customer communities. In this high-energy, highly-interactive workshop we’ll explore what attracts people to a community, elements needed for a community to gel and thrive, the fine line between community facilitation and management, how to measure progress and success, and how to use insights from the community to inform key business functions like sales, service, product development, public relations. We’ll also go behind the scenes of successful communities to see what makes them tick. Be ready to move, to think, to share and to get out of the usual communications and social media boxes

You’ll come away with:

• Understanding of the five key guiding principles of successful communities - and how to overcome the three most common obstacles
• How to create and facilitate a community environment that fosters participation and conversations
• Techniques on gleaning strategic insights from the community to shape and inform key business functions like sales, product development,
• Insights, based on a new industry study, on how to measure community effectiveness that go way beyond visitors and clicks
• Beware the technology: 10 questions to use in evaluating community technology platforms.)
• How to get started.

Beyond buzz & messaging as Usual: Creating points of view that propel and unite sales, marketing, PR and executive communications

For marketing, communications and sales professionals who want to find ways to create messages and thought leadership concepts that inspire, inform, initiative and get embraced by everyone in the organization.

Most messaging initiatives are painful, slow and frustrating. How to inject speed, fun and innovative thinking? Lois Kelly, author of the award-wining book Beyond Buzz, will share three “aha” approaches to creating messages that stick- and involve you in a full day experiential development process where you’ll walk away with ideas that can be put to work in your organization immediately.

You’ll also come away with:

• Understanding of how to tune in to the digital conversations to find important clues on how to frame your messages and use lexicon that resonates.
• The four essential elements of making meaning - and why all effective messages use these principles.
• The nine themes that all people like to hear about and talk about - and how to use these as a way to turn sterile messages into topics easy for people to communicate.
• Concepts and ideas from the workshop exercises that you can put to work in your organization

Social media communications 101: New skills for a new marketing era

For: marketing and communications professionals responsible for executing communications programs like blogs, podcasts, sales presentations, social networks, video interviews.

One of the biggest challenges of today’s new social media world is relearning some of our most basic communications skills. In a conversational world, how we communicate actually is more important than the message itself. Use stilted, corporate language in response to an unfavorable blogger comment about your company and you may fuel the fire, creating more negative posts. Respond in an open, friendly conversational way and you’re likely to turn a naysayer into a advocate. Start a presentation with the usual set up and niceties and you may have lost most of the audience to their Blackberries and Twitters.

This one -day or two-day workshop not only teaches essential new skills, but gets everyone in the group using these new skills so that they really stick.

You’ll come away with knowing:

• Why how we communicate matters more than the message itself
• The essentials of social media writing - from openers and headlines to style and tone
• How to listen in new ways
• How to participate and respond to blogs in a win-win way
• How to conduct interviews that get listened to
• How to effectively use more visuals and fewer words
• How to create themes and openers for presentations that pack a punch
• 10 cool communications tools that make a big difference
• Why you went into communications and marketing in the first place. ?

Reclaiming your marketing mojo: Mid-career fine tuning, relearning and refocusing

For: mid-career marketing and public relations professionals feeling overwhelmed by all the extraordinary changes and technologies in marketing — or are feeling slightly burned out.

Many say marketing has become a young person’s profession with its social networks, blogs, wikis, Twittering and “Googleization.” Not necessarily. This workshop offers mid-career professionals a safe, fun, and hands-on way to get way up to speed on what matters in this social media age, helping them to reclaim their professional mojo and have the confidence and skills to thrive in today’s social media marketing age.

You’ll come away with:

• Understanding of the context of marketing in a social media age: what’s really different
• The two fundamental guiding principles of this new marketing era
• Overview of the tools and techniques that matter the most
• Five common obstacles and how to overcome
• Beyond Botox: rethinking marketing fundamentals: what to add, what to evolve, what to let go
• 5 everyday practices to integrate into your professional life to be in the game and loving it

Beyond Buzz: Succeeding in a word of mouth marketing world

For: marketing, sales and communications professionals interesting in how to make it easier and more interesting to connect with customers.

The conversations in marketing circles say its time for a revolution, and most of the talk is around tactics, like blogs, Wikis, podcasts, and social networking. The big new idea isn’t about tactics, although they’re opening up fascinating new communications channels. The big idea is simply this: marketing today is about having conversations, engaging with people about interesting ideas and perspectives through new and traditional channels. The goal of marketing today is not to generate buzz, but to create trust and understanding. And conversations help us do this.

Lois Kelly, author of the award-winning book Beyond Buzz and partner in Beeline Labs, will share insights and pragmatic ideas on:

• What conversational marketing is and why it’s more effective than conventional, one-way “packaged” marketing and sales messaging.
• Why all organizations need a point of view and how to find one that’s worth talking about.
• How to use conversational point of views in all the ways you communicate - from sales presentations and Web sites to blogs and public relations.
• Examples of how six very different organizations are successfully using conversational marketing
• Three ways to get started and 10 cool tools no marketer should be without

Online alumni communities that rekindle the old college magic: Realizing the possibilities; burning down the obstacles

For: college alumni directors interested in learning how to develop and manage online alumni communities that increase alumni affinities in ways that lead to greater advocacy, deeper involvement, and larger donations.

Every college wants a deeper connection with its alumni, and Web 2.0 is opening up vast possibilities to do so through online communities. In this high-energy, highly-interactive workshop we’ll explore what attracts people to a community, elements needed for a community to gel and thrive, the fine line between community facilitation and management, how to measure progress and success, and how to use insights from the community to inform strategic planning, resource priorities, and fund raising development. We’ll also go behind the scenes of successful alumni communities to see what makes them tick. Be ready to move, to think, to share and to get out of the usual college communications and alumni relations boxes.

You’ll come away with:

• Understanding of the five key guiding principles of successful communities - and how to overcome the three most common obstacles.
• How to create and facilitate a community environment that fosters participation and conversations
• What type of community content is most likely to trigger donations?
• Techniques on gleaning strategic insights from the community to shape and inform strategy.
• Insights, based on a new industry study, on how to measure community effectiveness that go way beyond visitors and clicks
• Beware the technology: 10 questions to use in evaluating community technology platforms. (And how to move away from static, one-way message boards disguising as communities.)
• Confidence in how to get started — and keep going