Learn to Build Your Business Using Social Media for Free!

	A new Social Media Course designed to help industry professionals develop career-advancing skills was added to the SEMA Educational Institute's comprehensive online library.

The SEMA Education Institute (SEI) has added a new SEMA Social Media course to its comprehensive online library, which is designed to help industry professionals develop career-advancing skills. The six-session course, available for a limited time, without charge, at www.SEMA.org/eLearning, begins with Foundations & Definitions, an introduction to the social-media concept. The five subsequent sessions describe how automotive specialty-equipment companies can leverage outrageously popular social-media channels to help promote and market their businesses.

Your customers are already active participants in social media, and their influence has become far too large to ignore: More than 500 million people currently use Facebook, with 200 million on Twitter and 100 million on LinkedIn. SEMA's SEI has developed this new series to help your business expand its reach, increase brand exposure and drive revenue. SEI has collaborated with social-media experts to develop this comprehensive and practical training course. It is designed to show you how to implement strategies, tactics, monitoring tools and best practices to grow your business.

The SEMA Social Media course will provide a thorough explanation of social media and how it can help build profits. You'll learn how to:

• Market on key social media sites, including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube.
• Integrate and execute effective social media campaigns to increase brand awareness and drive sales.
• Use reputation management and listen to your target market to provide high-quality customer service.
• Conduct a social media audit and uncover gaps and opportunities.
• Understand how social media can be used to aid marketing objectives, including advertising, search-engine optimization, public relations and reputation management.
• Create employee guidelines and develop a business culture to support social media.
• Develop practical strategies to position your brand and generate leads.
• Benefit from the latest statistics and recent case studies.
• Utilize tools and tactics that will help you measure engagement and return on investment.
• Manage your own brand and develop a personal social graph that can help you win business or get hired.

Hallie Janssen, vice president of Anvil Media Inc. is the presenter of the SEMA Social Media course. Anvil Media Inc. specializes in search-engine marketing and social-media marketing services. Janssen manages overall client strategy and oversight of the marketing professionals at Anvil Media. She has developed online marketing strategies with hundreds of clients. She regularly speaks at industry events, is a social-media instructor for Online Marketing Institute and co-teaches a class on search-engine marketing at Portland State University. She also writes regularly for industry publications, such as Search Marketing Standard and Online Marketing Connect.

The SEMA Social Media course is part of the new Learning Management System being developed by the SEMA Education Institute. New courses are being added approximately every two weeks. The Social Media course will remain free for employees of SEMA-member companies but, after a brief introductory period, will cost $149 for non-members. Take advantage of this limited-time offer today!

For more information, visit www.SEMA.org/sei or contact SEMA Education Administrator Juliet Marshall by phone at 909/978-6655 or via e-mail at julietm@sema.org.