As the Life of PIE weeklong social media event nears an end, the PIE Center is launching a new outreach program tomorrow geared toward helping people take advantage of social media themselves.
The Slice, a 10-minute video, aims to provide practical tips, guidelines and suggestions that can be immediately put to work, according to Outreach & Training Coordinator Nicole Dodds, who loosely modeled the program around the popular TED Talks.
Respondents to the PIE Center’s annual needs assessment and evaluation identified a desire for shorter learning and training materials, she said. The PIE Center’s current training tools and webinars are each about an hour long.
“Our target length for The Slice is 10 to 15 minutes,” Dodds said. “Stakeholders also told us that they wanted more training on using social media, so we chose this topic to be the focus of our first serving of The Slice.”
Media Specialist Laura Bernheim was part of the PIE Center team that volunteered presentation topics, time, equipment and advice. She also volunteered to be the first to step in front of the camera to share her social media tips and experiences.
“I want to show people that social media isn’t scary,” she said. “If you approach it with some common sense, social media can accomplish some great things. Social media is something you have to work at, of course, but it’s a very forgiving environment.”
The PIE Center social media toolkit covers a variety of social media networks in more detail than The Slice, and Bernheim said she is eager to hear how people respond to The Slice.
“We really seek out and value other people’s opinions and thoughts of how we can do better,” she said.
Viewers can evaluate the pilot episode of The Slice and suggest new topics, Dodds said.
“We’ll see if The Slice fills a need, and we’ll also monitor its use to determine how popular this information delivery format is,” she said. “Our stakeholders want outreach products that are practical and that they could use more quickly than the tools or webinars, and that’s exactly what we aim to provide.”
