SEQUIM – Whether you’re a Facebook friend to many, one with many Twitter followers or you’ve never done any such thing, you’re wanted at Wednesday’s barn-raising.
It’s an ultra-modern community-building party called the Sequim Business Friends and Followers Social Media Workshop, and “it should be really fun,” said Arthur Buhrer, one of the two hosts of the event.
This get-together for people at all — or no — levels of Facebook and Twitter will run from 5:30 p.m. to 8 p.m. Wednesday at the Holiday Inn Express, 1441 E. Washington St.
Admission is $14.92 for Sequim-Dungeness Valley Chamber of Commerce members and $19.13 for nonmembers.
Those figures, by the way, are a nod to the year Columbus first came to the New World and the year Sequim became a city.
But let’s get down to business, said Buhrer and his co-host, Web consultant and Peninsula College instructor Renne Brock-Richmond.
Twitter talk
Buhrer will talk Twitter at the workshop,and explain how 140-character “tweets” — messages exchanged by those who “follow” friends and associates on www.Twitter.com — can bring a community together.
“Twitter really is the world’s conversation,” said Buhrer, a broker at Clift Mortgage.
People send two-sentence Tweets out about specials their shops or restaurants have on any given day, about the movie they saw and loved, and just about everything else that’s happening.
Brock-Richmond, who with her business Unique as You (www.UniqueAsYou.com), creates marketing plans for Sequim firms such as the Red Rooster Grocery, 134 W. Washington St.
The Red Rooster uses Facebook to full advantage, posting messages about what kind of fresh produce is coming in from local farms.
An often-raised question about Facebook, Brock-Richmond said, is about how to protect one’s privacy, so she promises to demonstrate easy ways to set Facebook preferences for a user’s preferred level of security.
Customer reach
She will also talk about how to use Facebook to reap input from customers. Establishing a Facebook page and reading the posts on it, she said, “is a great way of having a focus group that will be honest with you.”
Facebook and Twitter are avenues to express oneself, share ideas with others in the local community, even find long-lost friends, Brock-Richmond has found.
“I encourage people to use social media for social good,” she added. One can use Facebook or Twitter to invite people to a fundraising concert, for example.
“If we all get connected,” added Buhrer, “it will help us all support each other more.”
Facebook and Twitter aren’t just for young and middle-aged people, he said.
His 83-year-old grandfather, Arthur Halls of Sequim, uses Facebook to keep up with extended family and enjoy photos of his grandchildren.
Brock-Richmond teaches Facebook and social media classes in Peninsula College’s Sequim classroom and has many senior students.
“I want people to feel comfortable using these sites that are, for the most part, free,” she said, “to promote themselves and the abundance in our area.”
For other details about the workshop, phone 360-683-6197.
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Sequim-Dungeness Valley Reporter Diane Urbani de la Paz can be reached at 360-681-2391 or at diane.urbani@peninsuladailynews.com.
