SMIP 101 is the first training and competency development initiative under IDA's People Sector Programme.

More than 160 participants from 69 non-profit organisations have benefitted from training courses conducted under Phase 1 of the Social Media Immersion Programme (SMIP), which aims to educate members of people sector organisations about the benefits and proper usage of social media technologies.

SMIP 101 is the first training and competency development initiative under the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore’s (IDA) People Sector Programme.

“Apart from working with our people sector organisation partners in reaching out to their communities and helping them with technology adoption, it is also important to ensure that their management, employees and volunteers are also well-trained in using the latest infocomm tools when engaging the communities,” said Mr Mark Lim, Assistant Director, People Sector Transformation, IDA. “With this in mind, we initiated the SMIP in which participants are taught important online community management and social media skills to help increase their awareness and usage of various tools such as Facebook, Twitter, and Blogger.”

The short introductory course covers an overview of some of the most popular social media channels and aims to differentiate between good and bad implementations through case studies and group assignments.

Five sessions of SMIP 101 were conducted between September 2010 and February 2011. They were attended by some 165 online community managers from volunteer welfare organisations and other non-profit organisations.

The short introductory course covered an overview of some of the most popular social media channels.

Among them was Mr Raymond Chow, Director (Planning), Asian Women’s Welfare Association (AWWA, who attended SMIP to understand more about the use of social media and to find out how to use it to publicise AWWA’s programmes and services and reach out to a wider audience in the quickest possible time.

“We run a resource centre that specialises in disability. We hope to expand our membership and the use of our centre through social media,” he said. “It is a powerful and useful tool for reaching out to the masses. But at the same time, there are certain risks involved in using social media, and caution must be taken to minimise risk."   

The sessions were conducted by trainers from Deloitte, IDA’s partner for SMIP 101. “Deloitte is pleased to have worked with IDA on the Social Media Immersion Programme to help participants develop an awareness of social media technology and to reach out to their communities,” said Mr Philip Chong, Executive Director, Deloitte Enterprise Risk Services.

An advanced SMIP 201 programme is also being planned for the coming year. This will focus on teaching advanced skills to current practitioners of social media, and providing them with skills in content production using video, sentiment analysis, analytics and online reputation management.

“For Phase 2 we want to move beyond awareness and theory and focus more on actual implementation,” said Mr Lim. “For that reason we are making Phase 2 partly a lab course and participants will have access to computers in order to go through topics such as social media analytics and content creation for social media channels.”