Last year you may have heard us introduce Blocks, an upskilling initiative by the team at Bolster. Since launching, 2020 happened, so we’ve put our ideas to the test, tripped up and refined our techniques to (hopefully) make the journey a little smoother for you.
In the (continued) wake of 2020, we’ve broadened our horizons and pivoted our offering to cater to the growing need for accessible online spaces, thoughtful digital practices and unique virtual experiences. So, let’s get reacquainted.
What’s Blocks again?
Blocks offers webinars that are community focused, data-led and informed by industry practice. Our aim is provide a concise, but comprehensive learning experience for social media and digital advertising. Our workshops and webinars are driven by learnings from over 3000 campaigns. Now, more than ever, our URL and IRL lives are colliding and we’re here to help to make sense of it all.
A little deeper…
Since Bolster’s inception in 2015, knowledge sharing has been part of its very fabric. We’ve got a veritable goodie bag of tricks up our sleeve and we’re keen to share them. As a business, we’ve hosted workshops and panels at conferences such as BIGSOUND, CHANGES and even our own Side B.
Blocks builds on that, channeling years of industry experience into something informative, practical and hands-on. We wanted to step into the space to provide an immersive experience that was agile and fun.
Blocks felt like a natural progression for us to be able to work with those in our broader community. We want to encourage people to come along and learn fundamental skills they can take away and put into practice. The entertainment industry can be a particularly competitive place and we wanted to ensure that those who couldn’t access our services as an agency, can still play in the game (and play well).
We work with brands and events in the digital realm every day. We know those consumer markets and we’re specialists when it comes to social media and digital marketing and in particular, flipping social tools on their head and making them work for our use cases. We’re driven by industry learnings, having run thousands of campaigns for the country’s biggest festivals and events, labels, brands, touring companies and artists.
Who’s behind Blocks?
Program coordinator Lauren Mitchell has focused her energy on giving back to a community that Bolster feels passionate about.
“When I started at Bolster back in 2016, we were a company in its infancy,” she says. “We were able to work with a lot of smaller events and up and coming artists, but in recent years we’ve grown to a point where that’s no longer possible.”
She says Blocks enables Bolster to continue to work with all members in our community and give them the skills necessary to take their social and digital practices to the next level.
“We want to help them grow and hopefully get to a point where we can continue to grow with them.”
So how has it changed?
Blocks has opened up our offering to include brand and food and beverage verticals in addition to music. We wanted to reach organisations and events that might be struggling in the wake of COVID-19 with content that’s relevant to their circumstances.
In addition to this we’ve shifted entirely online to a webinar only model and condensed our pre-existing courses. While there’s still a lot of information to cover, we figured people are spending so much time on their computers at the moment so we don’t want to add to the screen fatigue.
The result is a two-hour webinar focused on organic social media planning, a two-hour webinar focused on paid social amplification, and a six-hour masterclass webinar that covers off social media, paid amplification and digital marketing more generally.
Now we’re talkin’! Tell me more…
In the two-hour organic social media webinar, we’ll cover off things like setting goals, building communities, understanding social channels the fundamentals of measurement and more.
In the two-hour paid amplification webinar, we’ll dive into audience profiles and targeting, channel planning, creative best practices, timelines, optimisation, data and more.
In the six-hour masterclass webinar (coming later this year), we’ll focus on planning and understanding your brand, goals, audiences, channels and environment. You’ll gain an understanding of designing for digital, consumer journeys, creating content, internal campaign structures, pixels, insights and so much more.
You’ll also get an in-platform live demo for both Ads Manager (Facebook, Instagram etc.) and Google Ads (Search, YouTube, Shopping).
After you’ve completed the masterclass content, you’ll have the opportunity to take an online multiple choice quiz. Upon completing successfully, you’ll receive your very own certificate to prove you can rub shoulders with the best of them.
We understand there’s no one-size-fits-all approach to learning. The aim of Blocks is to provide you with a flexible education offering that slots into your life — we don’t want learning new skills to feel like a chore, we want to help satiate your thirst for knowledge and build a solid foundation you can keep building on.
Love it! Sign me up!
You can register for both the Social 1.0 and Paid Social 1.0 now! Once you sign, you’ll also receive our Quick Guide full of hot-tips to tide you over before the sessions.
Both webinars are priced at $99, but to celebrate the Blocks re-launch, we’re offering a $20 discount to anyone that registers before 30th September 2020.
For more info on Blocks, head to betterwithblocks.com
