Cerebra launches academy to get corporate drones comfortable with social

Cerebra, the WPP-owned digital and communications agency, has launched an academy aimed at empowering corporate workforces in social media use.

The academy uses a combination of face-to-face and online video based training designed to help corporate employees to mitigate the risks, and deliver on the opportunities, of social media.

As the agency notes in a press release sent to Memeburn, big corporates fall victim to social media disasters on an almost weekly basis. This, it says, is largely down to a lack of education, especially when it comes to the relationship between an employee’s personal social profile and their employer. And while social media usage policies can protect a company after the fact, it’s almost always too late by that stage.

“There is a complex relationship between employee’s personal social profiles and their employers’.” Says Mike Stopforth, CEO of Cerebra. “And businesses can no longer ignore the threats. We have to accept that our employees are using social media whether we approve or not and that this has a direct impact on our businesses and brands.”

According to Cerebra, listed businesses in particular have a far higher compliance requirement and need to be proactively educating their staff. Every employee with a social media account is a company spokesperson. Without the right training they share confidential information and bring brands into disrepute.

“There is no such thing as a ‘personal opinion’ on social media. Whether you like it or not, your employees and colleagues speak for your company,” says Stopforth.

Beyond the risk, Cerebra claims, there is the potential opportunity that exists within an educated and connected workforce. Employees who are empowered to contribute to a positive online brand image, and who are given the tools and permission to do so, will collectively become a massive media asset to the business.

All Academy content is delivered via video, audio and text, making it highly understandable andeasy to consume. The Academy has been built in a modular fashion to combinecustom content with a pre-populated bank of educational content, easily suited to every company’s individual learning and development requirements. The content can also be separated from the delivery platform, allowing corporates to either deliver the material via existing learning platforms or via the Cerebra online portal, which can also be white labeled to carry the customer’s branding.

The per-userlicensing model, and online delivery, means the Academy can be deployed globally to any size workforce and accessed on any device, any time, anywhere in the world.