Advanced Moderation Online   Lithium’s new Advanced Moderation course was developed using Lithium’s own moderation model. We highly recommend this course for individual moderators, moderation teams, community managers, and community stakeholders interested in understanding community dynamics and learning best practices to improve the tone, quality, and management of community content.   The online course consists of 30 minutes of video tutorials and a downloadable moderation guidelines template. A Lithium Community badge will be awarded when you complete this course.   Participants learn about: Characteristics of an effective moderator and the overarching goals of moderation Public and private community documents, including Terms of Service and Moderator Guidelines Maintaining a positive atmosphere through engagement with users Identifying and interacting with different types of community members Identifying and handling violations using the Five Levels of Moderation       Thought Leadership   Moderation is one of the key elements of any successful community or social platform. Lithium has over 10 years of experience in moderation, and during that time we’ve developed best practices that transform moderation into a positive tool for change.   This course was developed by Lithium’s Manager of Moderation Services, Sandra Dorman (@SandyD) and Moderation Team Lead, Lesley Pfeifer (@LesleyP). This course is designed to equip moderators and moderation teams with the knowledge and skill set to maintain healthy and successful communities.   How do I register?   You can pay and register for this course in Lithium Campus. If you're interested in group pricing, please contact education@lithium.com.          Jordan Suffin is Director of Training Services at Lithium, responsible for development and delivery of educational and engaging training materials. He previously worked at MicroStrategy where he spent 16 years in various education roles, starting out as a technical trainer for the West region and more recently running Global Partner Sales & Technical Training and Internal Sales Training/Onboarding programs.   ... View more

As part of a larger project to improve our Education content on the community, we've given the Online Training page a small makeover.   The page has been renamed to Training & Certification to reflect our increased focus on our global training events alongside our online offerings. We've also cleaned up the previously text-heavy header, and added a featured blog component. Now, you can quickly view our latest news and updates from one page--including both new online courses and upcoming training events.   We hope this helps our community members quickly find the Education information they're looking for. Head on over to the updated page to take a look at the changes. We welcome any feedback you have, please feel free to leave a comment or reach out to us at education@lithium.com.   Stay tuned! We have more changes planned for the Training & Certification section this year.        Jordan Suffin is Director of Training Services at Lithium, responsible for development and delivery of educational and engaging training materials. He previously worked at MicroStrategy where he spent 16 years in various education roles, starting out as a technical trainer for the West region and more recently running Global Partner Sales & Technical Training and Internal Sales Training/Onboarding programs.     ... View more

  Why Lithium’s Certification program?   Lithium’s certification program validates social media and community professionals through industry- proven assessment. Trusted by leading firms and brands, the Lithium Certificate is the leading qualification to prove your expertise in Social Media and Community.   Graduate Success: -90% of course participants say they were able to take what they learned and apply it to the actual work that they do. - 92% of course participants say they would recommend Lithium’s certification program to a professional contact.   Who are Certifications for?   Upcoming Programs:   PARIS CERTIFICATION WEEK: 14 -18 September 2015   Register here   Location: Le Cercle Kadrance - 48, rue la Bruyère, 75009 Paris, France   Agenda: 08:30-09:00: Breakfast 09:00-12:00: Morning Session 12:00–13:00: Lunch 13:00–16:30: Afternoon Session 16:30–18:00: Certification Exam   Pricing: €799 Early Bird Special -   Early bird pricing ends 28 August €1500 Standard price     Monday September 14th Lithium Community Product Certification Target Audience: Beginner/Intermediate   In the Lithium Community Product certification participants are provided an overview of the Lithium platform with a strong focus on best practices for set up, implementation and delivery. This includes what elements are needed to reach high Community Health Index (CHI) scores and what features of Lithium provide Gamification elements in developing engaging communities. We will also cover topics such as how to create quality content for blogs, Lithium Ideas and the Lithium Tribal Knowledge Base. The certification provides several hands-on exercises, with each participant provided a community instance to explore.   The course covers the topics below: Lithium’s Community Features Administration tasks: Tabs, Structure, Navigation, Settings, Ranks & Roles Features for improving CHI score Gamification Elements Keys for successful Forums and Blogs Idea Features elements and strategy Tribal Knowledge Base – Product differentiation, and Creating and Managing articles   The program includes six hours of live training from Lithium’s subject matter experts and a two-part, 90-minute examination conducted at the conclusion of the training session. To become certified, participants must pass the examination.     Tuesday September 15th Community Management Certification Level 1 Target Audience: Beginner/Intermediate/Advanced   The Lithium Community Manager Certification gives you the opportunity to learn the latest best practices, as distilled by Lithium’s consultants, from hundreds of companies around the world who have implemented enterprise communities on the Lithium platform. For experienced community managers, it’s an opportunity to benchmark their practices against some of the world’s best. For those starting out, it’s a great foundation for future learning. The program includes six hours of live training from Lithium thought-leaders and subject matter experts, and a two-part, 90-minute examination conducted at the conclusion of the training session. To become certified, participants must pass the examination.   The certification program focuses on the 18 core responsibilities of enterprise community managers:   Select appropriate interaction styles and features for your audience Design and configure the proper community structure Define community roles and responsibilities Develop marketing plans to increase usage and membership for the community Create comprehensive set of community guidelines and policies Oversee and manage moderators Plan for PR crises and other customer issues Manage off-domain activity Develop communication plans for community members Identify and manage your most active community members Plan and execute community activities to support business events Plan and execute community events Manage blogs and other content program Manage functional touch points within your organization Expand community Develop a measurement program and deliver regular reports to stakeholders Coordinate with the platform vendor Conduct periodic evaluations and competitive analysis   The Lithium Community Manager Certification gives you the opportunity to learn these best practices and hone your skills as a practitioner. The program includes six hours of live training from Lithium thought-leaders and subject matter experts and a two-part, 90-minute examination conducted at the conclusion of the training session. To become certified, participants must pass the examination.     Wednesday September 16th Community Management Certification Level 2 Target Audience: Intermediate/Advanced/Expert   Are you one of the 500+ people who are Lithium Certified Community Managers? If so, we have a new certification course for you. Community Manager Certification II prepares you to achieve higher performance in four areas:   Growing community membership and participation Developing and managing super users Managing company participation Driving business transformation   For each area, you’ll learn the key challenges faced, the tactics that separate success from failure, and the elements that make a program complete.  Building on the foundation laid with Community Manager I, this new course includes more data points, deeper case examples, new reusable assets, and more opportunities to collaborate with fellow attendees.    The course is led by Lithium’s Chief Community Officer Joe Cothrel, whose experience includes helping more than 300 organizations create successful community efforts.    The course is designed for community managers, executives or directors who manage them, or anyone who wants to gain a deeper understanding of the state of customer community management today.  Those who successfully complete the course and exam will earn Lithium’s new Level 2 Certification in Community Management. The program includes six hours of live training from Lithium thought-leaders and subject matter experts and a two-part, 90-minute examination conducted at the conclusion of the training session. To become certified, participants must pass the examination.     Thursday September 17th Social Response Certification Target Audience: Intermediate/Advanced/Expert   The Social Response Certification is designed for those wanting to advance their skills while developing a roadmap based on their specific business objectives for their implementation of social technology.  This new certification is built around the latest LSW technology: it’s filled with practical examples showing best of class integrations with the entire Lithium platform.   Participants will come away with an actionable plan for high-scale, efficient customer engagement and response, and will gain the following professional benefits:     Tactical Mastery Learn how to best engage with customers on the social web to build brand advocates Understand what monitoring tools can and cannot accomplish See proven techniques to improve social agents’ performance Understand recent trends in social behaviors   ROI Connection Learn how to optimize ROI for customer care teams from call deflection, cost per resolution and the value of the solution created Identify and measure success in the context of those objectives   Thought Leadership   Taught by Lithium’s best-selling author and recognized social technology leader Dave Evans, this course is designed for teams wanting to push their implementation of social technology beyond the traditional areas of support, sales, marketing, and PR. It is aimed at those who want to tap the inherent knowledge of their entire organization to build stronger advocates faster through customer engagement and response on the social web.     Friday September 18th Developer Certification Target Audience: Designer & Developers: Intermediate/Advanced/Expert   Lithium Developer Certified Professionals deliver the highest-possible level of expertise, providing knowledge and best practices on Lithium’s platforms. This certification will cover Lithium’s architecture ensuring that developers know which layer of the stack to utilize to achieve their customization goals. Including visible elements such as Freemarker and stage/prod environments this training provides all that is needed by developers to customize and personalize their community.     This program is built around the following Lithium technologies:   Advanced community customization Endpoints Common.init Best practices Performance – caching strategies & serving assets via the CDN Security Integrations – content syndication, system-to-system, and native mobile Products – developers should know the use cases of and demonstrate proficiency with the following products: Lithium-Klout SDK Setting up source control Using continuous integration How to setup the optimal team-based workflow Community API v1 and v2 LSW API Bulk data API   Pre-requisite: Students should know the use cases of and how to write code for the following customization points: Basic community customization Skin / CSS Custom components Quilts Layouts Text keys ActiveCast   The program includes six hours of live training from Lithium thought-leaders and subject matter experts and a two-part, 90-minute examination conducted at the conclusion of the training session. To become certified, participants must pass the examination.     SAN FRANCISCO CERTIFICATION WEEK: 14 -17 December 2015   Register here   Location: Lithium Headquarters 225 Bush Street Floor 15 th   San Francisco, CA   Agenda: 08:30-09:00: Breakfast 09:00-12:00: Morning Session 12:00–13:00: Lunch 13:00–16:00: Afternoon Session 16:30–18:00: Certification Exam   Pricing:   $799 Early Bird Special -   Early bird pricing ends 28 August   $1500 Standard price     Monday December 14th Lithium Community Product Certification Target Audience: Beginner/Intermediate/Advanced   In the Lithium Community Product certification participants are provided an overview of the Lithium platform with a strong focus on best practices for set up, implementation and delivery. This includes what elements are needed to reach high Community Health Index (CHI) scores and what features of Lithium provide Gamification elements in developing engaging communities. We will also cover topics such as how to create quality content for blogs, Lithium Ideas and the Lithium Tribal Knowledge Base. The certification provides several hands-on exercises, with each participant provided a community instance to explore. The course covers the topics below: Lithium’s Community Features Administration tasks: Tabs, Structure, Navigation, Settings, Ranks & Roles Features for improving CHI score Gamification Elements Idea Features elements and strategy Tribal Knowledge Base – Product differentiation, and Creating and Managing articles including Blogs The program includes six hours of live training from Lithium’s subject matter experts and a two-part, 90-minute examination conducted at the conclusion of the training session. To become certified, participants must pass the examination.      Tuesday December 15th Community Management Certification Level 2 Target Audience: Intermediate/Advanced/Expert   Are you one of the 500+ people who are Lithium Certified Community Managers? If so, we have a new certification course for you. Community Manager Certification II prepares you to achieve higher performance in four areas: Growing community membership and participation Developing and managing super users Managing company participation Driving business transformation   For each area, you’ll learn the key challenges faced, the tactics that separate success from failure, and the elements that make a program complete.  Building on the foundation laid with Community Manager I, this new course includes more data points, deeper case examples, new reusable assets, and more opportunities to collaborate with fellow attendees.    The course is led by Lithium’s Chief Community Officer Joe Cothrel, whose experience includes helping more than 300 organizations create successful community efforts.    The course is designed for community managers, executive or directors who manage them, or anyone who wants to gain a deeper understanding of the state of customer community management today.  Those who successfully complete the course and exam will earn Lithium’s new Level 2 Certification in Community Management. The program includes six hours of live training from Lithium thought-leaders and subject matter experts and a two-part, 90-minute examination conducted at the conclusion of the training session. To become certified, participants must pass the examination.     Wednesday December 16th Social Response Certification Target Audience: Intermediate/Advanced/Expert   The Social Response Certification is designed for those wanting to to advance their skills while developing a roadmap based on their specific business objectives for their implementation of social technology.  This new certification is built around the latest LSW technology: it’s filled with practical examples showing best of class integrations with the entire Lithium platform.   Participants will come away with an actionable plan for high-scale, efficient customer engagement and response, and will gain the following professional benefits:   Tactical Mastery Learn how to best engage with customers on the social web to build brand advocates Understand what monitoring tools can and cannot accomplish See proven techniques to improve social agents performance Understand recent trends in social behaviors   ROI Connection Learn how to optimize ROI for customer care teams from call deflection, cost per resolution and the value of the solution created Identify and measure success in the context of those objectives   Thought Leadership   Taught by Lithium’s best-selling author and recognized social technology leader Dave Evans, this course is designed for teams wanting to push their implementation of social technology beyond the traditional areas of support, sales, marketing, and PR, for those who want to tap the inherent knowledge of their entire organization to build stronger advocates faster through customer engagement and response on the social web.     Thursday December 17th Developer Certification Target Audience: Designer & Developers: Intermediate/Advanced/Expert   Lithium Developer Certified Professionals deliver the highest-possible level of expertise, providing knowledge and best practices on Lithium’s platforms. This certification will cover Lithium’s architecture ensuring that developers know which layer of the stack to utilize to achieve their customization goals. Including visible elements such as Freemarker and stage/prod environments this training provides all that is needed by developers to customize and personalize their community.   This program is built around the following Lithium technologies:   Advanced community customization Endpoints Common.init Best practices Performance – caching strategies & serving assets via the CDN Security Integrations – content syndication, system-to-system, and native mobile Products – developers should know the use cases of and demonstrate proficiency with the following products: Lithium-Klout SDK Setting up source control Using continuous integration How to setup the optimal team-based workflow Community API v1 and v2 LSW API Bulk data API   Pre-requisite: Students should know the use cases of and how to write code for the following customization points: Basic community customization Skin / CSS Custom components Quilts Layouts Text keys ActiveCast   The program includes six hours of live training from Lithium thought-leaders and subject matter experts and a two-part, 90-minute examination conducted at the conclusion of the training session. To become certified, participants must pass the examination.   All our programs have been created by industry thought leaders. Find out more by contacting us at education@lithium.com.       Jordan Suffin is Director of Training Services at Lithium, responsible for development and delivery of educational and engaging training materials. He previously worked at MicroStrategy where he spent 16 years in various education roles, starting out as a technical trainer for the West region and more recently running Global Partner Sales & Technical Training and Internal Sales Training/Onboarding programs.   ... View more

  Today the Lithium Education team launched a new certification program: LSW Social Agent Certification.   With an estimated 1 billion Facebook users and 200 million Twitter users, it’s no surprise that the rise of social media has permanently impacted the customer service channel.   The Social Agent Certification course covers how to interact with customers through Lithium’s Social Web platform by presenting both best practices as well as product training. We will explore the day-to-day responsibilities of a social agent, including a comprehensive presentation of the Agent features on the Lithium platform. Agents will learn key techniques they need to know in order to work efficiently and effectively while representing your company professionally and according to your policies. Today’s customers expect fast and thoughtful responses to their questions and concerns on the social web. Successfully completing this certification provides agents and their managers with the confidence that they are prepared to handle this challenge.   The online Social Agent course consists of approximately 30 minutes of video tutorials, along with a certification exam to be completed online at your convenience. This certification is recommended for Social Agents, Team Leads, Managers, and Supervisors of Social Agent teams.   How do I register? You can register for the online Social Agent Certification course in Lithium Campus. If you need assistance registering for the course, please reach out to education@lithium.com. If you're interested in purchasing for a group of 5 or more, ask us about our special group rates.   Lithium’s certification program validates social media and community professionals through industry- proven assessment. All our programs have been created by industry thought leaders. Find out more by contacting us at education@lithium.com.      Jordan Suffin is Director of Training Services at Lithium, responsible for development and delivery of educational and engaging training materials. He previously worked at MicroStrategy where he spent 16 years in various education roles, starting out as a technical trainer for the West region and more recently running Global Partner Sales & Technical Training and Internal Sales Training/Onboarding programs.     ... View more

 Lithium’s new Moderation Certification was developed using Lithium’s own moderation model. We highly recommend this certification for individual moderators, moderation teams, community managers, and community stakeholders interested in understanding community dynamics and learning best practices to improve the tone, quality, and management of community content.   The program covers:   Characteristics of an effective moderator and the overarching goals of moderation Public and private community documents, including Terms of Service and Moderator Guidelines Maintaining a positive atmosphere though engagement with users Identifying and interacting with different types of community members Identifying and handling violations using the Five Levels of Moderation   Beyond Content Moderation   Our certification goes a step beyond moderation of content by highlighting how moderators can recruit and engage with superusers, assist with the development and management of promotions, use escalations to raise the community team’s awareness of issues, and report on metrics and insights.   Applying Our Strategies & Practices   We’ll use several interactive scenarios to walk you through different approaches to effectively handle common community pitfalls. You’ll walk away with the knowledge of how to apply our best practices to your own community or social platform.   Thought Leadership   Moderation is one of the key elements of any successful community or social platform. Lithium has over 10 years of experience in moderation, and during that time we’ve developed best practices that transform moderation into a positive tool for change.   Taught by Lithium’s Manager of Moderation Services, Sandra Dorman (@SandyD), this certification is designed to equip moderators and moderation teams with the knowledge and skill set to maintain healthy and successful communities.   To learn more about LiNC 2015 or to register to attend, click here or visit http://www.lithium.com/conference/linc2015/.      Jordan Suffin is Director of Training Services at Lithium, responsible for development and delivery of educational and engaging training materials. He previously worked at MicroStrategy where he spent 16 years in various education roles, starting out as a technical trainer for the West region and more recently running Global Partner Sales & Technical Training and Internal Sales Training/Onboarding programs.     ... View more