TopRank Online Marketing and the Direct Marketing Association have just announced a partnership to develop and deliver a series of educational workshops on social media marketing entitled, "Social Media Smarts: Introduction to the Social Web, Tools and Tactics." With marketers facing tighter budgets in the coming months, social media marketing offers new opportunities for companies to engage customers, improve brand awareness and increase sales with budgets that are more recession friendly than many traditional marketing efforts. Leading the workshop will be Lee Odden, CEO of TopRank Marketing, who will introduce participants to the marketing opportunities with social media through best and worst practices examples. As you can see from the photo in this post, I'm much taller than Lee. But, according to George Markham Director, Education Services at Direct Marketing Association, “Lee is a well rounded digital marketer uniquely qualified with over ten years experience as an internet marketing consultant and a background in corporate training.” Markham adds, “As a consultant working on the front lines of social media marketing for companies large and small, Lee brings first-hand knowledge and real-world examples to teach attendees how to develop a successful social media strategy.” But I'm still taller. The Social Media Smarts workshop will provide attendees with insight into blogging and blog marketing, social networks, microblogging, social news and bookmarking, video sharing, image and audio sharing, wikis and social media analytics. Rounding out the workshop is a social media strategy exercise that will empower attendees to create their own social media strategy and develop a framework for building a business case within their organizations. Lee is quoted in a press release as saying, "As a high demand digital marketing and PR agency, we're seeing tremendous benefits from educating in-house marketing staff on the finer points of social media marketing." He adds, "Offering both good and bad social media marketing examples along with strategy, tools, tactics and analytics can really empower companies to succeed." Now, I've served on panels with Lee. I know Lee. And that's exactly the way Lee talks. The first of the Social Media Smarts workshop series will be conducted in New York, December 4th and 5th, at the Microtek training facility in lower Manhattan. If you are in the nieghborhood, drop by and heckle Lee. And remember: I'm taller. Actually, I was standing on my toes for this photo. Lee's actually pretty tall, too.