Facebook has announced the addition of nine more U.S. cities to its 'Community Boost' small business education roadshow, which aims to provide digital literacy education to help SMBs, and individuals, grow through Facebook and other digital tools.
Announced late last year, Facebook's Community Boost roadshow sees experts from Facebook's team providing face-to-face education on a range of elements.
- If you’re looking for a job, we’ll provide training to help improve your digital and social media skills.
- If you’re an entrepreneur, we’ll have training programs on how to use technology to turn an idea into a business, or show you ways to create a free online presence using Facebook.
- If you’re a business owner we’re going to offer ways your business can expand its digital footprint and find new customers around the corner and around the globe.
- If you’re getting online for the first time or you want to support your community, we’ll provide training on digital literacy and online safety. And we’ll also help community members use technology to bring people together, with features like Events and Groups.
More recently, Facebook's also added in a new element on digital data and privacy obligations, to help businesses get a better handle on what they need to do on this front.
Facebook initially provided dates for 30 Community Boost events, but that's since been expanded, with this week's announcement taking the program to 47 cities in total. Facebook says it's aiming to reach 50 U.S. cities by the end of 2018.
It's a good initiative - and while brands should remain somewhat wary of building too much reliance on the platform, the stats show that Facebook has provided benefit to a lot of businesses, and their associated communities.
The expansion's also part of Facebook's pledge to train a million businesses in digital literacy by 2020 - an ambitious target.
The new cities added to the Community Boost tour list are:
- New Orleans, LA – August 7th-9th
- Seattle, WA – October 15th-17th
- Indianapolis, IN – October 18th-19th
- Redmond, OR – October 23rd-24th
- Baltimore, MD – November 12th-13th
- Charlotte, NC – November 28th-29th
- Springfield, IL – December 3rd-4th
- Little Rock, AR – December 11th-12th
- Miami, FL – December 18th-20th
You can see the full list of coming and past locations at the Community Boost website - worth heading along if they're in your area.