A series of free workshops aims to give Wiltshire businesses and organisations a better understanding of social media.

The informal courses will be led by social media entrepreneur Marcus Lilley, whose Marlborough-based firm, FutrSocial, helps people across the UK get to grips with an ever-changing array of communications technology.

The sessions are aimed at people who are using the basics of social media, and want to improve their skills.

Each of the interactive workshops will include a practical Team Challenge element, during which Marcus will help attendees to try out platforms and create their own project.

The first workshop, More Than Words (Tuesday 28th May), Marcus will explain how Twitter has broken from its 140-character boundaries to embrace pictures, video and sound.

He'll also be looking at platforms that enable users to schedule and manage their tweets.

The Team Challenge will be to document and promote the event using the Twitter tools Hashtags, Mentions, and Lists, and to collate the tweets using the Storify app.

In the Second Workshop: Google – More Than a Search Engine (Tuesday 25th June) Marcus will explore Google +, and guide attendees through the concepts of Circles and Hangouts.

During the Team Challenge, he'll be creating a hangout of the session, to demonstrate how the tool can be used to create a virtual networking event.

In the Third Workshop: Your Mobile – A Studio in Your Hands (Tuesday 30th July) Marcus will be looking at some of the smartphone apps that can help tell a story through video, text, pictures and sound.

The Team Challenge will be to create a curated record of the 2013 Marlborough International Jazz Festival, and attendees will be encouraged to contribute their own pictures, videos, sound recordings and thoughts to the event.

The session will be of particular interest to organisations or businesses that run their own events, and want ways of recording and promoting their activities, both from their own content and that generated by others.

The sessions will be held at The Food Gallery, High Street, Marlborough from 6pm to 7pm on Tuesday, May 28, Tuesday, June 25 and Tuesday, July 30.

The sessions are free, although attendees will be encouraged to purchase a hot or cold drink or cake from the host venue. Attendees will need to bring a laptop, tablet or smartphone to participate in the practical sessions.

Marcus, who handles social media promotion for a range of businesses and events including Marlborough Jazz Festival and OxFest, will be a guest speaker at the prestigious Digital Shoreditch conference on May 23, alongside Eze Vidra of Google, Omid Ashtari of Foursquare, MTV's editor in chief Melanie Hick, and Nikhil Shah, co-founder of Mixcloud.

Event supported by Marlborough based marketing agency: Secret Agent Marketing who are on Facebook and Twitter.