What is Social Media Marketing?
Social media marketing refers to the use of social media for marketing purposes. However, there are certain specific features and advantages of SMM that makes it unique. At the same time, some of these terms are quite confusing, especially for a newcomer. Social Media Marketing Courses would help you develop skills to enter this exciting field with confidence.
There are around 3.7 billion social media users. Each person spends around 142 minutes every day on social media.
Traditionally, marketing comprises of Product, Price, Place, and Promotion. In the digital world, the concepts remain the same, only the treatment changes. Most importantly, social media is one of the most influential channels of marketing today.
The SMM world
One of the most interesting things about social media is dynamism. The ever-changing Social Media Marketing world manifests new rules every now and then. On the other hand, traditional marketers often find themselves caught between the marketing knowledge they possess the chasm they have to cover to be an SMM professional.
Social Media is an online platform that provides users an opportunity to create and share content with a network of connections.
This provides an opportunity for the businesses to be ‘interactive’ rather than be a mere ‘loudspeaker.’ In other words, the interactive form of marketing of the SMM world means that the firms can now address the customer directly.
Why Social Media Marketing is important?
SMM offers an incredible opportunity for one-to-one interaction. This also helps in inbound marketing. You can target those people who have already interacted with you in the past – these people are in the awareness stage. You can expand the customer reach by targetting a new audience. It offers seamless integration for customer service. It is also a very powerful tool for brand awareness. SMM integrates very well with the automation of marketing processes. Lastly, it is also cheaper than other forms of marketing. You can even reach followers free of cost which is not possible in other channels.
- Changes the focus of the marketing from firm to the customer
- Extreme level of tracking the efforts and returns.
- More interactive
- Highly accessible
- Word of mouth is amplified on social media
- Powerful segmentation and targeting
- The richness of information – videos can explain complicated product features
- Higher engagement
Best social media marketing courses online
Firstly, let us structure the courses as per the course structure:
Broad courses on SMM:
1. Hubspot certification on Social Media : FREE
Hubspot is a well-known authority when it comes to online media. Their courses are excellent resources to learn about any topic. This certificate program has about 10 lessons with about 38 videos in total. At the end of each lesson, there is a quiz which you have to pass. It is a beginner-friendly course and a great starting point for anyone starting with Social Media Marketing.
This course is hosted by multiple instructors who guide you through different functional areas in Social Media. Firstly, provide an introduction to social media strategy which is followed by other lessons about increasing your presence and reputation online. It also covers how to build relationships with the customers and how to evaluate your success. Overall I highly recommend this course as it is an excellent place to get an overview of SM.
2. Hootsuite Social Marketing Training: $199
Don’t get put off by the pricing of the course. The course is very well designed. Hootsuite is another reputed organization when it comes to social media. This course is divided into six modules and an end of course exam. Once you qualify for the exam, you will be eligible for the certification.
This course has about six hours of video content. It focuses more on developmental aspects. Firstly, it covers sections like optimizing your social media profiles. Secondly, it teaches you about the different ways to define your goals, measure your success and plan out the SMM efforts. It also has sections on content marketing, advertising and community building.
3. LinkedIn – Social Media Marketing Foundations – PAID
LinkedIn is another great platform for courses. However, if you are not already a member, you will need to subscribe to the LinkedIn premium. If you want to know more about the features and benefits, please check out our article on LinkedIn premium costs and features.
This course is designed to cover key aspects related to the SMM strategy, defining your audience, prioritizing your channels, content marketing tips, community practices. Some unique modules are selling on social media which is not covered on many websites. This could be useful if you are planning to open up a social media shop. The instructor is a university professor. However, the course length is pretty short at under two hours.
4. Udemy – The complete Digital Marketing Course – PAID
This is a ‘mega’ course. Most noteworthy feature is that this course is an amalgamation of twelve smaller courses. It is a whopping 23.5+ hours course with lots of training modules, quizzes, tips and tricks.
There have been over 390,774 enrolments so far in this course with over 85,300 ratings. The current rating of the course is around 4.4 stars which is pretty commendable.
The unique points about this course is that it coves a lot of broad as well as platform specific topics. Specifically, the platforms covered are Facebook, Youtube, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, Quora, LInekdin. It also covers the nitty gritties of advertisements as well as Google Analytics. It is an end to end course which can be the best options for all the confused sould out there who are finding it difficult to decide upon one single course from an ocean of online courses.
Platform-specific courses
1. SMM courses on Facebook
1.1 Marketing on Facebook by LinkedIn
This course requires a subscription to the LinkedIn premium. Overall it is an easy course that introduces the beginners to Facebook(FB) marketing. This is a relatively shorter course with a total video duration of 2.5 hours.
The course covers topics like introduction to FB page layout. Setting up your FB page. Intro to different Facebook features that are useful for businesses. It also covers different types of media and post options. Finally, there is a brief introduction to setting up your ad and tracking the page views.
2. SMM courses on Youtube
2.1 Youtube Marketing Course : Hubspot
This is another good free course from Hubspot. The learners get access to a short and crisp course that is less than 1.5 hours long.
You will learn how to develop your Youtube(YT) profile. Optimize your videos, keywords, file names and descriptions. The primary focus of this course is on creating high-quality courses.
2.2 Marketing and Monetization on Youtube : LinkedIn
Youtube(YT) is another incredible platform for social media marketing. Currently, it is also the second most popular search engine. Consequently, it has become a very powerful tool for Social Media Marketing.
This is yet another basic course that gives you an overview of the YT channel. You can learn how to set up a business account and set goals for YouTube. The course also covers other topics like optimizations, monetization and community management.
3. Instagram Social Media Marketing courses
3.1 Instagram Marketing 2020 : Udemy
This course has over 100k students enrolled and around 20k ratings on Udemy. Extremely budget friendly course option. However prices depend on your country.
This course covers tips and tricks to create a business account for Instagram. It is dedicated to teaching you how to grow Instagram followers. The major benefit of this plan is that it covers some newly added functions on Instagram that are helpful for businesses.
It is a 30 day course, which includes 5.5 hours of on-demand videos spread across 8 articles and other downloadable materials.
3.2 Instagram Marketing Courses: Skillshare
This is a very popular course taken by over 9000 people on Skillshare. It is targetted towards beginners on Instgram.
This course covers defining your Instagram goals, debunking myths and creating a powerful and unique brand. Rather than trying to outsmart the algorithm, this ourse teaches you to build a community.
4. Twitter SMM Courses
4.1 Twitter For Business: Udemy
This is an excellent course for beginners. Over 8000 students have enrolled for this course and it has 4.1 star rating on Udemy.
The duration of this course is 2 hours, including 3 artcles and several other useful resources. However, this is not a very extensive course.
It covers basic guides ike creating and using all Twitter features, optimizing the account to look professional and how to attract followers. These tools will help in saving time and increasing engagement on Twitter.
4.2 Twitter Business Basics: Twitter
This course is run by Twitter itself and guides users. The special focus is on increasing followers and giving creative post ideas.
All of the official resources are a concise guide to running your account efficiently on Twitter. The Twitter Business Blog section offers excellent introductions to many important features of Twitter.
Social Media Marketing manager
The SMM manager is incharge of handling the SMM for the firm. Overall guiding purpose of Social Media Marketing Manager is to enhance the presence of the firm on social media, help in executing the marketing goals and co-ordinating with different teams in firm to fulfill their requirements.
As we have discussed earlier in the previous sections, the objectives of social media marketing are creation, development and maintainance of social media accounts. They are directly responsible for increasing customer engagement, improving public relations and managing the sales funnel.
Career & Scope in SMM
SMM is critical for firms of all sizes. Businesses derive value and benefit from different social media platforms. In fact, some of the business models are entirely based on social media platforms. For instance, there are several shops running on Facebook pages or on Shopify without a website or a physical store.
There is immense scope for social media marketing professionals. However, it is a highly competitive field. In conclusion, one needs to be very thorough with their SMM skills. Additionally, SMM managers need to stay abreast of every important update in the social media marketing world. Many of these social media marketing courses online may require you to retake the test every two years or so to maintain the certification.
Social Media Marketing Jobs
We have attempted to list down some of the most sought after marketing jobs here. This list is not an exhaustive list owing to the dynamicity of this field. Essentially, the SMM jobs are posted as per the social media team’s requirement.
The highest-paid SMM job is that of Chief Marketing Officer (CMO). However, the job description of CMO includes a lot more than just handling social media. Her/his job is to strategize and execute marketing efforts of a firm in different channels.
Job description for SMM
The job desciption for Social Media manager generally covers the skillsets that are already covered in the online SMM courses discussed above. Above all, these are some common points in job description for SMM:
- Creation of social media account
- Planning a social media campaign
- Strategizing, benchmarking and optimizing SMM campaign
- Monitoring and reporting of business KPIs
- Nurturing the online community
- Enhancing the online presence of the brand
- Content marketing (Article writing, blog posting, sharing posts)
- Search engine optimization
- Social media optimization
- Sales funnel management
- Loyalty and retention
Salary for Social Media Marketing professional
The starting salary of social media marketing professional is around 40,000 USD. It depends on several factors:
Firstly, your pay would depend on your work experience. Work experience in related fields would also be helpful in this regard.
Secondly, it is also dependent on educational qualification. Educational qualification like MBA would definitely boost your chances of getting a better job profile as well as higher salary.
Thirdly, it is dependent on the type of skill you bring to the table. For instance, coding professionals earn more than graphic designers, on average.
Fourthly, your salary would also be dependent on the business vertical.
Social Media Marketing resume
Here are some key points to ensure that you have an excellent resume for SMM:
- Highlight your creativity. Emphasize your ability to create and publish original content.
- Include links to your online certifications to Social Media Marketing courses for validation. If you did an offline course, store the pdfs on Google docs or Dropbox and share the links.
- Mention cross-functional skills, if any.
- Ensure that you have a section to demonstrate your abilities by listing your most important projects and clients.
- Provide a link to your online portfolio and client testimonials.
- Rather than using adjectives to highlight your experiences, try to use numbers and percentages. For instance, don’t write “Excellent leads management skills.” Rather write “I increased the conversion rate from 14% to 27% in two months.”
Additionally, here is an example template to get you started. You may use it to create your own resume for social media marketing.
In the same vein as having an excellent resume, ensure that you also create a cover letter that you can modify and send across different job portals.
Recommended social media marketing articles
Finally, before embarking on the learning journey through Social Media Marketing courses, you may check out some excellent articles to get an overview of what is social media marketing.
Here are some top articles on Social Media Marketing:
- https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/social-media-marketing
- https://neilpatel.com/what-is-social-media-marketing/
- https://medium.com/trapica/a-step-by-step-guide-to-social-media-marketing-d41a4f0636f3
- https://www.wordstream.com/social-media-marketing
- https://buffer.com/social-media-marketing
- http://neilpatel.com/2016/05/06/instagram-marketing-101-grow-your-following-with-these-7-guides-and-5-courses
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