COURSE DESCRIPTION
What are the strengths of social media? How does it actually work? What are the pitfalls and challenges? This practical, hands-on course will explore the essentials and show you how to plan, measure and implement a social media marketing strategy.
This course is designed to build students’ social media marketing skills by utilizing projects that give Participants hands on experience implementing social media marketing strategies. Topics include integrating different social media technologies into a marketing plan, creating social media marketing campaigns, and applying appropriate social media tools. Upon completion, participants should be able to use social media technologies to create and improve marketing efforts for businesses
Who should attend this course?
Anyone responsible for implementing their brand or organisation’s social media activity, including:
- Marketing executives
- Marketing managers
- Community managers
- Communication managers.
COURSE LEARNING OUTCOMES (CLOs)
On completion of this course, participants will learn:
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An engagement framework for social media marketing
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How to measure and monitor online discussion around your brand, competitors or industry
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How to implement an efficient day-to-day workflow for publishing content to Facebook and Twitter
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How to increase engagement with your customers on social channels
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How to integrate social functionality on your existing website
COURSE OUTLINE
Part 1: Introduction to Social Media
- Introduction
- Overview and history
- Review Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, G+ and others
- Review tools for management and selection
- Audience modeling, creating personas and targeting
- Posting, moderating and advertising capabilities
- Aligning marketing goals with social media opportunities
Part 2: Social Strategy, Creative & Execution
- Defining goals, objectives and strategy
- Using social media to build connections, establish SME and drive leads/sales
- Posting and moderating: creating a strong dialogue
- Team alignment, 3rd party vendors and software tools
- Advertising on social media sites
- Budget & forecasting
- Benchmarking and KPI’s
- Reporting & Measurement Overview
Part 3: Listening, Monitoring, Research, Advocacy & Analysis
- Listening and monitoring overview
- Listening –> action
- Tools and resources – free and paid (Radian6, Hootsuite etc)
- Research and communication
- Creating advocates and managing evangelism for your brand/product
- Creating guidelines and policies for SMM
- Examples of listening campaigns
Part 4: Cross-Channel Integration
- Connect Social Media to other digital channels
- Email marketing & video
- Search engine marketing, SEO & content optimization
- Offline marketing
- Promotions/Events/Loyalty
- Measuring success of integrated campaigns
Part 5: Putting it into Action
Real-world case studies and takeaways
Group Presentations & Review
Each group will work together throughout the course of the certificate program to define its group presentation. Presentations will take place during the final week of class and are encouraged to be creative uses of Social Media Marketing. Tools such as power point are encouraged. Group presentations will demonstrate your advanced understanding of the use of Social Media for a particular business. Your presentation can include Social Media plans, guidelines, reporting, listening data, audience modeling, ad campaigns and more. Each group will have approximately 15-20 minutes to present, depending on final class size.
Course Textbook
Social Media Marketing: Strategies for Engaging in Facebook, Twitter & Other Social Media
Liana Evans
Link: https://www.pearson.com/us/higher-education/program/Evans-Social-Media-Marketing-Strategies-for-Engaging-in-Facebook-Twitter-Other-Social-Media/PGM28543.html
Feedback Given to Participants in Response to Assessed Work
- Individual written feedback on coursework
- Feedback discussed as part of a tutorial
- Individual feedback on request
- Model answers
Developmental Feedback Generated Through Teaching Activities
- Feedback is given at presentations and during tutorial sessions
- Dialogue between participants and staff in tutorials and lectures
GRADING AND SCORING
The course grade will be based on a final project presented by the participant and graded by the instructor. Participants much achieve a passing grade of 70% or more to be awarded a certificate of completion of the course.
