Top 10 Social Media Marketing Courses Online
Social media used to be just another marketing channel.
This channel was optional, and marketers could ignore it completely, focusing their efforts on other channels. However, the world of digital marketing continually changes, and now social media is one of the main channels that help businesses increase brand awareness, grow traffic, and build relationships with their target audience.
Marketers no longer can ignore social media when planning their campaigns because the majority of their potential customers use social media all the time.
Even though SMM became necessary, it doesn’t mean that all businesses manage to use it to their advantage. When you’re dealing with social media, you may either enjoy great success and get an endless supply of followers and leads, or you may feel frustrated because your brand doesn’t get enough attention.
The success of your social media campaign depends on how much effort you put in it, as well as on the chosen approaches.
SMM Is a Challenge
Many businesses get new customers and increase their sales thanks to social media. However, even more companies don’t get any tangible results, so their campaigns don’t fulfil their purpose.
For instance, many companies use social media to share links, hoping that followers will visit these links, and their website traffic will grow. Usually, they share the same links on all of their social media accounts, so all of their accounts look the same.
This is not the best approach, especially given the fact that the latest version of Facebook’s algorithm can penalise link-based posts. At the same time, Instagram only allows users to have one link in their bio section.
The truth is that sharing tons of your content on social marketing has more to do with spamming than with SMM. Therefore, there’s no surprise that many marketers realise that they need additional social media marketing training.
Effective social media marketing takes a lot of time and dedication. Generally speaking, all social practices require you to invest your time and effort, and SMM is no exception. We’ve already shared a list of the best branding and marketing courses, so let’s go further and consider social media marketing in more detail.
In this article, you’ll find a list of great sources that will help you sharpen your SMM skills. But first, let’s determine the purpose of SMM.
Why Your Business Needs Social Media
No matter whether you’re running a small business or working with a big enterprise, your potential customers are online, and they use social media all the time.
They use social media to communicate with friends, to search for useful information, and to get answers to their questions.
If your company doesn’t provide the necessary content at the right moment, your competitors will do it. Therefore, you need to build a strong social media presence so that you can develop beneficial relationships with your target audience.
The main advantage of engaging with your potential customers on social media is that it helps boost advocacy. Advocacy can help you build trust and make your marketing efforts much more effective. However, you need to earn support by engaging with your customers daily.
Social media should serve as an extension of the brand. Here are some of the main benefits of effective social media marketing:
Relationships
Establishing positive relationships with your audience is the ultimate goal of SMM. If you want to build relationships, you should stay connected to your followers all the time, no matter where they are.
Fortunately, social media breaks down the walls between people and brands because the distance doesn’t matter here. According to research, average social media users are in 3.74 degrees of separation away from each other, and the network continues to grow.
Integration
Social media can help you enhance different areas of user experience. We recommend that you integrate social media into your marketing campaign from the very beginning.
This way, you’ll get more customer touchpoints for branding, your PR will increase reach and impressions, and your customer service will be able to provide the timely help.
Feedback
Social media enables users to share information very quickly, so people often use it to complain about their customer experience or to recommend brands.
For brands, social media is a valuable source of feedback.
“If you listen to your customers on social media, you’ll be able to incorporate social listening into the product development process, making sure that your customers get exactly what they want,”
Notes Audrey Robbins, a digital marketer at a writing services review website Pick The Writer.
Now that you know what the benefits and objectives of SMM are let’s take a look at the list of the best SMM courses that will help you learn more about this area of marketing and sharpen your skills.
10 Best Social Media Marketing Courses
1 – Social Media in a Noisy Online World
This is a course from Skillshare that offers much useful information that will help you build an active social media strategy.
This platform has more than 15,000 courses about virtually anything, and these courses are created by experts who are willing to share not only their knowledge but also their best practice approaches that have proven to bring great results.
The best thing about social media courses on Skillshare is that they are specific. Besides, you can enjoy a 60-day trial period, and you can also cancel your membership whenever you want.
2 – Fundamentals of Digital Marketing
This is a course from Google. More than 300,000 students have already appreciated the company’s social media certification because it provides in-depth knowledge on content optimisation, organic, and paid search, and other aspects of SMM and SEO.
Another great thing about this course is that it’s free. When you complete the course, you’ll get a digital certificate from Google that you can add to your resume and LinkedIn profile.
- Diamond, Stephanie (Author)
- English (Publication Language)
- 816 Pages - 05/07/2019 (Publication Date) - For Dummies (Publisher)
3 – Social Media Certification
The social media course from Hubspot includes many vital topics that every social marketer should know. This program will help you attract more customers and increase brand loyalty.
Given that social media marketing and inbound marketing are connected in many ways, this course addresses topics from both of these areas, including methods that can help you extend reach, information on content creation, and ROI evaluation. Besides, this course is also free.
4 – Social Media Marketing — Complete Certificate Course
This is a social media course from Udemy that covers many topics, being an excellent solution for both beginners and experts who want to learn advanced practices.
There are a few social media courses on Udemy, and this one focuses on the foundations. Thanks to this course, you’ll understand the basics of strategy development and the unique features of different social media platforms.
This course has over 29,000 students, and it gives you lifetime access to the course materials for $29.99.
The content is updated regularly, so you don’t have to worry about whether or not the course is relevant. It includes information on all the latest trends so you can use your knowledge in practice immediately.
5 – Digital Marketing Specialization
This is a comprehensive course from the University of Illinois. The course is aimed at beginners and is also a part of the MBA degree.
After you complete this course, you will learn a lot about digital marketing and social media marketing, in particular.
There are more than 40,000 students enrolled, and the lectures are delivered by professors and other experts, including the head of Google Analytics. The course costs $49.
- Dib, Allan (Author)
- English (Publication Language)
- 232 Pages - 05/05/2018 (Publication Date) - Page Two (Publisher)
6 – Social Media Marketing Masterclass
This is another social media marketing online course from Udemy that will help you learn various effective marketing practices.
This course focuses on ethical digital marketing methods and includes information on how to integrate SMM with your business and email marketing.
You can complete this course in 20 hours, it costs $16.99, and it currently has 18,000 students enrolled.
7 – Social Marketing Training
This is a course from Hootsuite Academy that includes many useful materials prepared by experienced marketing managers.
It will be an excellent solution for beginners because it will teach you how to optimise content, grow your online community, and increase engagement.
The course can be completed in only six hours. It costs $199, and it will help you learn from experts that have worked with companies like P&G and Pfizer.
8 – Social Media 101 Training
This is an informative video-based course from Boot Camp Digital that will help you learn the basics of social media marketing and the most effective practices.
This course is intended for beginners, and it will provide you with information on benchmarking, measuring ROI, and various templates.
The course costs $97 and enables you to learn from professionals who’ve worked with such companies as Nike, GE, and NASA.
- Audible Audiobook
- Brendan Kane (Author) - Brendan Kane (Narrator)
- English (Publication Language)
- 04/30/2019 (Publication Date) - Audible Studios (Publisher)
9 – Fundamentals of Digital Marketing, Social Media, and E-Commerce
This course from Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania is intended for professionals who want to get a prestigious certificate and to learn more about the digital economy.
Both marketers and business owners will appreciate it. This is a six-week course that costs $585 and enables you to learn at your own pace.
10 – The Strategy of Content Marketing
This is a great content marketing course from the University of California, Davis that will help you create compelling, engaging, and relevant social media content.
You will learn how different types of content can be used in different situations, and how to build your social media campaign around high-quality content.
The course costs $49, and it has over 36,000 students.
Final Thoughts
We hope that our list of the best social media marketing classes will help you establish a robust online presence and attract more customers.
Social media is a vital marketing channel, and it can demonstrate amazing results if you choose the right approaches.
Learn from experts, try new practices, and you will see how social media marketing can help you increase traffic and revenue.
Last update on 2023-03-09 / Affiliate links / Images from Amazon Product Advertising API
