Social Media Marketing Certificate

Join us for this exciting learning experience. With an easy to follow syllabus paced over 12 weeks in an online environment that you can approach in a self-study format, you'll find this course will fit into even the busiest schedule. While the syllabus is structured to give you a recommended schedule, you'll be able to go through it at your own pace. The entire learning experience can be enjoyed at home or your office.

Course Description and Objectives

Social media is changing how business is done around the world in almost every industry. The marketing and business worlds are undergoing fundamental changes in how consumers interact with brands and each other. Social media has helped give consumers a voice and connect them with their friends and other like-minded consumers, and it has also opened up numerous new communication channels available for marketers and brands to connect with current and potential customers.

This course is designed to help you understand how marketing has (and has not) changed due to the rise of social media and changes in various underlying contextual factors, such as dramatically increased speed of information dissemination across consumers and brands. The overarching goal is to obtain a clear perspective on what’s really going on in digital/social/mobile marketing so that you can begin to appreciate its true value to consumers, to managers, and to other corporate stakeholders. It will equip you with the relevant knowledge, perspectives, and practical skills required to develop marketing strategies that leverage the opportunities inherent in social media and social interactions for achieving business and marketing goals.

Note that this course is NOT about specific online social media platforms that you may know well from a user perspective (e.g., Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat). While these platforms are important and will of course be discussed, it is important to know in advance that this course is not solely about these platforms. The intention is to broaden your perspective, not narrow your thinking by focusing on just a few platforms that happen to be important now.

The emphasis of this course is instead on understanding consumers’ social interactions, examining the various social media channels available to marketers, learning how to build social marketing strategies, and practicing how to track their effectiveness. Also, since social media is heavily technology-driven, we will cover some relevant related aspects in digital marketing more broadly, including emerging topics in electronic commerce and mobile marketing.

Learning Outcomes

This course will offer you an opportunity to:

• Understand what social media is and how this new type of media and communications technology influences how business and marketing is done
• Understand key principles of “connected consumers” from psychological and sociological perspectives, and how these principles can be leveraged when developing social media marketing strategies
• Develop skill in using the predominant social media tools currently available for business/marketing communication
• Discover innovative uses for social media in a variety of business areas and processes (e.g., new product development and service management)
• Understand how to use various social media channels to publish and disseminate relevant branded content in order to engage consumers and to increase social impact, influence, and value
• Develop a strategic plan for identifying opportunities for using social media in a company

Course materials $119.99

Digital access to case studies, “Mimic Social Simulation,” and “Social Media Marketing: Principles and Strategies” textbook will be available for purchase upon registration. The course materials fee of $119.99 is not included in the course registration.

Quizzes

Every chapter from the textbook has an accompanying quiz. The quiz should be completed when the reading assignment is given.

Simulation

A very important part of this course is the simulation. This simulation will give you a taste of what it is like to run a social media marketing campaign for a business. There are twelve rounds to the simulation. It is likely that you will not do very well for the first round or two, but that is all right. Don't worry. This, combined with the lesson materials, will help prepare you for success in social media marketing.

Expert Sessions

There are twelve expert video sessions featuring social media marketing experts. It is highly recommended that you watch them all in order to get great, practical information from people in the industry.

Exam

There will be one final exam. The exam will be online, timed, and open book. The exam will be in multiple choice format. (Passing grade on the final exam is 68%.)

Digital Badge

Each student successfully completing the course will receive a digital badge marked as "SMEI Social Media Marketing" that can be proudly plugged in and displayed on LinkedIn and other social platforms.