Using Social Media in Business

Social media offers a powerful way to reach new customers and grow your business through increased leads and sales. In this social media for business course, you will learn about some of the most popular social media platforms such as—Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Google Business Profile, Twitter, Pinterest, and many others—and study secrets for using these platforms to promote your business. Throughout the course, you will gain insights into how to build a social media team and automate your...

6 Weeks / 24 Course Hrs

Starting April 16, 2025

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Learning method

Self-Guided

$190

No instructor. Study on your own schedule

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Instructor-Moderated

$175

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Starting April 16 | May 14

Details + Objectives

Course code: smb

One of the biggest challenges for business owners is finding new customers. Over the past decade, some business owners have leveraged social media to do just that. Whether you are a social media novice or a seasoned veteran, this course will give you a solid foundation in social media marketing and how to use social media for business

No matter your goals, social media is a game changer for businesses in today's globally connected environment. So, whether you are looking for a new way to market your business or simply want to better understand social media, this social media in business course will empower you for future success.

What you will learn

Describe the basics of online marketing and how social media works
Identify the main objectives for using social media in your business
Select the right social media platform(s) that align with and support the identified business objectives
Demonstrate the ability to set up and configure the most popular social media platforms
Develop a process to test, measure, review, and continuously improve the effectiveness of your social media efforts
Automate social media activities, leveraging tools and strategies to streamline processes

How you will benefit

Confidently promote yourself as a social media marketer
Immediately apply what you learn in the lessons to promote your business and generate new leads
Gain the knowledge and abilities to implement a "SOCIAL" process to increase your business's awareness, engagement, and sales
Master the art of using social media to promote a business and track your results - a skill most struggle to do successfully

How the course is taught

Instructor-Moderated or Self-Guided online course
6 Weeks or 3 Months access
24 course hours

Outline

In this lesson, we're going to build the foundation you'll use for social media to grow your business. You'll discover the definition of social media, learn about its characteristics and see what it can do for your business. Then, you'll explore the various types of social media and focus on the ones that offer the greatest benefits. We'll examine the right way to use social media to develop relationships and drive new leads into your business, and explore a step-by-step process for ensuring that social media works for you.

In this lesson, you'll see how you can build a strategy for using social media to grow your business. First, you'll discover what a strategy is and why it's important to have one for your social media efforts. Then, you'll gain an understanding of the critical elements of any social media strategy. Finally, we'll examine the steps needed to plan, build and execute a social media strategy that's customized for your business and that will help you to expand awareness, gain more clients and increase your sales.

This lesson demonstrates how to develop a social media organization that will help you be as effective as possible. First, you'll choose from the various platforms and select the ones that will serve your business best. Then we'll explore how to build a simple social media organization diagram to document and guide your social tactics. Finally, we'll examine how you can transform your simple diagram into a more detailed electronic file and add elements as your business grows.

In this lesson, you'll learn how to produce social media content that engages your followers and entices them to comment. First, we'll examine the different types of social media content you should consider producing. Next, you'll gain an understanding of how to write content that's optimized for distribution on social media platforms and to do so without it becoming a full-time job. Finally, we'll examine various ways that you can create, store, manage, search, and retrieve the social media content that you produce.

Facebook is one of the most popular social networking sites. In this lesson, you'll learn how you can use Facebook to effectively market and grow your business. First, you'll get an overview of how Facebook works, and you'll take a tour of a Facebook page. Next, we'll walk through how to create a Facebook account and set up a page for your business, and we'll explore the features you can use to engage, interact and grow a base of followers. Finally, we'll examine several business growth strategies that you can use to gain awareness and exposure for your business.

In this lesson, you'll learn how you can use Instagram to effectively market and grow your business. First, we'll walk through an overview of the social media platform, highlight how it differs from others we've explored, and take a tour of its features. After that, you'll see how to create a personal account and to set up one for your business. Finally, we'll examine several strategies that you can use to leverage Instagram to engage and interact and grow a base of followers for your business.

In this lesson, you'll learn how you can use LinkedIn to make connections, expand your personal network, and use the power of the platform to market and grow your business. First, we're going to introduce you to LinkedIn and outline the things that make this platform different from the other ones that we've investigated. We'll then outline the steps to create your own account and show you how to optimize your LinkedIn profile page. Finally, we'll explore a handful of business growth strategies that you can use to gain awareness and exposure for your business.

In this lesson, you'll discover how to effectively use Google Business Profile to enhance your business's online presence. We'll start by understanding what Google Business Profile is and its advantages over other social media platforms. You'll learn step-by-step how to set up your profile and the essentials of managing it. Lastly, we will dive into several strategic approaches for leveraging your profile to increase visibility and attract more customers to your business.

In this lesson, we'll explore a variety of social media platforms that extend beyond the typical ones like Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn, focusing on how they can be utilized for your business. First, we'll introduce what each platform—such as X (formerly Twitter), Pinterest, Reddit, Snapchat, Telegram, TikTok, WhatsApp, and YouTube—offers and how it stands out from the others we've discussed previously. You'll learn how to determine which platforms are most applicable for your specific business situation. Next, we'll outline initial strategies to engage effectively with your audience on these platforms. Finally, we will provide specific tactics for each platform to help increase your visibility and connect with more users interested in your products and services.

In this lesson, you'll learn about social media automation. First, we're going to investigate what it means to automate your social media activities and outline the various ways you can do so. Next, we'll peek at the pros and cons and identify the most common pitfalls of using automation. And finally, we'll introduce the most popular free and paid automation tools that you can put to immediate use.

In this lesson, you'll learn to minimize the time you spend on social media activities through delegation. First, we'll investigate the types of tasks you can delegate and examine some common pitfalls to avoid. Next, we'll explore the process for assigning tasks to team members and, if needed, hiring a part-time or full-time social media manager. Finally, you'll gain some strategies for centralizing your social media information and get a preview of some software solutions for integrating your social media team's efforts.

How do you know if what you're doing is working? In this lesson, you'll learn about tracking, monitoring, measuring, and improving your social media activities. First, we're going to investigate the most common types of metrics you'll find in social media. Next, we'll outline the basic metrics and a simple approach that you can use to track how well social media is working for you. And finally, you'll browse some popular third-party tools that can take your analysis to another level.

Instructors & Support

Brad Semp

Brad Semp, Ph.D., is Chief Executive Officer (CEO) at a global corporation, a life-long entrepreneur, and a former professor of Bachelors and Masters of Science courses in Internet Marketing. Dr. Brad is active on social media platforms to engage with prospects and customers, expand relationships, and to grow businesses. He routinely coaches other entrepreneurs and business owners and consults with Fortune 500 organizations on how to design and implement effective social media systems, strategies, and tactics.

Instructor Interaction: The instructor looks forward to interacting with learners in the online moderated discussion area to share their expertise and answer any questions you may have on the course content.

Requirements

Prerequisites:

There are no prerequisites to take this course.

Requirements:

Hardware Requirements:

This course can be taken on either a PC, Mac, or Chromebook.

Software Requirements:

PC: Windows 10 or later.
Mac: macOS 10.6 or later.
Browser: The latest version of Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox are preferred. Microsoft Edge and Safari are also compatible.
Microsoft Word Online
Adobe Acrobat Reader.
Software must be installed and fully operational before the course begins.

Other:

Email capabilities and access to a personal email account.

Instructional Material Requirements:

The instructional materials required for this course are included in enrollment and will be available online.

FAQ

Instructor-Moderated: A new session of each course begins each month. Please refer to the session start dates for scheduling.

Self-Guided: Your course begins immediately after you enroll.

Instructor-Moderated: Once a course session starts, two lessons will be released each week for the 6 week duration of your course. You will have access to all previously released lessons until the course ends. You will interact with the instructor through the online discussion area. There are no live sessions or online meetings with the instructor.

Self-Guided: You have 3 months of access to the course. After enrolling, you can learn and complete the course at your own pace, within the allotted access period. You will have the opportunity to interact with other students in the online discussion area.

Instructor-Moderated: The interactive discussion area for each lesson automatically closes two weeks after each lesson is released, so you're encouraged to complete each lesson within two weeks of its release. However, you will have access to all lessons from the time they are released until the course ends.

Self-Guided: There is no time limit to complete each lesson, other than completing all lessons within the allotted access period. Discussion areas for each lesson are open for the entire duration of the course.

Instructor-Moderated: Students enrolled in a six-week online class benefit from a one-time, 10-day extension for each course. No further extensions can be provided beyond these 10 days.

Self-Guided: Because this course is self-guided, no extensions will be granted after the start of your enrollment.

Reviews

The information in your course is as good as gold. I know now I have the right information and direction to make a clear judgement on which way to take my business.

This is an excellent course! You provided a lot of valuable information in each lesson. I really appreciated the videos and quizzes in the lessons. Thank you!

Thanks Dr. Brad! This class is awesome! I will definitely refer some of my friends to this class in the future. I feel much more confident in my abilities to manage the social media aspect of our marketing. Great class!

Thank you for the effort that you put into all of your lesson plans. Each one was informative and I especially enjoyed the video segments that were added. They helped keep me engaged. The interactive quizzes were a welcomed change of pace. Kudos to you.

I really have to take the time to just say thank you, because when I first started this course, I was not sure how I would be able to learn all of these various platforms, yet build them. This course was great, and I will be recommending it to many of my colleagues and friends.

I enrolled in this course for further training in marketing and I have learned so much from it. Although I'm not a small business owner, I do feel well-equipped to help any future employers who need help with social media. In fact, there are many local businesses that advertise for part-time social media help that I feel confident I could help them grow their business using the information you have provided. Thank you!

I just wanted to thank you for providing this course. I've learned more about the social world than I ever thought existed. I am looking forward to being able to track and analyze the data that we put into our social platforms. Thank you, for all of your help.

Thank you for making this course so interesting. It was very organized and I learned more that I thought I would!

I think Dr. Brad's SOCIAL formula is excellent! A great way to organize this new information and really useful resource to refer to every time we start work on a new social media goal or process.