Using Social Media in Business

Learn how to use the five most popular social media platforms-Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and Instagram-to grow and promote your business. This course will help you harness the power of social media to connect with new customers, advertise products, and promote your brand.

6 Weeks / 24 Course Hrs

Starting June 14, 2023

Offered in partnership with your preferred school

ed2go

Change School

Learning method

Self-paced

$190

No instructor. Study on your own schedule

Enroll Now

Instructor-led

$175

Confirm your start date in cart

Starting June 14 | July 12

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're a social media novice or a seasoned veteran, this course will give you a solid foundation in social media marketing and using it to grow your business.

In today's globally connected environment, social media is a game changer for businesses. So, whether you're looking for a new way to market your business or simply want to better understand social media, this online social media marketing course will empower you.

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 setup and configure the five most popular social media platforms.
Develop a process to test, measure, review, and continuously improve the effectiveness of your social media efforts.

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 develop the ability to implement a SOCIAL process to increase awareness, engagement and sales for your business.
Master the art of successfully using social media to promote a business and track your results - something most people can't do

How the course is taught

Instructor-led or self-paced online course
6 Weeks or 3 Months access
24 course hours

Outline

In this lesson, you'll build the foundation you need to use social media to grow your business. You will 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 in on the ones that offer the greatest benefits.

You will see how you can build a strategy for using social media to grow your business. First, you will discover what a strategy is and why it's important to have one for your social media efforts. Then, you will gain an understanding of the critical elements of any social media strategy.

This lesson demonstrates how to develop a social media organization that will help you be as effective as possible. First, you will see how to choose from among the various platforms to select the ones that will serve your business best. Finally, you will learn how you can transform your simple diagram into a more detailed electronic file and add elements as your business grows.

In this lesson, you will learn how to produce social media content that engages your followers and entices them to comment. You will 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, you will learn the various ways that you can 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 will learn how you can use Facebook to effectively market and grow your business. First, you will get an overview of how Facebook works, and you will take a tour of a Facebook business page. Next, you learn how to create a Facebook account, set up a page for your business, and use strategies to gain awareness and exposure for your business.

This lesson focuses on using Twitter to effectively market and grow your business. You will be guided through the steps required to create and brand a Twitter account for your business. Finally, you will learn several advanced strategies that you can use to gain awareness and exposure for your business.

This lesson will teach you how to use LinkedIn to make connections, expand your personal network, and grow your business. You will explore a handful of strategies that you can use to gain awareness and exposure for your business.

In this lesson, you will learn how you can use Pinterest to share information and connect with others who are interested in your products and services. You will learn a handful of strategies that can help your business gain additional awareness and exposure.

In this lesson, you'll learn how you can use Instagram to effectively market and grow your business. First, you'll look at an overview of the social media platform, see how it differs from others you've explored, and take a tour of its features. After that, you'll see how to create a personal account and how to decide whether or not to switch to a business profile. Finally, you'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 will learn about social media automation. You will peek at the pros and cons and identify the most common pitfalls of using automation. And finally, this lesson introduces the most popular free and paid automation tools that you can put to immediate use.

In this lesson, you will learn to minimize the time you spend on social media activities through delegation. First, this lesson investigates the types of tasks you can delegate and examine some common pitfalls to avoid. Next, you will explore processes for assigning tasks to team members and, if needed, hiring a part-time or full-time social media manager. Finally, you will 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 will learn about tracking, monitoring, measuring and improving your social media activities. You'll investigate the most common types of metrics you will find in social media and then examine 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 8 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.
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-Led: A new session of each course begins each month. Please refer to the session start dates for scheduling.

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

Instructor-Led: 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-Paced: 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-Led: 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-Paced: 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-Led: 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-Paced: Because this course is self-paced, 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.

Now that I have taken this course, I feel more confident in finding a job working specifically as a Social Media Specialist/Coordinator...and I owe it all to you. Thank you so much for taking the time to prepare this online course.