If you want to know what is Social Media Marketing, you are on the right page.
I shall take you through all the key idiosyncrasies of Social Media Marketing and help you find ways through which you can master your Social Media Marketing skills.
Before we deep dive, it’s right time to understand the Social Media Marketing Definition-
Social media marketing is the use of social media platforms and websites to promote a product or service. –Wikipedia
Social media as a marketing medium is highly dynamic and evolving almost on a daily basis with new technological developments and feature updates across different social media channels. Artificial Intelligence and Virtual Reality are the latest buzzwords in the marketing world and they are going to bring in lot of transformation to social media and the digital marketing world.
In this article, I will answer different questions in your mind related to learning social media marketing. So let’s get directly to the point, and begin with “how to learn social media marketing”.
How To Learn Social Media Marketing
There are primarily four ways to learn social media marketing online, and they are:
1) Reading Social Media Blogs
This is one of the most basic and an excellent way to comprehend what is Social Media Marketing. This way before even having any practical experience of running social media campaigns, you will be well aware of different social media channels, their nuances and individual tactics as well as broader social media plans, role of Social Media Marketing agencies, campaigns and case studies.
All this information will come quite handy and act as a catalyst in your mind when you will be actually running any social media campaigns. But remember to follow only high-quality blogs to learn about social media marketing. I recommend to read following Social Media Marketing blogs at this stage (and even later on, as learning is an ongoing process):
Digital Vidya’s Social Media Blog Posts
There are more than 1100 posts on social media marketing in this repository dealing with almost all the aspects of social media that will help you master what is Social Media Marketing. Be it understanding the basics, learning how to create social media plans, learning tactics and best practices of different social media channels like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn etc.
Buffer Social
Buffer is a tool to schedule your social media posts across different channels and check out the analytics for the same. Their blog posts are of high quality which offer actionable insights to their readers.
Razor Social
Their blog provides an excellent information about the tools and technology in the social media space. A must follow for all the social media enthusiasts.
Agora Pulse
A comprehensive coverage of different aspects of social media marketing with actionable tips and insights.
Peg Fitzpatrick
She is one of the most well known social media marketer around the world today. She has also co-authored one of the best selling books on social media “Art of Social Media” along with Guy Kawasaki to help you understand what is Social Media Marketing in the most comprehensive manner possible. Her blogs offer lots of insights for social media marketers in an interesting manner. A must follow.
Jon Loomer
His blog is specifically focused on Facebook marketing. Facebook on its own has grown to be a behemoth, a big daddy of social media channels. With its nearly 2 billion user base, no marketer can afford not to be there. So what Jon Loomer has done is, he has created a highly specialised and wonderfully insightful blog only for Facebook marketing. Again, a must follow.
Sue B. Zimmerman
If you are looking for insights on Instagram marketing, then this is a must follow blog. Apart from the screenshots in her blog posts, she also explains the ideas using videos, which makes it very easy for the reader to absorb the information.
2) Start A Blog And Promote It Using Social Media
Once you have a sufficient theoretical knowledge of what is Social Media Marketing, it is time to apply the same in a practical way. One of the best ways to do that is to start your own blog. Your blog can be on any topic of your interest. You can learn to blog in just 30 minutes! WordPress.org (for self-hosted blogs) is the most popular blogging platform in the world right now. In case you want to go for self-hosted blog (which I recommend) than to purchase the domain name and hosting you can consider Bluehost (Disclosure: this is an affiliate link) as they are officially recognized by WordPress as one of the best hosting platforms. Plus they are offering 1-year hosting (and a FREE domain name, Email etc.) at a very competitive rate.
Once you setup your blog. The next step is to create social media accounts of your blog on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Pinterest etc. Next create a social media marketing plan to promote your blog. Now follow this plan and measure the results. Wherever you are weak, improve those areas, and repeat the processes where you are good. This way you will keep on improving.
3) Take Social Media Marketing Course
Doing self-study using freely available information online is fine and good enough, but it can be time-consuming and sometimes overwhelming and confusing too as there is tons of information out there and it is not organised in course format as professional training providers like Digital Vidya do. Also if you are looking at social marketing distance learning, Digital Vidya’s social media marketing course can be taken at the convenience of your home. All you need is a laptop and an internet connection and you can learn what is Social Media Marketing & its best practices in a practical manner.
Apart from the instructor-led training (by experts) and high-quality course material and exercises, one biggest advantage of doing professional social media marketing course is that you become a certified professional (which is industry recognized) and helps you get a good job in the market.
Remember that Digital Vidya’s social media marketing course offers certification in partnership with Vskills (Government of India’s initiative) which adds a lot of value to your CV. Digital Vidya’s social marketing course fees right now is Rs. 11,900 + 15% service tax. The entire course fee is refundable after your 1st live session, if you don’t like the training. There is also a group discount of 10% for 3 or more registrations.
NOTE: You can also learn digital marketing online, as the future of Digital Marketing jobs is to have multiple skills, not just one area like social media marketing (although that too has lots of jobs at the entry level, but at senior level, one ought to have diverse skills). You can also learn digital marketing online (if you are interested) by enrolling for Digital Vidya’s CDMM course which is their most comprehensive course on Digital Marketing.
Also, if you are looking for digital marketing course online or at digital marketing course distance learning, then again, CDMM course is the best bet as you can undertake it at the convenience of your home, all you need is a laptop and an internet connection.
4) On-Job Learning
Once you get into a full-time job with some company, you face a lot of real-life challenges which you had never even thought about while learning from blogs or from courses. For example, some online reputation management issue like customers bashing your product or brand on social media. How to handle that? That you will learn only in real-life situations and master how to do Social Media Marketing like a pro.
Similarly, how will you create social media contests? How will you do influencer outreach on social media? And so on. All these things you will learn while actually doing a social media marketing job for some company. You will also be introduced to different Social Media Marketing Tools such as Buffer, Hootsuite, Facebook Power Editor, etc.
Also, have a look at the amazing Social Media Marketing Quotes.
Conclusion
I am sure the ways which I have shared in this article will help you a long way to understand what is Social Media Marketing and how you can use it to optimize your career & business growth.
In case you are in search of some good Social Media Marketing Jobs then the aforestated tips will empower you to join a top rated Social Media Marketing Agency as a pro marketer. Find here the list of best Social Media Marketing Agencies in India.
Having any queries related to this article? please feel free to ask in the comment box below.
Inputs by Shivendra Tiwari.
i want to join smm course where is the a-z complete syllabus
very informative blog, filled with a lot of information, please keep sharing. thanks!
Thanks for the beautiful comment.