HootSuite Podium offers an online course entitled, The Fundamentals of Social Media Marketing. The course content is free, however to take the final examination and get certified you will be charged a fee of $199.00 USD.
The course content covers everything from optimizing your social media profiles to teaching you how to grow your online community.
Here are some insights from HootSuite Podium: The Fundamentals of Social Media Marketing:
Optimizing Your Social Media Profiles
Ensure that your profiles across all platforms are properly optimized. Since your social media channels are an extension of your website, they should be maintained and updated, regularly.
Images
Your profile image and header/cover photo should be high resolution and sized properly. Your social profiles should be visually cohesive across all channels to make it easy for your target audience to find you.
Keyword Strategy
When creating your profile, take your keyword strategy into consideration. Google will pick up on these keywords and help improve your SEO. Depending on the channel you will have a limited number of characters to describe what you do. Think strategically and use these characters to your advantage.
Contact Information
Make it easy for others to find you. Include a link to your website to allow others the ability to learn more about your business and offerings.
Social Media Strategy – from A to Z
Create a social media strategy, something that you can follow to keep you organized and on track. Within this strategy think of goals that you wish to achieve with your social media presence.
Set Goals
The goals that you set could include the number of followers or ‘likes’ you want to obtain month-to-month or the number of impressions you want your posts to receive.
Evaluate Success
Use Google Analytics, Twitter Analytics and Facebook Analytics to monitor your successes. Monitor how others are finding you and if they are engaging with your content.
Growing Your Online Community
It’s recommended that you monitor and keep track of your social media growth over time.
Community Growth
Keep track of your followers on all social media platforms. Are your follower numbers increasing at a steady rate? If not, you might want to revisit your strategy.
Community Engagement
Is your content being engaged with? Keep track of all interactions, especially comments. It’s important to respond to comments in a timely manner to show that you are active on social media. If someone writes a negative comment, find a solution. If someone provides insights into something you posted, consider starting a conversation.
To learn how to create a great social media plan, download our infographic. Follow us on Twitter and Facebook to learn more about improving your social media for business use.
