This is our first course in the social media marketing professional

certification program. This course is an

introduction to social media. Of course, I'm sure that most of you social media
needs
little introduction. But if you're like me, you probably use some
platforms on a daily basis, but don't have frequent
exposure to other platforms. I, for instance, have always been a heavy user of
Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn,
Pinterest, and Twitter. But when it comes to
TikTok or Snapchat, I'm a more recent
users and I use YouTube but less
frequently. What's more? I use all these platforms
in my personal life, but I use some of them
more than others when it comes to their business
and marketing applications. I know there's always
something new to discover, that's why I think it is
always a good idea to take a few steps back before diving deep into social
media marketing. It helps to understand
the landscape a bit, to know how the main platforms work and how you can
use them for marketing, even if you have some
experience already and since there are
different frameworks and ways to approach marketing, it's a good idea to all get on
the same page and look
at the building blocks, I believe are essential to
a good marketing approach, which is the focus
of this course. We'll start at the beginning. If you have some experience already
then the scores will be a nice refresher with some of the latest trends
and applications. If you don't have
experience yet, then you'll be all set by the end of this course to start your
social media
marketing journey. What will we cover? The first week is all about understanding
the
social media landscape. You'll get a better
understanding of what we mean by marketing, digital marketing, and
social media marketing. Then you'll learn how businesses can participate in social
media. You'll also get an overview of the social media landscape and learn how to
categorize
different types of social media
platforms and how media evolved and which products
it offers for business. In the second week,
we'll start digging into the main social
media platforms. You learn how they function and what opportunities they
offer for marketing. As you know, there are
many platforms and we will go through the
most important ones. We'll cover Facebook,
YouTube, Messenger, WhatsApp, Instagram,
WeChat, Pinterest, LinkedIn, TikTok,
Snapchat, Twitter, and networks that focus
on niche interests. Then in the third week, you will start getting ready for your
social media marketing. You'll first learn to set
your marketing goals. Then you'll define
what successful look like for you and how
you will measure it. In the fourth week,
we continue with the core building blocks
and you'll define who you will target with your
marketing and explore what a typical journey of
your customer looks like. You'll also complete a
project where you will define a customer persona and map out the journey
of that customer. That may sound
somewhat abstract now, but we'll provide you with
a blueprint of what will become a detailed description
of a target audience. Finally, in week 5, you'll learn how to choose social media
channels
for your marketing. First, you'll learn
how to identify the channels that best
fit your goals and your audience and then you'll learn how to put
policies in place to help manage
your company blogs and social media interactions. This introduction will give
you the foundation you need to start your social
media marketing journey. All that's left for me is
to wish you good luck. I'm excited to get started, and I will see you
in our first lesson.