If you are struggling to get to grips with Social Media or love it and want to get certificated as an expert then here are the best free and paid online training resources to help and support you through this daunting part of promoting your business.
Social media for business is quite different to posting pictures of your family holiday on Facebook. Social media activity is planned and executed meticulously for optimum results. Randomly posting and tweeting just won’t cut it and can be damaging to your brand.
Just making small adjustments to your Tweets i.e. adding just one #hastag rather than 2, makes a difference. The timing of tweets and posts can be the difference between 3 shares or 5 shares. Social Media is a time heavy exercise so we need to get it right.
1. Fundamentals of Social Media Marketing – Podium Hootsuite
Hootsuite offers 6 free online courses, Hootsuite University for education and certification to become a certified industry expert and make Social Media Marketing your job description.
The videos and tests after each class inform then test your knowledge.
2. Twitter Guide Book – Mashable
This is quite an extensive guide to setting up and managing your Twitter account successfully. One of ways businesses can harness their brand is by using Twitter as part of their Customer Services duties. This requires predefined scripts for negative Tweets about products and services but customers who have been dealt with quickly on Twitter are often very impressed indeed.
3. Beginners Guide to Social Media – MOZ
MOZ have very kindly put together a free comprehensive Beginners Guide to Social Media ideal for printing, binding and referring to on your desk. This guide covers best practice, understanding Metrics and ROI and walks through the main social media platforms.
4. Small Business Case Studies Webinar – Hubspot
Hubspot offer social media marketing tools so they are experts in this field. This webinar highlights pitfalls and recommendations using great imagery on how small businesses should be using social media marketing and how not to.
5. Complete Guide to Social Media Formatting
This is a comprehensive detailed blog post on social media formatting best practice for gaining the best responses. Ultimately, we don’t want to waste time on mediocre posts that raise little interest so the ‘devil is in the detail’ approach is very valuable.
6. Slideshare
Slideshare is a platform utilized by companies wishing to publish slides about their specialism. Social Media Marketing slides are in abundance from general guides to more specific information about tone and listening in social media.
Slideshare was sold to LinkedIn for $119 million (source) so many of the top marketing professionals have published executive slides on this hot topic.
7. YouTube Social Media Channel – Social Media Week
Video’s are a great way to learn something new so join a YouTube Channel such as Social Media Week who publish lots of interesting videos including tips and advice on social media for businesses.
8. Social Media Examiner – Online Social Media Management Magazine
Claiming to be the worlds largest online Social Media Magazine the website and YouTube channel offer a host of practical advice and information to help with marketing your business online.
9. Rebekah Radice – Social Media Marketing Expert and blogger
I found this lady on LinkedIn whilst researching a blog and found that she has an award form top social media blog and she certainly doesn’t disappoint. You will find tons of useful blog posts and advice from her. I like the layout of her blog posts too as she is clear and straight to the point.
10. Neil Patel – QuickSpout- Entrepreneur
Neil Patel is the co-founder of three companies and consultant for corporations such as Amazon and HP to inform and advise them on growing revenue. He is highly respected and influential on the WWW as one of the top online marketers and has even work with the US Congress.
His newsletters and webinars are useful and contain lots of tried and tested tips and tricks to gaining lots and lots of followers.
He is the owner of QuickSprout resource for advice on content marketing.
Get Certified as a Social Media Expert
If you want to spend time learning then it maybe a good idea to become a certified expert by taking one of the following courses.
1. Online Marketing Institute – OMI
2. City & Guilds Social Media Marketing
3. The IDM Professional Certificate in Social Media (Cert SocM)
5. Chartered Institute of Marketing
Summary
It is not a case of Posting and Tweeting that will gain business, we are aiming to convert followers to customers by gaining brand loyalty so social media is a planned, targeted and reportable exercise and requires expertise.
Doing Social Media badly will be a waste of time and have a detrimental impact to the business. Doing it well will make visitors and customers feel good about you, trust your business and recommend you to others.
We can help you or you can outsource your social media to us today.
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