Building a successful social media marketing strategy for your business takes careful planning, and a lot of trial and error. Get help developing your social media strategy and skills by enrolling in free online courses from educators and practitioners.
Here is a list of free courses to hone your social media marketing strategy. Some of these courses are single-lecture events. Others are multi-week classes within larger specializations.
Free Social Media Courses
What is Social? Created by Northwestern University, this course is the first in the six-course specialization, “Social Media Marketing: How to Profit in a Digital World,” for business owners, executives, and marketing professionals. Learn about the goals, structure, and deliverables of the social marketing specialization. Use the audit option to see lectures and certain assignments for free without subscribing or starting a free trial. You can upgrade to a subscription later if you decide you want to complete the series.
Northwestern University – Social Media Marketing.
Introduction to Marketing. This course from the University of British Columbia will teach you the fundamentals of marketing, including strategies and tools used across industries. The course covers social media strategy and other key marketing topics, including market research, brand strategy, pricing, integrated marketing communication, and more. Learn through the award-winning teaching approaches of the Sauder School of Business’s marketing faculty.
Social Media Analytics. This class covers the basic principles of social media analytics for beginners and for marketers who want to refresh their knowledge. For all newcomers to social media analytics, this free course offers an introduction to its fundamentals. It aims to help anybody involved in social media analytics, no matter whether they are working for a brand, an agency, or in the media.
HubSpot Academy Inbound Certification. HubSpot Academy’s free Inbound Certification course consists of twelve class lectures that span the four stages of the inbound methodology. In “Amplifying Your Content with Social Media,” learn why social media is an essential element to every inbound strategy. Implement best practices to create an effective social media strategy, including social media monitoring, publishing, and reporting. Additional classes cover search engine optimization, blogging, email marketing, and more.
HubSpot Academy.
Social Media Monitoring. Learn how to use social monitoring tools to find the hot pockets of conversation and meet you customers on their own turf. Learn to use social media tools to conduct content curation and find online influencers. Learn social media monitoring for Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Craigslist, blogs, and forums using free social media monitoring tools and services, and master the art and science of social media monitoring.
The Business of Social. In “The Business of Social,” learn how to transform your organization’s social marketing from an untracked investment to an integral part of your company’s marketing strategy. Learn the legal considerations involved as well as proven performance metrics and management tactics for success. This is another course in the Social Media Marketing Specialization from Northwestern University.
Viral Marketing and How to Craft Contagious Content. Created by The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, this course explains how things catch on and helps you apply these ideas to be more effective at marketing your ideas, brands, or products. Drawing on principles from his best-selling book, “Contagious: Why Things Catch On,” Professor Jonah Berger illustrates successful strategies to use buzz to create virality so that your campaigns become more shareable on social media and elsewhere. By the end of this course, you’ll have a better understanding of how to craft contagious content, build stickier messages, and get any product, idea, or behavior to catch on.
The Wharton School Online.
Quick Sprout University. Neil Patel’s Quick Sprout University offers a wide variety of short classes in social media, as well as content marketing, email marketing, paid advertising, SEO, link building, and more. Social media courses include “How to Enhance Your Social Media Presence” and “How to Improve Your Social Media Marketing with Social Media Metrics.” Learn the right way (and wrong way) to set up your social media profiles, how to add social sharing buttons to your blog, how to optimize your social media profiles for search engines, and engage with your followers to turn them into paying customers.
Digital Analytics for Marketing Professionals. This course builds on the theory and foundations of marketing analytics and focuses on practical application by demystifying the use of data in marketing and helping you realize the power of visualizing data with artful use of numbers found in the digital space. This course is part of the “iMBA” offered by of the University of Illinois Masters of Business Administration degree program.
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign iMBA Program.
Content, Advertising & Social IMC. In this course, you’ll learn how marketers are successfully navigating today’s media landscape. Learn why developing engaging content for your audience is an essential component in effective social marketing. A panel of experts unlocks the paid-owned-earned media riddle and replaces it with an integrated who-what-where approach that utilizes platform-specific messaging to grow your market share. This course also includes an overview of the integrated marketing communications strategy for social and how it is being deployed around the globe, as well as gamification tips to keep your audiences coming back for more. In addition, you will learn the secrets to advertising on Facebook and other social sites.
Email Marketing for E-Commerce. This quick class with MailChimp’s Director of VIP Services, Ariana Hargrave, shares tools and tips you can put into action today to send better emails and achieve your business goals. Explore three key concepts to boost your business through email, automation, optimization, and personalization, with helpful tactics and visual examples for each.
Advanced Social Media Marketing for Picking Up Clients. In “Advanced Social Media Marketing for Picking Up Clients,” learn how to implement simple rules and attract quality, motivated clients to you via social media. Discover how to use Facebook groups, niche forums, online bulletin boards, and YouTube to your own professional ends.
Facebook Blueprint. Learn the best practices of Facebook marketing through a series of free, self-paced online courses and webinars. Or follow a tailored learning path made up of courses curated for your role. Gain an edge with your followers by exploring topics, such as content targeting, audience insights, brand awareness, and brand best practices.
Facebook Blueprint.