Whether you’re an influencer, a marketing agency, startup, freelancer or an average social media user, you are going to need certain social media marketing skills to build a brand image, attract your target audience and leave an impact.

Content that is interesting enough to get likes, retweets, and generate the kind of social shares to take your message and advertising viral. With more states legalizing gambling, and more casinos competing against one another, your online marketing approach must draw in your audience. The reason it kills the social media engagement is because an advertising agency begins to use social media as an advertising channel and not as a real-time marketing tool and building a relationship with. Further, many content repositories have rich social media overlays (Facebook-driven comments on blog posts, for example). In no way will content marketing overtake social media in any corner of the universe with the possible exception of professional marketers. Social media is the new telephone. Content marketing is the new brochure.

But what exactly is social media marketing?

Social media marketing is basically the usage of social media platforms to connect with your specific target audience, increase sales and drive website traffic.

It is an amalgamation of creating good content, promoting that content, managing brand campaigns, keeping a track of the analytics, interacting with your audience and regularly engaging with them.

Nowadays businesses use social media in a myriad of different ways. For example, a business that is concerned about what people are saying about its brand would monitor social media conversations and respond to relevant mentions.

A business that wants to understand how it’s performing on social media would analyze its reach, engagement, and sales on social media with an analytics tool (social media analytics).

A business that wants to reach a specific set of audience at scale would run highly-targeted social media ads (social media advertising).

All of these activities combined are often also known as social media management.

Free Online Courses

Now every time you wish to enroll yourself in a course, it is not feasible to get back to college.

The fast-paced, digitized life doesn’t allow people to physically attend classes so online courses are the new colleges.

Especially when it comes to learning something as dynamic as social media marketing, it’s better to learn through online courses than any old school textbook course.

Here is a curated list of the top 10 free online courses to learn social media marketing for free:

What is social?

By: Coursera

The “What Is Social?” This hands-on, “how-to” program won’t just tell you how to grow your professional persona using social – you will actually do it! This course is the first in the six-course specialization, Social Media Marketing: How to Profit in a Digital World.

You will also get a certificate at the end of the course which is shareable. This course includes videos, practice quizzes , graded programming assignments, etc.

In each course, you will also receive special toolkits with timely information.

Sign up here

“I really loved this course for three reasons: (1) It was clearly designed for an online audience (as opposed to a recording of a University lecture); (2) it offered good, relevant, clearly-presented information in a concise way, including guest lectures by topical experts; and (3) it was relevant and useful to my current business needs. It met and possibly exceeded my expectations. I was able to glean helpful information and sources without being overwhelming in terms of time expenditure.This is helpful”

Jody P

Social media marketing course and certification

By: eMarketing instituteThis course teaches you social media marketing and a detailed review of social media websites. It will clear your idea about which social networks will actually provide benefit to your company.

It will further polish your skills on how to use these social networks to your benefit for the promotion of your business and the process of reaching potential customers.

The tool here is a free e-book which includes full course material and there will exams before you get your certificate.

Sign up here

Growth academy

By: WordStream

This is a free, flexible, on-demand video training that helps small businesses and marketing agencies. It is a roadmap to growing your business through digital marketing, online advertising, lead generation, etc.

It is taught by some of the top marketing experts in the industry.

Sign up here

Social Media Strategy for Small Businesses

By: Alison

This is a free social media marketing course. It will help you learn about key concepts of social media along with different ways of creating and promoting content.

You will also learn social media analysis and a practical overview of how to apply this knowledge on all social media platforms.

It is just a 3-hour course with 4 modules. This course will give you a headstart especially if you are a beginner. You will be given a certificate in the end if you pass with an 80% or higher result rate.

The certificates have to be purchased and that is the only downside.

Sign up here

“ I have done diploma in web business development and online marketing from this website and I really appreciate the way they let us learn at our own pace. A very good place to learn many things in an easy and interesting way. I really thank them for providing a good platform for learning whatever we want for free and even providing the certification at low fees. I really recommend it for everyone. ”

Social Media Quickstarter

By: Constant Contact

All social media managers and marketers start somewhere. This free social media class from Constant Contact is a great resource for those who are looking to dive into the world of social media without all of the complications.

It offers a step-by-step guide to building a presence on almost every social media platform you can think of.

Sign up here

“ I love services from constant contact . From the minute i signed up, they have been incredibly friendly and supportive”

Kara B

Marketing with Ahrefs

By: ahrefs academy

This free course by Ahrefs academy includes 5 tutorials.

Through this course, you learn about major marketing features and how to apply them.It teaches you keyword research, analysis and also gives in-depth information about link-building.

It is a 4 hr 57 min video tutorial and every lesson includes solid examples to back up the advice given. Take this course for a quick lesson on strategic SEO techniques.

Sign up here

Google Analytics Academy

By: GoogleAnalytics Academy helps you learn about Google’s measurement tools so that you can grow your business through intelligent data collection and analysis.Google Analytics Academy is an incredible online resource for marketers looking to up their game in everything Google-related.A beginner can learn from the basic level and then upgrade to a higher level with each course.You need to score 80% or above to get the Google Analytics Course Certificate.

Sign up here

“Within seven days, we can get results that would normally take us a month,”

Sarah.

Marketing Measurement Strategy

By: edX

In this marketing course, you’ll learn the best approaches and practices for marketing measurement, including how to use metrics to measure success.

The professor, Stephan Sorger, presents hands-on examples of how to identify market trends.

Sign up here

Social Media Analytics

By: Quintly

This course offered by Quintly covers the basic principles of social media analytics and the fundamentals of social media marketing.

It aims to help everyone involved with social media ie. the influencers, brand.

The course is very vast and provides a 3 step process of learning analytics.

Sign up here

“I am a marketing student at the University of Zambia. I have developed a keen interest in digital marketing and am grateful to quintly for the knowledge I have acquired from this free course.”

Peter Senn

Social media management

By: Udemy

This is one of the few free courses offered by Udemy as you learn how to use social media, social media strategy, and marketing.

It will give you an insight into why social media matters, its benefits & drawbacks.

It includes 38 lectures that focus on how social media can drive business social responsibility.

Sign up here

“ This course have gave me the all the glimpse and help-full resources for understanding more about social media management.”

Naresh Bhati

Conclusion

These free social media courses on online marketing are all that you need to kickstart your marketing skills.

It is also very essential to be original and create your own content rather than leeching off of other people’s hard work.Be regular in uploading your content and interactions.

In the end, it’s not just about what course you’ve done but about implementing it all.

All these courses will jointly help you to build a brand image that makes a difference.

Social media management is an art and these courses will help give bolster to the latent artist in you.

Posted byTeam RecurPostFebruary 27, 2020Tags:inboundmarketing, marketingautomation, moocs, onlinecourses, personalbranding, socialmediamarketing61

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How To Use Social Media For Marketing

Everyone who knows me knows I’m obsessed with unicorns – not just the magical beasts you’ll often find hanging out near rainbows but marketing unicorns.

What’s a marketing unicorn, you ask? It’s one of those magical campaigns that’s so effective it performs in the top 1-3% of all marketing campaigns.

Marketing unicorns are so special that, even though they’re rare, they end up delivering almost half of the value of your overall marketing efforts. For example, here on the WordStream blog, our top 50 articles drive as much traffic as thousands of others (the marketing donkeys) combined. I call it the Unicorn Marketing Power Law.

This is why it’s so key, as a marketer or business owner, to find your own unicorns and make the most of them. There are unicorns in every corner of the online marketing world – unicorn ads, unicorn blog posts, unicorn webinars, unicorn emails. These are the campaigns with exceptional click-through rates, conversion rates, open rates, and engagement rates.

So if you find a unicorn, CLONE IT! An idea or piece of creative that does well in one online marketing channel is bound to do well in your other marketing channels as well. As I’m always fond of saying, you have to go all in on your unicorns.

I’ve spent a lot of time experimenting with different online marketing strategies this year. Below you’ll find the best of the best – my top 10 favorite online marketing strategies that create and exploit unicorns to give you the best possible bang for your buck.

Check it out and share – I’ll provide a little more detail into each of the 10 strategies, which include strategies for SEO, PPC, content marketing, social media marketing, remarketing, and more, below.

My 10 Most Unicorn-Worthy Online Marketing Strategies

#1. Aim for super-high organic click-through rates

Does organic CTR matter? YES! Now more than ever! If you want to compete in the new SEO reality, you’ve got to raise your click-through rates and other engagement factors. Here’s our process:

• Find content with average or below-expected CTR for its rank
• Ditch boring titles and test emotional, relatable headlines that promise value
• Improve intent match to reduce bounce rate and pogo-sticking
• Bonus: Data indicates raising CTR can move up your rank!

#2. Aim for super-high ad click-through rates

CTR isn’t just important for SEO (duh). It’s also incredibly important for paid ads, because ads with high engagement rates get better placements at a lower cost per click on Google AdWords, Facebook Ads, Twitter Ads and pretty much every platform. Here’s what you need to know about raising your ad CTR:

• Tactics like Dynamic Keyword Insertion are boring and don’t create unicorn ads
• Ads with the highest CTR focus on four key emotions: anger, disgust, affirmation, and fear
• Bonus: High CTR ads usually have high conversion rates too!

#3. Forget everything you know about conversion rate optimization

Sorry to burst your CRO bubble, but the classic A/B test is a fairy tale – too often, we get super excited about early leads, but they tend to disappear over time. Either the test hadn’t reached statistical significance, or people were responding to novelty, but the effect didn’t last.

Here are a few more CRO truth bombs for you:

• Aggressive CRO often increases lead quantity butreduces lead quality
• To really move the needle, change your offer to something truly irresistible
• Brand familiarity has a massive effect on conversions – so try remarketing!

#4. Remarketing is great … but try Super Remarketing!

Maybe you’ve noticed (ha) that in the current online marketing landscape, it’s harder and harder to get your content noticed. The competition is insanely fierce! That means everyone’s attention is spread thin. But all hope is not lost, aspiring unicorns!

• With a smart social ad strategy you can promote your content to the perfect audience for pennies
• Use social media remarketing to increase engagement by 2X to 3X
• Then step it up with Super Remarketing: the awesome combination of remarketing, demographics, behaviors, and high-engagement content

#5. Hack RLSA for a Unicorn Surge of Leads

Regular old, plain-flavor RLSA is kind of a shell game: You’re basically cherry-picking your cheapest leads from a larger pool. Yes, you save money, but your lead volume is greatly reduced! Most people don’t want that, right? We want more leads AND lower costs.

Here’s how to use RLSA to get both, AKA Operation Unicorn Surge:

• To reduce cost per lead AND increase volume in competitive markets, try Super RLSA!
• Bias people toward your brand by using social ads to dramatically increase the size of your cookie pool

#6. Get your Facebook organic reach back

Newsflash, Facebook organic reach sucks. In fact, we recently discovered it’s even worse than we thought!!

The good news is, you can recover your reach! Here’s how:

• Use preferred audience targeting to target organic posts like ads
• Use Larry’s Unicorn Detector Pyramid Scheme
• Invite people who like your content to follow your page
• Post video content for way higher engagement rates – the key to organic reach

#7. Outsmart your competition!

Try these brilliant competitive advertising strategies:

• Target users whose interests include your competitors
• Disrupt your competitors’ videos with YouTube ads
• Use your competitors’ brand names to keyword target your Gmail Ads
• Download and target your competitors’ Twitter followers

#8. Use social ads to make an impression on influencers

Not a big name yet? No problem!

Here are some crazy awesome ways to use social ads to fool people into thinking you’re a big deal:

• Build awareness of your personal brand by targeting ads at specific employees and specific companies
• Write an awesome guest post for an influencer, then promote and amplify so it makes a splash
• Tag your fave influencer and do an engagement campaign
• Become a trending story on LinkedIn Pulse

#9. Learn how to REALLY run a Twitter lead generation campaign

Forget Twitter’s advice for running lead gen campaigns – it’s totally wrong! Do this instead:

• Twitter Lead Generation Cardslook too much like ads and charge you for useless engagements
• Never use automatic bidding – it’s a trap
• Instead, use funny images, emoji, advanced targeting options and don’t forget conversion tracking!

#10. Master the art of Medium publishing

There are insanely good reasons to republish your content on Medium – like reaching a much bigger audience with minimal effort. Here’s how to make the most of the Medium platform:

Marketing Through Social Media

• Don’t just republish your post – make it go hot! Include a powerful image immediately after the headline

• Promote your post – if you get 200 hearts in a day, your article will trend and pageviews will skyrocket
• Follow people who engage with your content to build your audience

That’s it – my absolute favorite online marketing strategies of the year, all of which I’m going to keep using next year too.

Now go and find your own unicorns!

Top 10 Online Marketing Strategies [Summary]:

1. Raise your organic click-through rates for more search traffic AND better rankings.
2. Improve your ad CTR in paid search to dramatically lower costs.
3. Forget about traditional conversion rate 'truths': Instead, offer something irresistible and improve brand familiarity with remarketing.
4. Use social remarketing in combination with demographic and behavior data and high-engagement content.
5. Leverage Google RLSA – Remarketing Lists for Search Ads.
6. Hack your Facebook strategy to improve your organic reach.
7. Rise above the competition with brilliant competitive advertising strategies.
8. Use social ads to make an impression on influencers.
9. Ignore Twitter’s advice and learn the best way to drive leads through Twitter ads.
10. Republish your existing content on Medium for much more exposure.