Student Thonnia Lee working on laptop outside
Thonnia Lee completed the Fundamentals of Social Media Marketing Certificate and Advanced Social Media Marketing for Business Certificate programs in 2018.

Master skills to drive engagement through targeted, innovative social media marketing campaigns

This course is in the process of being converted to a self-paced online program. To be notified when it is open for registration, or for any other information, please submit the inquiry form.

  • Learn More about UD PCS Virtual Info SessionsCurriculum applicable to numerous industries
  • Geared toward students with fundamental to mid-level social media marketing skills
  • 15-week online course — September 6-December 18, 2022 — CANCELED
  • Discounts, payment plan, scholarships available
  • LEARN MOREview info session presentationlaptop icon
Thonnia Lee on laptop outdoors
Learn more: Social Media Marketing program inspires second career

In today’s digital world, organizations are turning to social media for advertising, customer service, human resources, market research, revenue growth and more. There are audiences to be engaged, communities to be managed, influencers and advocates to be guided, content to create, ad strategies to be developed, profiles to be optimized, and an assorted laundry list of daily tasks that need to be addressed.

Taught by distinguished social media marketing expert Nancy Dibert, UD’s Advanced Social Media Marketing for Business Certificate course teaches students with fundamental to midlevel social media marketing skills to effectively and successfully leverage the power of social media to support organizational goals.

Participants will conduct a project for an organization of their choosing and receive in-depth, hands-on experience to research, plan, develop, integrate, execute and analyze the outcomes of comprehensive social media marketing strategies, integrated campaigns, targeted content and paid placement.

Students master skills to drive engagement through targeted, innovative social media marketing campaigns, gaining firsthand experience with industry standard tools such as Sprout Social and Rival IQ. Class members learn methodologies for creating, executing and evaluating goal-oriented social media marketing strategies across multiple social media platforms.

Classes include recorded online lectures, multimedia demonstrations, detailed content and examples, case studies, open online discussions, and testimonials from businesses successfully using social media marketing. Past guest speakers have included industry experts Jason Falls and Samantha Toscano.

This class offers dynamic, interactive, fast-paced and highly engaging content to ensure participants are ready to take on today’s social media landscape. Students will have until Sunday to complete each week’s assignments while working on their individual project. Plan to allocate eight to 12 hours per week toward this program.


We also have a self-paced, online Foundations of Digital Marketing program that can be started anytime. LEARN MORE


Program details

Register Now buttomAdvanced Social Media Marketing for Business Certificate – Noncredit Certificate
LOCATION: ONLINE
SCHEDULE: September 6-December 18, 2022 – CANCELED
PRICE: $2,495, all materials included. Potential discounts available, including: Elevate Delaware funding, Early registration, Military, UD student or alum, 2 or more (group).
CEUs: 6.0


Who should participate in this program?

  • Aspiring and current social media managers
  • Marketing and communication professionals
  • Consultants
  • Nonprofit employees and volunteers
  • Business owners
  • Anyone looking to start a social media marketing business

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Instructor

Nancy Dibert is the program director and chief instructor for the University of Delaware’s Fundamentals of Social Media Marketing Certificate and Advanced Social Media Marketing for Business Certificate programs and a customized learning facilitator with UD’s Division of Professional and Continuing Studies (UD PCS). A nationally-recognized and well-respected social media marketing expert, Dibert has developed award-winning social media campaigns for clients in government, education and private industry environments and has reached millions of people through her innovative social engagement strategies.

Dibert graduated from high school at 14 and received her first advanced degree at 17. She earned a bachelor of science in business from the State University of New York at Albany, a master of science in business administration from Penn State University and a master of science in marketing from University of Maryland University College. Dibert continues to make education a priority and is a longtime member of Mensa International.

She enjoys meeting people and sharing what she knows, both locally and on the road. Dibert has lectured on social media, strategic marketing, cross-selling, advertising, branding and other topics. A Constant Contact Authorized Local Expert and an Authorized Business Partner, she is also Google AdWords certified and HTML-certified by the HTML Writers Guild.

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Course outline

Week 1

Introduction to Social Media Marketing

  • Overview, history and scope of social media marketing
  • Standout social media marketing examples
  • Social sales cycle
  • Understanding consumer needs
  • The Pillars of Delight
  • Consumer insights
  • Technographics Ladder

Social Media Audit

  • Situational analysis of existing footprint
  • Competitive analysis

Audiences

  • Audience modeling
  • Creating personas
  • Identifying targeted audiences and influencers

Individual Project

  • Individual project parameters

Week 2

Developing a Strategic and Comprehensive Social Media Marketing Plan

  • Aligning organizational mission, vision, values and financial objectives with marketing goals and social media opportunities
  • Integrating social media marketing strategy and initiatives
  • Defining data-based social media goals, objectives, strategy and tactics
  • Developing and communicating a social strategy, plan, timeline and budget
  • Benchmarking and identifying KPIs to fit goals
  • Sprinkler vs. Waterfall strategies
  • Strategy execution: engagement cycle, sales process, engagement grid and channel plan

Content Marketing

  • Understanding social objects, paid media, earned media, owned media and content curation
  • Message pillars
  • Content pillars: Creating content with a purpose
  • Engaging content: brand story, planning, mapping, calendaring and creation
  • The five types of content marketing: entertain, inspire, converse, educate,
    convince
  • User-generated content

Week 3

Social Media Tools

  • Sprout Social
  • Hootsuite
  • Crowdfire
  • Scheduling and multiple network posting

Social Media Platform (Facebook)

  • Audience demographics
  • Platform terms, concepts, use, profiles and channel tactics to stimulate engagement and grow audience
  • Branding and image guidelines
  • Channel etiquette
  • Review basics
  • Advanced platform use, tactics, strategy

Week 4

Campaigns

  • Planning, developing and executing social media marketing campaigns
  • Cross-channel integration
  • Potential action points to meet campaign goals
  • Digital storytelling strategies

Social Media Platform (Twitter)

  • Audience demographics
  • Platform terms, concepts, use, profiles and channel tactics to stimulate engagement and grow audience
  • Branding and image guidelines
  • Channel etiquette
  • Review basics
  • Advanced platform use, tactics, strategy
  • ManageFlitter, Tweriod, Followerwonk

Week 5

Social Media Platform (Instagram)

  • Audience demographics
  • Platform terms, concepts, use, profiles and channel tactics to stimulate engagement and grow audience
  • Branding and image guidelines
  • Channel etiquette
  • Review basics
  • Advanced platform use, tactics, strategy
  • RePost, Planogram

Week 6

Social Media Platform (Snapchat)

  • Audience demographics
  • Platform terms, concepts, use, profiles and channel tactics to stimulate engagement and grow audience
  • Branding and image guidelines
  • Channel etiquette
  • Review basics
  • Advanced platform use, tactics, strategy

Engagements and Assets

  • Golden rules of social media
  • Engagement and nurture marketing strategies
  • Secure creative asset
  • Branding and image guidelines for social media platform

Week 7

Social Media Platform (YouTube)

  • Audience demographics
  • Platform terms, concepts, use, profiles and channel tactics to stimulate engagement and grow audience
  • Branding and image guidelines
  • Channel etiquette
  • Review basics
  • Advanced platform use, tactics, strategy

Social Media Platform (Pinterest)

  • Audience demographics
  • Platform terms, concepts, use, profiles and channel tactics to stimulate engagement and grow audience
  • Branding and image guidelines
  • Channel etiquette
  • Review basics
  • Advanced platform use, tactics, strategy

Week 8

Social Media Platform (LinkedIn)

  • Audience demographics
  • Platform terms, concepts, use, profiles and channel tactics to stimulate engagement and grow audience
  • Branding and image guidelines
  • Channel etiquette
  • Review basics
  • Advanced platform use, tactics, strategy

Social Media Platforms (Foursquare/Swarm, blogging platforms—WordPress and Blogger)

  • Audience demographics
  • Platform terms, concepts, use, profiles and channel tactics to stimulate engagement and grow audience
  • Branding and image guidelines
  • Channel etiquette
  • Channel basics

Week 9

Influencers

  • Creating brand advocates and managing evangelism
  • Engaging influencers and connectors

Social Media Platforms (Wikipedia, Houzz, Yelp)

  • Audience demographics
  • Platform terms, concepts, use, profiles and channel tactics to stimulate engagement and grow audience
  • Branding and image guidelines
  • Channel etiquette
  • Channel basics

Engagement

  • Finding conversation triggers
  • Researching and engaging with potential business opportunities
  • Community advocacy
  • Social media for customer services, public relations and human resources recruitment
  • Facebook and LinkedIn Groups
  • Community management

Week 10

Paid Placement and Ads

  • Social media platform paid ads and boosted posts
  • Selecting audiences for paid placement
  • Developing social media ads that get attention and clicks
  • Calls to action

Week 11

Listening

  • The importance of listening
  • Examples of listening campaigns
  • Listening, monitoring, research, analysis and action

Gamification

  • Social media gamification case studies
  • Rules of engagement for sweepstakes, giveaways and games

Week 12

Advanced Social Media Toolkit

  • Tools, software, apps and resources – free and paid options
  • Scheduling and multiple network posting
  • Social media management systems
  • Social media automation and when to use it
  • Basics of chatbots

Social Media Policies and Guidelines

  • Guidelines, policies and governance for social media use
  • Creating a social media marketing policy and escalation process
  • Internal readiness plan for user engagement and crisis management
  • Using multiple devices

Week 13

Measuring and Analytics

  • Measuring the results, impact and effectiveness of social media marketing efforts
  • Differentiate between social media platforms for data collection and analytics

Reports

  • Build the reporting foundation
  • Sample reports
  • Automating reports

Reporting and Measuring ROI

  • Differentiate platform metrics and how they apply to social media marketing goals
  • Measuring and calculating return on investment for social media campaigns
  • Different reports for different departments based on KPIs
  • Benchmarking and KPI reporting
  • Honing the execution plan: responding to analytics
  • Measuring success of integrated campaigns

Week 14

Basic Video Production

  • Copyright considerations
  • Imagery
  • Video
  • Audio
  • Video creation
  • .GIF creation

Social Media Management

  • Career
  • For SEO

Week 15

Individual Presentations

  • Individual project presentations of comprehensive social media marketing strategy including audit, plan, campaign, influencers, ad spend, budget and results.

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Learner outcomes

Upon completion of this course, participants will be able to:

  • Identify and demonstrate an understanding of the various social media platforms and techniques to successfully initiate, integrate, organize and implement phased social media incorporation into existing offline and digital marketing communications structures.
  • Demonstrate an understanding of social objects, paid media, earned media, owned media and content curation.
  • Create an effective and extended communications road map for social media implementation to elevate communication, marketing and branding efforts.
  • Contribute to organizational marketing communication decisions, growth management and strategy discussions.
  • Conduct and document a comprehensive audit of an organization’s social media footprint and online reputation.
  • Craft a social media response decision tree for user engagement and crisis management.
  • Evaluate scenarios when organizations may consider temporarily going dark on social media platforms.
  • Develop content calendars for original and user-generated content.
  • Leverage target messaging to content and platform influencers to extend reach and support organizational, communication and marketing goals.
  • Leverage gamification techniques to increase user engagement while staying compliant with the rules of engagement for social media platforms.
  • Develop a social media toolkit—suited to platforms, context, audience and scope—that effectually addresses organizational, communication and marketing goals.
  • Evaluate current social media measurement tools, tactics and methodologies, both quantitative and qualitative.
  • Plan measurable social media goals and research, develop, launch and execute a social media strategy for digital storytelling to engage with target markets and timeline to achieve the goals.
  • Recognize the costs and benefits of and develop, launch and manage paid campaigns across social platforms to support organizational goals.
  • Acquire practical experience using social media measurement tools, tactics and methodologies to measure and analyze social media efforts and performance for organizational goals, engagement, performance and ROI, and create updated strategic deployment plans to adjust future campaigns based on results.

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Career resources to help you succeed

NEW! — Participants enrolled in this certificate program will have access to a new suite of career resources and services to help them navigate a career transition, maximize their job search efforts and more. Click here to learn more about UD PCS Career Services.

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Technology requirements

  • A laptop or desktop computer (PC or Mac) is required to participate in this class.

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Prerequisites

  • Students are expected to have personal social media accounts on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Snapchat, YouTube and Pinterest.
  • A mobile device and access to a computer with internet connectivity is required for this course.

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What our students say

  • “I walked away with tools that are going to benefit me but didn’t feel so stressed because I needed to have a certain grade on a test. As long as you are engaged and attempting to participate, you are going to learn something that is going to benefit others.” – Thonnia Lee
  • “If you are really wanting to take your business to a new level, these are the classes to take. There is a lot of work involved, but I enjoyed all of it and it was definitely worth it for me.” – Ann Manley
  • “UD’s social media classes have redeveloped my confidence in myself and my ability to interact with people. I have learned that I am not completely out of touch with millennials and Gen Zers.” – Tony Powell

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