Where to Learn Social Media Marketing For Free

​Managing a social media account is essential in getting the trust of customers. This is an open opportunity to get to know what they need, want and think of your business. Getting them engaged in interacting with your social media account is very important into driving them to try your product and service. 

​On this year of technology and Internet, it’s great to have this skill of managing a social media account in achieving a successful business goal. With the given opportunities that come with social media management, you don’t want to ignore it by not learning how to do it. Go and acquire the needed skills and social media marketing tools to manage your own social media account.

​No excuses. You can learn and improve your social media management skills through these free social media courses.

​1. DS106: Digital Storytelling and Social Media

​Are you looking for a good introduction to digital storytelling and using social media for building your network? This digital storytelling course from the University of Mary Washington attempts to re-imagine how storytelling can be taught in the digital age. Based on a course taught at the University, the online version called Open DS106 is freely available online.

​Open DS106 includes course outlines that include tasks for each unit, instructional videos, participant blogs, the DS106 handbook and an active online community. Here are some things included in this course. Bootcamp, Getting Through Bootcamp and Personal Cyber Infrastructure, What Mean Ye Digital Storytelling?, Listening to Audio, Telling Stories in Photos, It’s All By Design Advanced Audio And Radio Show Production, Telling Stories Within the Web, Reading Movies, Making Movies, ximeR and M@$#up, and Final Project and Wrap Up 

​2. Hubspot Academy

​If you are after an Inbound Marketing Certification, inbound marketing pioneer Hubspot offers a variety of free Inbound Marketing Certification Program. While their courses are aimed at people in digital marketing and social media industries, if you’re dedicated you can learn a lot about content marketing.

​In the Hubspot Academy, you can watch the videos at your own pace and when you complete all the courses you can take an Inbound Marketing Certification Exam to get a certificate from Hubspot. You will learn Essentials of an Effective Inbound Strategy, Optimizing Your Website, The Fundamentals of Blogging, Amplifying Your Content with Social Media, Creating Content with a Purpose, The Anatomy of a Landing Page, Perfecting the Conversion Process, Sending the Right Email to the Right Lead, The Power of Smarketing, Taking Your Sales Process Inbound, and Cultivating Happy Customers

​3. Northwestern University (Coursera) 

​Do you want to develop a social media strategy to grow your businesses? This new social media marketing specialization from Northwestern University is designed for business owners, executives and marketing professionals to be able to do that. The specialization consists of 6 social media courses that you must complete along with projects that help you apply what you learn and a certificate from Northwestern University to highlight your new skills on your resume or LinkedIn.

​While the full specialization costs $49/month for complete access, if you don’t want the projects or certification you are able to search for the individual courses and when you click the “Enroll Now” button choose “audit the course” to get access to most of the course content. This includes: What is Social?, The Importance of Listening, Engagement & Nurture Marketing Strategies, Content, Advertising & Social IMC, The Business of Social, and Social Marketing Capstone Project.

​4. Salford Business School

To develop your professional online identity and use search engine optimization and social media marketing tactics and strategy to build an online audience, give this a try. The Salford Business School in Manchester, England did a pilot for a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) a couple years ago and they’ve posted the videos and course materials on their website about Search and Social Media Marketing for International Business.

It gives opportunity on Personal branding, Twitter, Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), Use of social media for international business development, Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, Google+, Copywriting online, Legal implications of social media, Monitoring and reporting, and Blogging.

​5. Alison

If you are after a “diploma” in Social Media Marketing, try this free, ad-funded course provided by online course provider ALISON. In just 15-20 hours, it explains the use of email marketing, affiliate marketing, Facebook marketing, and how to use social media tools such as Twitter, podcasting and blogging.

This also includes: Introduction to Web sites, Introduction to autoresponders and eBooks, Using autoresponders to build a list, Affiliate marketing and increasing Web site traffic, Email and Affiliate Marketing Assessment, Introduction to Social Media Marketing, How to use Twitter, Audacity for Recording Podcasts, Podomatic – Publish Your Podcasts to the Web, Blogging on the WebSocial Media Tools, Assessment Module, Facebook – Create your Personal Profile, Facebook – Creating your Facebook page, Facebook – Increasing traffic to Facebook pages, Marketing with Facebook Assessment, and Final Assessment

​6. Wharton School of Business (Coursera)

Do you have a goal to be viral and gain more popularity for your business? This new social media course taught by Wharton Professor Jonah Berger and author of the best-selling book “Contagious: Why Things Catch On” teaches you the key ideas and concepts behind viral marketing and crafting content that inspire people to share it with their friends.

To purchase the course and get a certificate from the Wharton School of Business the price is $95 but you can choose the second option “Full Course, No Certificate” if you wish to audit the course.
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Learn the following: What Makes Ideas Sticky?, How Social Influence Shapes Behavior, The Power of Word of Mouth, and Social Networks.

​7. GFC Learn Free

To better use popular technological tools like Skype, Meetup and Whatsapp, try Goodwill Community Foundation’s short, well-structured courses at an introductory level on topics in social media and blogging.
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If you’re an absolute beginner and you need to get up to speed on the basics of setting up a profile, finding people and sharing content using popular social networks then it’s a good place to get started. Get to know Twitter 101, Facebook 101, LinkedIn Basics, Pinterest 101, Skype, Beyond Email, Blog Basics, Networking Basics, Chat, Google, Apple, Digital Lifestyle, Information Savvy, and Internet Basics.

​8. Open 2 Study

Looking for the perfect course to utilize your writing skills? This course will help. It covers how to engage online readers through web design, writing style, structure and search engine optimization.
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It takes about 4 hours to go through the course materials and by the end of the course you will be writing better content for the web with a content strategy, more scannable content and more focus on shareability and ranking in search engines when you write your blog posts. Get to know the following: Why Writing For The Web Is Different, Characteristics of Good Content, Writing Effective Content, and Looking After Your Content. 

​9. Canvas Network

Want to learn about Social Media at your own pace? This social media course from Canvas Network allows you to sign up and get access to all the course activities, assignments and videos to study when convenient for you.
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In this social media course you will get hands-on experience with popular social media networks and communication tools like blogs, podcasts and RSS feeds.  The focus of this course is using available social media platforms to monitor conversations online, engage online communities, identify influences, and establish your thought leadership on the web.

​10. Quinly

Trying to learn how to track and measure your performance on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Google+, LinkedIn, and Instagram? In this online course, social media analytics and competitor benchmarking tool Quintly will help you with that.
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You can’t improve what you don’t measure so this course will teach you a useful set of analytical skills that will improve your social media campaigns and help you identify the content that is most helpful for growing your online audience. Have the knowledge on Introduction to Social Media Analytics, and Social Media Analytics Cycle.

​While learning social media management is very important, to add to your skills, it’s very important to apply what you learned. You can also ask for an expert’s help on how to strategically apply your learning. It’s very important that you have a great ally who knows the ins and outs of social media marketing for companies. Feel free to ask questions.