What to Learn After Social Media Marketing

Social media marketing is a rapidly growing career that uses different social media channels to promote products, brands, or ideas. Your job as a Social Media Marketer can give you the opportunity to learn skills in addition to your current skill set. Maybe you really enjoy working with brands. As you post content, you could become interested in specializing in content management. You may decide to take a deep dive into website optimization. Maybe you love data so much that you decide to learn how to do more with it. These are all additional skills you can learn after social media marketing.

What is Social Media Marketing?

Social media marketing uses platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube, and TikTok to connect with a target audience. According to Hootsuite’s Digital 2021 report, more than 4.48 billion people use these platforms daily, making social media marketing a smart choice to help drive website traffic, build a widely-known brand, and gain revenue.

There are two types of social media marketing: paid and unpaid. Paid marketing means buying ads on different social media sites, while unpaid marketing relies on high-quality content, clicks, likes, and shares. It’s also called “earned marketing.” While earned marketing is valuable because it doesn’t cost any money, it can take a long time to see results, so Social Media Marketers need to be patient and persistent.

A social media marketing campaign is based on these five essential activities:

• Strategy–setting goals, choosing the best channels, and deciding what type of content will attract your audience.
• Planning and publishing–understanding your audience, knowing what and when to publish, and maintaining consistency.
• Listening and engagement–interacting with your audience and tracking changes in the market.
• Analytics–collecting, tracking, and analyzing data on social media accounts so you can figure out what is working for you.
• Advertising–earned and paid advertising.

Read more about what social media marketing is and why you should learn it.

What Can You Do with Social Media Marketing?

Social media marketing is a powerful way to get the word out about your product or message, and one of the best things is you can do it for free. It doesn’t cost anything to open accounts on the different social media platforms, and many of the digital marketing tools you need are free to use or have a free version.

Data analytics tools allow you to research the market, identify a target audience, and tailor your message directly to them. Engagement tools let you interact with potential customers, get important feedback, see what your competitors are doing, and change your campaign as you need to. Social media marketing creates and maintains a community through regularly posted, high-quality content.

It can take a bit of time to see organic results, but you can use paid advertising to speed things up. Advertising increases engagement and is a good investment. Social media marketing tools allow you to pinpoint your audience and advertise just to them.

Brand Marketing

Many people have difficulty describing their brand because they are too close to it. Brand Marketers help clarify the message for individuals and companies. Experience working as a Social Media Marketer would give you the skills to make the shift to brand marketing. This public relations position supports a company’s or individual’s public image. Brand Marketers work closely with other teams like marketing, advertising, and sales to research industry trends and public perception and create marketing and advertising campaigns to strengthen brand identity. Rather than focusing on a product or service, Brand Marketers track how a brand performs on the internet and develop strategies to build or improve that performance.

A Brand Marketer provides a roadmap for a client to fulfill the company’s mission and vision by using digital marketing tools to create highly targeted marketing campaigns. This is a higher-level position, and many companies require a bachelor’s degree in business, journalism, marketing, or a similar field. In a larger firm, Brand Marketers will work as part of a digital marketing team. They report to a Brand Manager or Marketing Director and work with an advertising or sales department, Designers, Copywriters, and Videographers. In smaller companies, a Brand Marketer might take on extra roles in data analysis or design.

Content Management

Social Media Marketers work with content and sometimes decide to move to a content management position. Content Marketers are responsible for developing and managing a company’s content strategy. They work with Writers and Videographers to create blog posts, videos, social media posts, emails, ebooks, and reports to inform, engage, or entertain a target audience. Storytelling ability is crucial to building and maintaining a community audience.

Any company, business, or brand with an online presence can use content marketing to enhance its virtual reach. There are plenty of careers across the country for those with a background in content marketing. Content Marketers must also understand SEO and choose the best keywords to ensure prime placement on Google and other search engines. Knowledge of data analytics tools is another important part of a Content Marketer’s job.

Further, Content Marketers need to develop and implement a content schedule. This publishing plan determines the most advantageous timing for publishing content on a weekly, monthly, yearly, or seasonal basis.

If you are starting out in content marketing, you might work as a Marketing Copywriter and create content for websites and blogs. A mid-level position in this career path is Content Strategist, who might be in charge of setting editorial calendars, creating company style guides, and deciding on content strategy. At a senior level, you could become a Content Manager. This position could involve supervising employees and freelancers in content creation.

Website Optimization/SEO

Social Media Marketers also work closely with website optimization tools, so this could be another area to expand your expertise. Website Optimization/SEO Specialists perform audits to check on Search Engine Optimization (SEO). This involves using keywords and content to drive traffic to a website. SEO Specialists also check for a clear and easy-to-use website structure, speed, mobile-friendliness, XML sitemap, and navigation.

An SEO Specialist uses tools like Google Analytics and SEMRush to improve website optimization and search engine rankings. Web Optimization Specialists review company or client websites to make sure that the site is producing the way the company wants and that it is in line with the company’s goals. The website needs to perform well on search engines, so you need to test the website layout, fix links, and add content with keywords that will drive traffic to the site. It is very important to stay updated with the constantly changing SEO standards. Web Optimization Specialists use tools to measure web traffic, determine who the target audience should be, and recommend strategies to gain customer conversions–sales.

If you become a Web Optimization Specialist, you work as part of a team of Digital Marketers, UX/UI Designers, and Web Developers. While a few jobs are remote, most Web Optimization Specialists work in a corporate setting for large and small companies. You can also work for a web strategy firm or as a self-employed consultant, although these positions first require several years of experience.

Digital Marketing

After several years as a Social Media Manager, you might decide to learn more about other areas of digital marketing and move into a position as a Digital Marketing Strategist. Beyond choosing the most appropriate social media channels and type of blog content for a product, Digital Marketing Strategists develop long-term plans for future growth according to company goals. A job as a Digital Strategist can vary widely depending upon where you are employed. In large established companies with many employees, tasks are more stratified, and you may only handle a few areas while other team members are in charge of the rest. In smaller companies and startups, however, you may find yourself handling everything from regular social media posts to running analytics, keeping tabs on how a campaign is doing, and researching new tools to improve your company’s digital marketing.

When you have at least five years of experience, you can move into a leadership position as a Marketing Manager. You will set the agenda for a team of marketers and take responsibility for projects. The next step after becoming a Marketing Manager could be District or Regional Marketing Manager. Others might be more drawn to the creative side and become Creative Directors.

Take More Classes

If you want to expand your skill set, you can take classes to learn new topics. Noble Desktop’s digital marketing courses teach skills that can help you move in a new direction in the industry. You can attend in-person classes at Noble Desktop’s New York City location or live online digital marketing courses from anywhere in the world. You can also find other digital marketing courses, bootcamps, and certificate programs in your area using Noble Desktop’s Classes Near Me tool. Noble Desktop also offers more detailed courses for those looking to hone their skills in other areas, such as email marketing, video marketing, or data analytics.

Learn Social Media Marketing with Hands-on Training at Noble Desktop

Noble Desktop’s social media marketing courses teach skills that can help you start a career in the industry. Classes are small, with expert instructors, and you can retake a course for free up to a year after you take it. Those ready to dive into the field can attend in-person classes at Noble Desktop’s New York City location or attend live online social media courses from anywhere in the world.

In Noble Desktop’s Social Media Marketing Certificate, you can master successful social media marketing tools and techniques. You will learn about strategy development, content creation, brand building, analytics, and conversion optimization.

Noble Desktop also offers more detailed courses for those looking to hone their skills on specific channels, such as Facebook Marketing, email marketing, Social Media Content Marketing: Blogs & Twitter, and Video Marketing: TikTok & YouTube, or go for a Social Media Marketing Certificate. Other Noble Desktop resources that can help prepare for a career in digital marketing include its digital marketing blog, which has detailed articles about social media marketing, SEO, and other essential tools for digital marketers. Further resources include Noble’s seminar on YouTube entitled The Pillars of Digital Marketing Success.

Key Insights

After you learn social media marketing, you may want to go deeper and learn more related skills. Some of the common areas you can study are:

• Brand marketing
• Content marketing
• Website optimization/SEO
• Digital marketing management
• You can receive comprehensive social media marketing training through an in-person or live online course with Noble Desktop.