The Best Certificates For Working Remotely in Social Media Marketing
The professional landscape is changing.
In light of COVID-19 restrictions, employers are opting – or are being forced into – allowing their employees to work remotely. This brings many options for people looking for a career change. People who want to start a new career but can’t or don’t want to move from a remote area also benefit.
For those who have been professionally affected by the pandemic, remote work can be an appealing option. You can work wherever you want as long as you have a computer, a phone, and a reliable internet connection. Spend more time with loved ones or pets. You can travel. You can take care of your mind, body, and soul more efficiently than you could in most offices.
But where to start?
If you are looking for a new role or career, it can be intimidating to go back to university. Then there are also the financial challenges. Luckily, many online non-degree courses and certifications give you theory-based and practical knowledge in many industries, without completely breaking the bank.
Social media marketing uses social platforms to build brand awareness, increase traffic and sales, and connect with your target market. When done correctly, it can give massive value to both established and new businesses.
Massive online open course platforms such as Udemy and Coursera are becoming increasingly popular and have courses that are cheap or completely free (usually without a certificate then).
Premium options are also readily available and give both deeper and broader knowledge of social media marketing. Let’s dive into those by looking into the five best non-degree certificates for social media marketing. Here is our list:
- Hubspot – Social Media Marketing Course
- LinkedIn Learning – Social Media Marketing Foundations
- Hootsuite Academy – Social Marketing Training
- EDX – Strategic Social Media Marketing
- Udacity – Become a Digital Marketer
1. Hubspot – Social Media Marketing Course – Free
Are you bored on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon?
Hubspot’s course takes about five hours to complete and is a robust course designed to intertwine social media marketing and inbound sales.
Social media is crucial to an effective inbound marketing strategy. Hubspot combines the two to offer the basics and best practices of social media and how to effectively drive lead generation, traffic, and, ultimately, sales in the process.
You can expect topics like extending social reach, social listening, social media calendar creation, ROI, and even PPC campaigns.
You’ll also learn how social media connects with overall business content strategy and how to interact with and reach out to influencers in your niche.
2. LinkedIn Learning – Social Media Marketing Foundations – 29.99/month
Dive into the first course of LinkedIn Learning’s six-part mastery course, Social Media Marketing Foundations. New York University adjunct professor Brian Honigman teaches the class and focuses on content publishing, audience engagement, customer service, and channel experimentation. Linkedin Learning learning is great value, and you even get a free month of membership when signing up.
You’ll first explore how to create a social media marketing strategy and choose the right type of social media channels for individual businesses. For example, you probably wouldn’t market SpongeBob toys in user experience groups on LinkedIn or your water filtration system on TikTok.
The course ends with a hands-on innovation task that will send you through to the next course in the series.
Other courses within the specialization include ROI, paid advertisements, marketing optimization, advanced strategy, and a specific Twitter marketing section.
3. Hootsuite Academy – Social Marketing Training – Free/$199
This six-course certification employs a freemium model. You’ll be able to take the course for free if you’re not interested in certification. Once you complete the courses, you can take the final exam and be eligible for your certificate for $199.
The Hootsuite Academy curriculum includes an optional introduction to social media for complete beginners. This is then followed by various courses to provide skills and tactics to run social campaigns successfully.
Topics include social media profile optimization; a how-to guide on complete social media strategy including goal-setting, KPIs, personas, timing, budgeting, and crisis management; and content marketing fundamentals such as best practices for content creation, curation, sharing and, analysis.
You’ll also have a brief introduction to social advertising fundamentals. Here you’ll touch on the importance of successful paid advertising campaigns before attempting your final exam.
As a bonus, once you complete your competency exam, Hootsuite Academy will enter you into its system as a certified professional, allowing employers to contact you about potential job opportunities.
4. EDX – Strategic Social Media Marketing – Free/$399
Do you already have extensive social media marketing training? Maybe this social media strategy course from EDX is more up your alley. You won’t just be going through the basics of industry and market. You’ll focus on how businesses and corporations capitalize on social media listening and analysis to examine how consumers interact with one another to bolster marketing efforts.
This is a great beginner course for those interested in advancing from a social media marketing role to a product manager role.
Get in-depth and analytics-driven knowledge on how to create valuable and engaging content across platforms. You’ll be dealing with LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, and Snapchat.
This certification will teach you to listen to your target market and create content that appeals to your followers. Those insights will allow you to reach organizational objectives, goals, and KPIs.
5. Udacity – Become a Digital Marketer – $1,017
Get 75% off sitewide with the coupon code “LASTCHANCE2020”
The big one. The granddaddy of them all. The pinnacle. However you would like to describe the best of something. This one is it: The Udacity Digital Marketer course.
This comprehensive and career-preparing certificate from Udacity blows way past the ordinary, simple, and surface-level social media courses.
In this course, you will learn how to use social media to amplify your message, make sure your content is discoverable in search, create ad campaigns, crush Facebook ads, and learn how to connect it all using analytics.
Courses included in the certification include social media marketing, SEO, SEM, display advertising, email marketing, analytics campaigns, and more.
This course is for you if you’re serious about becoming a social media marketer or all-around digital marketing professional.
If this sounds right for you, use the coupon code LASTCHANCE2020 to get 75% off the courses sitewide. That includes the Udacity Digital Marketer course as well.
Summing up
No matter which option you go for, learning more (and having a certificate to show) can never hurt. But don’t get hung up on gaining more and more decorations for your CV, get out there and get work done. Having a great portfolio and experience beats out purely theoretical knowledge.
