Social Media Marketing Specialization: Strategy, Branding and Content

In this lesson, you'll learn how to research and unearth opportunities for the brand you'll be working with. I'll talk briefly about some useful tools such as search trends, social listening, SEO, observation, interviews and benchmarks.

All About Your Client

18m

What You Need to Know About Social Media

I’ll talk about the traditional sales funnel and how it's no longer linear in the digital space. How you need to be present for people to discover your brand but also have the information they need to compare and inform their purchase decisions. And how every social media channel can deliver on those needs.

17m

Mapping Your Messages and Touchpoints

In this lesson, I'll talk you through the message matrix and what to say to whom at every touchpoint.

A Concept to Make You Memorable

Now that you know who you are talking to, and what are the things that you need to cover to sell more, then it’s time to get creative.

Ideas, Content and Platforms

What are the new things that will bring people into your ecosystem? (a video, a contest, a crowdsourced experience) Here you will learn how to use the content matrix to come up with some complementary ideas.

Storytelling

Once you have altogether, you need to practice your delivery. Your deck needs to flow like a paragraph. With sentences, intention and punctuation. Let’s review if what you have right now makes sense or if you need to change or add something to our presentation.

Prototyping

Writing a line, creating a wireframe, drawing or building a low-fi prototype, you need to explain what you are thinking and here are some tools to help you with it.

Before the Launch: Measuring Your Campaign

This lesson is a reminder to start and end branding on conversion efforts with your goals in mind. And make sure you’ll be measuring what matters.

Bonus: Where to Practice or Find Partners

Here I'll share with you some ontest pages and freelance platforms where you can practice and make some money for your great ideas. Or hire professionals to develop your content for reasonable prices.

Module 3

Step into the world of social media design with Jennifer Hayashi, a multidisciplinary designer and art director behind campaigns for brands like Adobe and Netflix UK. In this module, you’ll learn how to craft your own social media toolkit using color, typography, and photography to elevate your brand. Discover how to create visually striking content that captures attention and leaves a lasting impression online.

11 lessons (1h 22m)

Fundamentals of Design for Social Media

In this lesson, you will learn the basic design principles to work effectively for social media.

Making the Most of the Tools Available

Now you will explore how to utilize the tools and features on your phone to create content.

What is a Social Media Playbook?

Here, you will learn what a social playbook is and why it’s an important tool when it comes to creating distinct social media campaigns or posts.

Exploring the Brief

To begin with, you will learn how to break down your brief and analyze what it's asking. You will also learn how to start creating your social media playbook.

Mood Board

Now you will learn how to create your own mood board for the playbook and what your toolkit should include. You will also look at inspiration and references and begin to craft the art direction of the playbook and toolkit.

Colour, Graphics, and Typography

You will see how to build out the graphic identity for your social playbook, working from your mood board to create the elements of the toolkit.

Photography and Videography

In this lesson, we will take a look at defining a photography and videography style within your social playbook.

Mock-ups: Exploring the Design

Next, you will take what you’ve created so far to design your posts. This is the exciting part: the execution.

Finally, you will bring all of your elements together to write your social media playbook. I will show you how to write the deck, so it’s easy and simple for anyone to create content based on it.

Finalizing the Toolkit

Pitching Your Own Ideas

I will talk about easy ways to pitch your playbook and your own ideas to the client.

Meaningful Collaborations

Now I will talk about the power of collaboration and how you can expand your network.

Module 4

What if social media could be the launchpad for the business you've always dreamed of? In this module, entrepreneur Sapphire Bates shares how she built multiple successful ventures through digital platforms. With her practical advice, you'll learn how to grow a business from scratch—covering market research, branding, and content creation—to build a loyal community and turn your passion into a thriving project.

12 lessons (2h 20m)

Creating a Strong Idea

We will start by discussing how to know if your idea is good. As an example, we'll take a look at the story of The Coven and work out how to mould your own idea into something with real potential.

Market Research

What is a Unique Selling Point (USP) and why is it important to have one for your online business? This is what I'll explain in this lesson. I will also tell you about the power of market research, and you'll see how to conduct your own to ensure you are offering exactly what your audience needs.

The way you brand your business will determine the first impression it makes on the audience. To help you better understand this, I will explain what branding is and why it is important.

Branding

Choosing Your Social Media Platform

Nowadays, there are quite a few social media platforms that exist. How do you figure out which one is right for you and your business? This is what we'll discuss next.

Creating Content and Showing up Online

The basis of your social media account will be the content you post on it. How do you come up with this content? What exactly should you be posting to boost your business? I'll be giving you my best advice.

Let's focus now on having an incredible launch for your online business. I will walk you through how to put together a good launch system that you can apply no matter what the product or service you want to launch next is.

Launch Strategies 1

20m

Launch Strategies 2

You've set your goals, now what? Here I will give you some advice on what more you could be doing to make sure your launch is successful.

Growing on Social Media

Posting on social media is good, but how do you find your audience and how can it grow? Here I will be talking about engagement, Instagram tools, and a good sense of timing.

In this lesson, I am going to explain how you can try and turn the following you've developed into an engaged online community.

Building a Community

Instagram Myth Busting

Last here, I want to bust some myths about Instagram and make sure you are utilising the platform as much as possible for your business launch.

Ignore Hustle Culture and Prioritise Your Mental Health

I want to discuss prioritising your mental health. I've been a business owner who worked 24/7 (almost literally). I lived and breathed hustle culture and, in doing so, burned myself out twice. This wasn't a healthy or sustainable way to run my business, something had to change and that something was actually someone – me!

Your Next Steps after a Successful Launch

In this lesson, we will be covering all of the things you finally need to know to get on your way. I'll tell you about trademarking, terms and conditions, late fees, customer service, insurance, taxes, staff and much, much more.

15m

Module 5

In this module, social media expert Hana Jay Klokner shows you how to build a standout Instagram strategy to boost brand awareness. With experience working with brands like Amazon and the UN, Hana guides you through managing content, setting goals, and tracking metrics. Whether you're building your own brand or supporting a client’s, you'll gain the tools to make a real impact online.

12 lessons (2h 5m)

Functions of Social Media Marketing

In this lesson, you'll learn what a marketing model is and how it can help you build your social media strategy as well as look at your objectives from another perspective.

Have you ever wondered how some brands create content and promote products, respond to messages, and create collaborations with ease, while others take chaotic actions and are inconsistent? There’s a way to manage social media right, and here’s what it takes.

Building a Foundation

Tools

Some tools can help you save time with content creation and execution when it comes to social media management. Let’s have a look at these tools and how they can help.

The Case Study

In this lesson, you'll meet Nerrisa from The Bargello Edit, who started a successful business selling kits for the needlepoint technique. You'll discover what’s the state of her Instagram, what she thinks she could improve, and what's her marketing aim on social media.

If you ever feel like you’re not achieving anything on social media, one of the reasons may be that you don’t have a strategy. Clear objectives, metrics, and time-bound goals will help you see if you’re on track or not. In this lesson, you'll find out how to create your goals and measure them.

Objectives and Metrics

Market research is essential for your social media efforts. If you were ever stuck with generating content ideas and creating content, you never did your audience research properly. In this lesson, you will find out how to do that.

Audience

Ever wondered why some brands hit the sweet spot for their audience on Instagram, while others struggle to get any engagement? And why some brands look relatable, while others look faceless? Let’s look at how to create content that delivers and people can relate to.

Content and Messaging

Instagram Campaigns and Ads

Have you ever heard that social media does not work for sales? In this case, they probably didn’t know how to sell. If you make your offer clear and promote it to your target audience, it will work. Let me show you how.

Resources and execution go hand in hand together. Think of your resources as a wheel that gets you to your goals faster, and the execution as a set of actions that drive towards a goal. In this lesson, you'll learn more about resources and execution to help you achieve the results you want and achieve them fast.

Resources and Execution

Additional Resource: To Learn More

One thing you should know about your content strategy is that planning is important, but being flexible is sometimes unavoidable. In Nerrisa’s case, I planned her content, but when she started working on it and a new campaign, her model got sick. This postponed a photoshoot by one week. Then, she needed her Kickstarter to be approved, and learnt it might take longer than anticipated. This video is a follow-up Zoom meeting between her and me, discussing what to do when things don’t necessarily go as planned.

Advice for Social Media Managers and Business

Whether you’re a social media owner or a business owner, you may want to get some valuable advice on where to start and how to go about managing social media accounts.

Repurposing Social Media Content

Are you ready to expand from Instagram to another platform? In this lesson, you’ll find out how to repurpose your Instagram content like a professional.

Module 6

What if creating social media content didn’t have to feel overwhelming? In this module, Tiago Henriques—content creator, author, and collaborator with brands like Instagram and Notion—shows you how to develop a sustainable strategy that works for you. Learn to build and schedule content with ease, stay consistent, and avoid burnout while keeping your creativity flowing.

11 lessons (1h 36m)

The Project: Intro

In this lesson, I will show you a visual overview of the course and comment on context and why it’s helpful to see content creation as a sustainable project that fits into our routine.

Template: A Quick Overview

In this lesson, I will show you an overview of the Notion template I will use in this course and that you can customize to your context.

Your Goal

Now we’ll get started on gaining clarity about our goals. This is one of the best ways to stay in our lane and avoid getting distracted by the information overload in social media.

Your Content

Based on the previous lesson, you'll start writing down which kind of content can be beneficial for you to reach your goals, creating a list of hypotheses that you'll build on.

15m

Your Creative Toolbox

In this lesson, I will cover the first set of creative prompts. They’re focused on reacting to content and things we already consume and experience and how to turn that into your own content.

Reacting

Now I will show you the second set of creative prompts. They’re focused on observing and documenting things we experience and how to turn that into your content.

Documenting

In this lesson, I will take you through the third set of creative prompts. They’re focused on repurposing content we have created in the past.

Your Turn: Keep Building on This

Now I will show you how to start building on the template and adding in your own creative prompts inspired by your own routine and skills.

Design Your “TV Channel”

Motivation oscillates. In this lesson, we’ll explore a concept that helps us stay consistent in a sustainable way: a content schedule that focuses on saving time and energy.

Your TV Shows

In this lesson, I'll talk about different ways of building a sustainable schedule that fits your routine, a flexible structure we can adapt, and improve over time.

Testing, Learning, Adapting

Here I will share with you some key questions to adjust the route when content creation is getting harder to sustain. I will also talk about the expectations we create and how to deal with them.

Module 7

Step into the world of digital communication with marketing expert David Cuen, whose experience includes leading roles at BBC, Instagram, and Booking.com. In this module, you'll explore the power of engagement and how to connect with audiences through effective social media strategies. Discover key principles for standing out online and building a brand that truly resonates with your followers.

13 lessons (2h 40m)

What Is Engagement?

Engagement is a word that’s thrown around a lot and seems subject to interpretation, but in reality, is very simple. In this lesson, I’m going to teach you what makes engagement unique and why engagement matters.

20m

How I Have Approached Engagement in the Past

You are going to see some examples of how I’ve done this in the past and how I would do it now if I was starting from scratch.

14m

General View

Here, you are going to learn three important principles that encourage people to interact with your content regardless of social channels and languages. We will understand why they are important if you want to engage your audience.

16m

Shared Interest

In this lesson, you’re going to learn what lives at the intersection between your brand’s goals and your audience’s passions. Why should people invest in your brand? The key is to tap into their interests.

Motivation

Now, it’s time to understand what will motivate people to engage with your content. Human beings have external and internal motivations and in this lesson, you'll understand the importance of both and when to use them.

In this lesson, I’ll teach you why people need to take away information and content that has practical value and how you can achieve that. More powerful than money is the ability to let people build social value.

Social Currency

What Makes Content Sticky? 1

Sticky? What are you talking about? In this lesson, I’ll share what stickiness is and why it’s important to always aim for it when it comes to engagement in social media.

What Makes Content Sticky? 2

We continue to review the factors that make content sticky.

Rules: Right Side of the Brain

Here you are going to learn how to appeal to emotions when it comes to content (the so-called right side of the brain) so that it’s relatable to your audience. We will learn how to connect to people's feelings. We are going to explore three key principles and how to put them into action: the role of emotions in content, the importance of storytelling (particularly human stories), and what makes the content relatable.

Rules: Left Side of the Brain

Now it's time to learn about logic and what for years has been known as the left side of the brain; to clock into the things that make our reasoning tick. To do that, we will learn how to make our ideas simple, achievable and I will introduce you to the concept of the content pyramid, a framework to guide you through engaging content.

16m

Why Do You Need Content Communities?

Community is a word that people tend to overuse, but here I will show you why it's important when it comes to content creation and how to start building your own. You will understand the power of giving people a voice and a platform.

Examples of Successful Use of UGC

Let’s take a trip together through some of the most interesting examples of UGC content you can find online, analyze what made them special and what we can learn from them.

Engagement and UGC, a Practical Guide

Now let’s jump into practice. I will show how to generate a UGC campaign that engages people, step by step. You’ll see me through the planning and execution process before handing it over to you to create your own.

15m

Module 8

Discover what makes influencer marketing such a powerful tool with Alejandra González, CEO of TNG Management and former YouTube Creator Partnerships Lead. In this module, she breaks down the influencer marketing ecosystem, from finding the right partnerships to measuring campaign success. Perfect for aspiring content creators, you'll learn how to turn brand collaborations into meaningful, results-driven opportunities.

11 lessons (1h 54m)

What Does Influencer Marketing Really Mean?

If you browse Wikipedia, you'll find the definition of influencer marketing written as "a form of social media marketing involving endorsements and product placement from influencers, people, and organizations who have a purported expert level of knowledge or social influence in their field." To me, it's much deeper and more strategic than that. In this lesson, I will go over what influencer marketing is and what it isn't, and how this tactic has become a form of promoting and selling ideas as well as products through credible and authentic social media voices.

Getting to Know the Creator Economy Landscape

More and more people are beginning to understand the true potential and impact of creators on a brand's business results. The industry is divided into a perfect triad: brands, content creators, and the audience. Much of the content today is developed by creators and consumers. In this interdependent triangle, authentic conversations and trends rise. Platforms give people an opportunity to express themselves. Audiences reinforce the sense of belonging and community, and advertisers and e-commerce players shape the business model.

Useful Lingo!

Knowing the relevant terminology is key. Each vertical market has its own terms and concepts. Influencer marketing is no exception. In this lesson, I will provide you with a general glossary that covers the most common terms in the industry. Understanding the right vocabulary is your ticket into the inner circle and will help you to kick off outstanding business conversations with creators.

13m

Setting a Goal

Have you heard of the expression less is more? Well, when applied to goals and objectives, it's very relevant. One goal per campaign is more than enough. Doing this will allow you to focus and track your performance appropriately. Although this process may seem easy, whittling your goal down to the simplest of terms can often become very complex. In this lesson, I will go through a quick step-by-step guide on how to set a clear and lean objective.

Identifying the Target Audience

Getting to know your audience can seem like a breeze. However, it requires a lot of effort to really know who you're talking to. A common mistake of marketers when it comes to launching an influencer marketing campaign is misunderstanding their audience. They fail to really drill down into who their customer is, what they appreciate, where and how they engage with the brand or product, and who/what will actually influence their decision to buy.

Choosing the Right Allies: Influencers and Third Parties

In a world of endless options, choosing the right name for your campaign is a challenge. A challenge that can be overcome through well-informed decisions! Remember, the follower count alone is not enough to determine who is the right creator to partner up with for your campaign.

Selecting the Right Platforms and Actions

It's common to feel dazzled and infatuated with platforms that are new, trending, or building the next generation of creators. But hold your horses! You need to choose the social media channel that is right for your influencer marketing campaign. Will it be Instagram? TikTok? Twitch? Facebook? YouTube? Twitter? Or all of the above?

16m

The 5-Step Plan

Guys, you already know how to find the right influencer or influencers to work with. The next questions you will need to answer are how to contact them, brief them, assure their commitment with a written agreement, and measure results. Once you've worked through all these steps, the final question to answer is, have the results I was looking for been achieved?

17m

Building a Killer Brief

Writing a complete influencer brief is essential to executing a successful influencer marketing campaign. Content creators are not corporate executives that like to read 20-page presentations. They are natural creatives and marketers, so it's important to make sure that your brief includes all the information about your brand and the campaign goals in a simple, snackable way.